Brauer Museum of Art

We visit this gallery on the Valparaiso University campus often. This month had two interesting shows. They're both on for another month if you can get by.

Henry Diltz took some of the iconic photos of the sixties. I remember seeing some as album covers. It really brought back the times--photos of the Hog Farm and Woodstock, Zappa, Hendrix, Morrison, Mama Cass, so many people I "knew."

We'd forgotten some of the exuberance and reminded ourselves we need that in our lives.

The second exhibit was a delight. I love finding things like this--that I've seen all my life but never really SEEN. Now I'll see each time I encounter a newel post!

There were two large rooms just full of rows of newels. They were identified by style and period but not much more. Each had been beautifully restored. A portion of a staircase showed them in use. The collection began with Mr. Christopher encountered some grungy old posts in shop basement and they reminded him of chess pieces. He decided to collect a "chess set" (and he did--it's there and very cool).  Then he went on to gather more and more of these pieces from demolished buildings. I think it was the massing of them that made it so impressive.  A delight.

antique treasure, gallery show, dunes

I found this over the weekend (Michigan City Antique Mall) and am still bouncing a bit. It really helped put a smile on my face. I put labels on it.For our Valentine's weekend Hubby and I played. We went out to Brauer on Saturday (Valparaiso University). If you're in the area, this is a show well worth seeing. It'll be there another month. Paintings by Richard Loving. African art and photos also in the galleries. But the paintings--they just were amazing.We headed back into Indiana on Sunday, first to the antique mall where I found my treasure, and then on to Lubeznik Galleries by the lakefront. We saw the end of the show of art from the McDonald's corporate collection. There was a wonderful of display of photos from the 70s--culture at a particular set of bars on the north side of Chicago, full of famous and not-so-famous faces. And two children's exhibits--always our favorites. One was photos by the kids in the Boys and Girls clubs and the other Black History month posters. It is amazing what children see.

Then we drove out to the Dunes to blow some fresh air into our lives. The snow was piled very high both on and off shore. I took this photo of pack ice at the water's edge from the road with a strolling couple in it for scale. I don't think I've ever seen the pack ice this high.This week has been a big melt off. We may hit record warm temperatures today (60F!). At first the temps hovered around freezing--snow would melt during the day and everything would be wet--and then freeze at night. Very slippery, especially when it all began to melt again. No morning walks. Now I'm dodging puddles on my walks, enjoying the "warm." This is kind of "Indian Spring" like we get "Indian Summer" here each year in the fall (Indian Summer is an unseasonably warm period of a few days that follows the first hard frost in the autumn). Winter will soon have us in it's grip again. But for now I'm enjoying no scarves, shawls, mufflers, mittens, hats and boots!