Picture this

I had a bit of an art-errific kind of weekend. Friday night, after partaking of a fine Restaurant Week meal at Rosa Mexicano with Dana and then sending her home to NYC for the weekend, I walked on over to Flashpoint, a local gallery/theater/artsy kind of place that was having an opening reception for a photography show that I read about on a local blog, dcist. I was sufficiently forewarned about the potential wait to get into this thing, primarily because the website told me about lines going down the block the last couple of years, and Dana and I also spotted the line winding its way down G Street on our way to dinner around 6:00. This par-tay was supposed to last from 5 - 9, so silly me, I thought things would have toned down by 8:15 or so - no dice! I spent about 25 minutes standing out in the freezing weather (literally - temp hanging right around 32 degrees at that time - at least the wind wasn't cutting through me!) waiting to get in. I wasn't getting very good night pictures with the camera, plus I was on the phone with Trinity and not totally focused on my picture-taking, but here's some line-waiting going on in the cold:

I didn't actually snap any pictures once inside for a couple of reasons: (1) it was so crowded I could barely shuffle one foot in front of the other, much less maneuver my arms and hands into a position that would capture a photo worth taking, and (2) I was intimidated by all of the people proudly standing next to their photography work with really awesome cameras in their hands. At least my camera is ridiculously portable. It was a pretty cool, albeit claustrophobic, experience - DJ blasting away, tons of amazing shots adorning the walls...and a bar. They were actually out of wine when I showed up, so I passed on that particular perk. Anyway, here's one of my favorite photos from the evening:

A lot more impressive than anything I accomplished on my morning walk to the archives and sculpture garden! You can check out more of andertho's photos on flickr - there are some great ones from the exhibit opening where you can see just how crowded it was. This adventure pretty much made me want to quit my job, blow a ton of money on an awesome camera, and just wander around taking a million pictures a day.

Art adventure for Saturday? Not quite as interesting as the events of Friday or Sunday, but it involved putting various artsy and framed things on my apartment walls. I have so much....stuff! But it makes it all homey and cozy, right? Up go the shelves, the pictures of friends, the Ansel Adams prints, the expensively framed expensive pieces of paper from good ol' Texas Tech, the giant star so emblematic of my home state....goodbye, apartment deposit, as I anchor things into the wall.

Sunday afternoon I walked over to the National Portrait Gallery, a mere three blocks from my apartment, to take in their fine framed artwork and kick off my museum tours. I spent two hours wandering through the galleries, jotting down some notes in my Moleskine city notebook (I bought it for myself for Christmas - seems like a cool receptacle for thoughts, ideas, places over the next couple of years, plus it has maps - Metro and street - that have already come in handy) and soaking up a little culture. There are some pretty cool things going on in that building - it was originally the U.S. Patent Office, Lincoln's inaugural ball was held there, it's one of only two buildings to hold portraits of the presidents (White House is the other one), and they have a good selection of exhibits. Old stuff - American origins! New stuff - portraiture now, which had some really great photographs taken in the last few years. Check out a slideshow of pictures below, and if you'd like to flip through at your leisure, I've included a link to the Picasa gallery where you can also take note of my (sometimes witty, often silly, occasionally enlightening) captions. I realize this is not fascinating to all of you, and I wish I possessed the capability to edit down my photo selections a little bit more, but I just think it was such a neat experience. Get ready for more of these!