Baltimore Art

I got a present yesterday from Supafine! A genuine piece of Baltimore Art from a Baltimore artist...the famous Supafine herself. A very cool picture that will soon be hanging in my office. (the one with the window and the door) I am very excited!

I think it is my first piece of art art from Baltimore. I mean, I have all sorts of poetry books from the Spring Art Fair (Artscape?) (including Adrienne Rich books...before I knew how cool she was, when she was just another Baltimore poet.)

All that said, my appreciation for art, while often attributed to the fact that my parents and art degree'd older sister often dragged me to the Smithsonian art museums, my love of art really came from Baltimore. No, we eschewed the Baltimore art museums for the most part. I am not sure I have ever even set foot in the Walter's.

So where did this love come from? It came from a restaurant. Haussner's. Every so often, about once a year after my sister and I became old enough to reliably behave, we went to Haussner's, usually on a Sunday, usually in the spring. This was a BIG DEAL. My father loved German food, his family was of partially German origin, he had lived in Germany as an adult. Haussner's served German food. Food is all well and good. Their strawberry pie and strawberry soup are probably the only ways I would eat a strawberry at this point in my life unless having a couple sunwarmed off the vine. The creamed spinach would be well worth the tummy troubles. The fried eggplant has led me to try all sorts of eggplant, no matter the bad luck it brings. The breadbasket is the breadbasket of my fantasies. No other breadbasket compares. My love will go on and on about Blossom's bread, and while it is good...very good, it isn't the restaurant bread of my fantasies. Rolls, muffins, bread, (and if anyone has Haussner's bread recipes out there...please share!) The menu was amazing. Wait, art.

You see, if you went to that link, you saw that Haussner's was more than just food. It was an art museum of sorts. In fact, if you climbed the stairs there was an "official" art museum. However, in the dining rooms, among the trolleys, the waitresses clad in white, (who often had been there longer than I had been alive) there was art. Some "notable" and "valuable" by some official measure of the value of art. Some of it not so much. There were paintings, sculptures, busts, miniatures, all sorts of amazing things. I spent long periods of time taking in landscapes that led my mind to wander, portraits, nudes, dogs and more. There was no next gallery to get to, (though I oft made more than one bathroom trip just to peer around). I could really sit and think and figure out things about paintings that I never would have if I had been in a museum.

So, Supa has reminded me that art and Baltimore are linked in my life. I will definitely appreciate my haunting Baltimore picture as it hangs in my office!