Denise Stewart-Sanabria: Denise and Alison do DC

Alison Oakes and I needed to head to Target Gallery in the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA to pick up our work that was on exhibit in "In the Flesh 3", earlier this week, http://www.torpedofactory.org/galleries/target.htm so we decided to hit the National Gallery in DC. They had a special exhibit by 17th cent. Dutch genre painting Gabriel Metsu we had to see.

It takes eight hours, so I picked Alison up at 5AM. This means I had to pick up coffee and a veggie egg white wrap at 4:30 AM in Cedar Bluff. The Dunkin Donuts there is no longer a 24 hour one-they didn't open until 5AM. Jerks. Alison was ready right on time with a cooler of food and her bags of important stuff.

We hit the Rt. 40 Dollywood exit right when the McDonald's opened at 5:30 AM for coffee and a no-meat egg McMuffin. Not that bad. Alison went back to sleep while I drove into the dawn coming over the approaching Blue Ridge. Coming close to Johnson City, I experienced horror. I saw it come out from the median-a tiny piece of fur that was running, blindly running. It was a rat. I like rats. I instantly calculated all the possible parameters that would ensure me not hitting the rat with either of my tires...change lanes, slow, swerve. Not one was doable, so it was up to the rat. The rat failed, and ran under one of my tires. this was horrible. I needed absolution for this event. Alison was needed to give it to me, but she was still sleeping. Shit. A few miles down the rode, I passed Megabus on it's way back from it's nightly DC run.

Eventually Alison was woken up by the sun shining in her face, and I told her about the kamikaze rat. We invented a narrative where the rat was really a bad rat who had been up all night womanizing and cooking meth, and was just running home in time to not get caught by his family. That was better.

We got to DC before 2, and only had to do three rotations around the block before we got a parking spot.

We Arrive.

I'm not sure what this installation with all the rocks was, but it was cool.

Alison finds a Bryon Kim and swoons. The tiled piece is a portrait of the skin tone of a whole ton of friends, family and fellow artists. The key, which I've inserted above the photo, shows everybodies name. Alison wants to do more smaller tiled pieces again after she looks at it.

I'd never seen Kerry James Marshall in person before....nice!

Wayne Thiebaud!

We now look for food. They've got a great cafetaria located between the twin opium addiction that is their art bookstore. I cannot be allowed to penetrate this too deeply, but I find a cool book called "Good Bye Kitty: Comtemporary Japanese Art" I need to see how much that is on Amazon.

Alison gets some good stuff.

I get something I can play with and mutilate. It also worked with coffee.

I needed to do reserch on molding construction of alters for something i'm planning, and they had tons of them.

Alters, alters.

More stuff we liked.. (we couldn't photograph the Metsu's since they wern't the galleries property)

Alison like the flesh tones, but decided the landscape background sucked.

I really liked the cat. The guy is pissing it off, I think.

Jan van Eyke details- an Astrology floor.

Same piece-rainbow wings and jewel details. Amazing stuff.

This guy looked like he was watching people in the gallery out his window.

We barely touched on what ws in there before we had to leave, but I had no idea of the quantity of iconic pieces of western art they owned. Alison took notes for upcoming lectures in her art history classes for her students at Pellissippi. (I need to send her the big jpgs for that...)

We made out own alter piece using the drinking fountain in the woman's rest room.

THEN we head to Alexandria. I got screwed up just once and we ended up at the gates of the Pentagon. I made a u-turn that I think was legal.

Alison, Allison the gallery director, and my dismantled installation. The show went great, got reviewed and viewed. Target Gallery has international juried themed exhibits most of the year, with a couple curated here and there. Unlike most juried exhibit, they don't get higher concentrations of local submittals. It all just comes from everywhere, all the time. Alison had been in "In the Flesh 1", and I was in last fall's 5" x 5" photography exhibit, and we really noticed that-and liked it.

We went to eat dinner at Mai Thai restaurant, which is just up the street and is really good despite a somewhat snotty waitress. I was so hungry I forgot to take pictures of the food.

Alison on the walkway by the Potomac. A lightening storm started up, so we got out and headed the 2 1/2 hours out to Harrisonburg-just far enough to find good hotels cheap. We saw the end of Inception and still can't figure out if he is in reality or not.