Celebrating Mother’s Day

Sunday Afternoon in Decatur

Since my mother died a number of years ago I tend not to celebrate Mother’s Day, but it so happened that the art museum in Atlanta had the last day of the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibit on Mother’s Day and was invited to go with my friend. Atlanta is only an hour and half easy, (when not commute time) drive. I don’t often go to Atlanta, I have never learned my way around …thank goodness for GPS now days. We started off on a bright sunny Sunday morning driving down our local country highway and then on to the freeway for our day’s adventure enjoying the scenery of lush green trees and green fields with memories of my mother.  I remember the first time I went to the High Museum which was many years ago when I fly from California to Atlanta to visit my parents in their new home. They had recently moved to Atlanta suburb from Tampa. My mother and I explored Atlanta and enjoyed the High Museum. So it felt very fitting to be returning to the High on Mother’s Day. It has been many years since I have been there. The High Museum, which is a fine very modern built museum with a nice courtyard entrance where there was a long row of red rosebushes all in bloom giving off a wonderful sent. Most of the courtyard was filled by a early morning yoga class with a women speaker into her headphone mike, what posture the participants should be doing. The participants where on there mats lifting parts of the bodies in odd ways, which was a kind of living impromptu sculpture garden, as we walked past them on to the entrance.

We needed to take an elevator to the exhibit and as the doors opened we were greeted by mural of extreme close-up faces of Frieda and Diego from an old black and white photo. Their thoughtful faces helped to set the tone for the exhibit, titled "Passion, Politics and Painting", which started with Diego’s early work, when he was sent to study art in Spain by the Mexican Government. Then continued with examples through out his career, including full wall poster of a mural he was commission by the Rockefeller Family to do in NYC, but they decided not to have it shown do to its political contain. It was very interesting to view this in the scale that it was painted. Growing up around San Francisco I have seen a number of his mural.  I would have liked to see more of Frieda’s paintings, the exhibit covered Diego’s career more than hers and did really focus on their politics. She was really a fine painting and created the most beautiful skin tones in her painting. What she most remembered for are her self-portraits. I really enjoyed seeing the gallery of black and white photos of them taken by famous photographers of the day. The photos where journalistic and told more of the real story behind these talented complex artist couple. 

On to a pleasant lunch in the museum cafe with floor to ceiling glass windows and a view of gardens with purple iris in bloom, lawn and a few high rise buildings, perfect place for people watching and thoughtful conversation.   The sunny afternoon stretched out before us and so we decided to go exploring a near by neighborhood/town of Decatur where we heard there were interesting shops and galleries.  At first driving in we wondered if it really did have nice shops, all we saw were office type buildings, but then we found the street with the shops, galleries and sidewalk cafe's. It was great fun exploring each place and finding interesting treasures, then drinking ice tea and eating yummy deserts at a sidewalk cafe on the tree lined streets, a perfect way to enjoy Mother’s Day. Hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day. 

Entrance to the High Museum

Square Trees- Courtyard of the High Museum