The spectacular (new) Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Directly across from the front of the White house is Lafayette park.  Crowding itself into the park is the Renwick gallery (shown above).  It is very old and was saved from demolition by Jackie Kennedy. It housed pretty standard art for most of its life.  Recently it underwent a long reno and is now re-opened and re-purposed as a breathtaking and moderately crazy, modern art gallery.

One artist was Patrick Dougherty who seems to have a habit of winding long tree branches into many shapes.  A lot of them strike me as nests of giant birds.  You can look at his website to see the great things he has created all over the world.  I so loved his work.

Another installation was by Gabriel Dawe - another website you can look up.  It was impossible to photo his work because they space was so tight. He weaves threads or filaments into complex forms, in huge scale, using a lot of colours and complimentary lighting.  The obsessive perfection that goes into his work is just inestimable by normal humans like us.

Believe it or not, there is a woman named Jennifer Angus who is certainly crazy by any definition.  Ms. Angus purchased - and captured a few herself - 5,000 bugs from Southeast Asia, in sizes from minute to shockingly large. She then paints the walls of her exhibition in the blood (honest) of the Cochineal bug which is more commonly used for food colouring.  She then attaches her 5,000 victims (which probably = 500,000 little legs) to the walls in patterns - the most apparent ones above being skulls (don't ask).

I cannot recall now what was in that stand in the middle of the floor, but it was not bugs, and it was a lot of drawers with some things which I spent a lot of time studying.  You could say I am not decidedly pro-bug, although there are many S.E. Asian bugs beautifully shown which I am quite happy not to have met on my travels there.

The bugs do not go to waste - she repackages each one in specially made trays and moves her beloveds on to some other show in the world where once again, they are pasted to a wall...etc.

As wonderful as those installations were, nothing really equals the indisputable insanity and talent of a Mr. John Grade.  He searched for just the right tree in Washingon state.  Found  Mr. Right Tree then proceeded to make a wax cast 40 feet up the tree and much of its branches.  Took that cast back to his Seattle studio, made a reverse cast, cleared away the original one, and presto, he had replicated the forest tree precisely.

Then he used 500,000 re-purposed rectangular cedar blocks just a few inches in size, with a rectangle hole cut in the centre of each to glue to his tree.  It was such a massive job that he put the tree horizontally in his studio window so people would see it and come in, and then he recruited  a few hundred to help him complete the work in only a full year.

The tree trunk and limbs on the lower photo shows it all hung from wires in the very tight gallery space.  In the top photo, you are looking from the base and root beginning right through the inside of the tree into the black hole which is the top exit.  There was another small tree also on display and it was a wonder to see.  One never becomes accustomed to the apparently unlimited talent of  genuine artists.

I loved and so admired the Renwick for such a bold re-purposing of a space and selecting such unexpected works of art.  It helps that it was free so I could go back and be amazed repeatedly.