Our First Stumble Through....

...is tonight!  We've been blocking all week and things are going swimmingly.  We'll see how much we all remember tonight and also see what happens that works better than what we did originally.  Ah, rehearsal.   The discoveries that are made are so exciting!  We've been having a blast this week exploring and talking and collaborating and laughing a LOT :-)  I can't believe I get to do this for a living!  I'm sure that's what any sports player or painter or opera singer or anyone in the arts feels like when they actually get paid for creating from their soul....we all must be black and blue from pinching ourselves.  

And speaking of creative wonders, I saw the exhibit America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s at the Art Institute yesterday.  Oh, boy, what a fantastic exhibit!  Works by Edward Hopper (one of my personal all-time faves), Thomas Hart Benton (right up there too), Grant Wood (now one of my new all-time faves), Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth...and much, much more (though only a couple of women, which is tragically disappointing).  The biggest learning experience for me was seeing all of the Grant Wood paintings.  Everyone knows the iconic American Gothic even if they don't know the name of the painting.  But his other works are just as fabulous. The way he saw landscapes and people and the world was whimsical and brilliant and I fell in love with all of his works.  And as we were strolling through the exhibit and then later the museum, I kept thinking how amazing it is that all of these incredible works of art are RIGHT HERE, lighting up our world with their imagination and beauty and oh, look!  there's a Picasso!  there's a Cezanne!  oh!  Georgia O'Keeffe!  Seurat!  Rodin!  Van Gogh! a statue from the 3rd century A.D.!  a tiny room with detailed furniture!  an Eames chair!  Tiffany glass! a suit of armor from 1540!  Margaret Bourke-White photographs!  I mean, really!!!! 

So here's a public work of art for you, affectionately known as The Bean but officially named Cloud Gate in Millennium Park.  Impossible to take a bad picture of it.  Can you imagine a world without art?  I surely don't want to.