Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Glorious Summer Days

Tuesday was a wonderful day! The weather was perfect -- comfortable, not humid, beautiful and pleasant. B and K and I met at a Minneapolis restaurant that I had never heard of: Wise Acre Eatery. Anyone in the Twin Cities reading this blog: go there! The food was fabulous! I had this salad which I think was the Wise Acre Salad:


So Yummy!!! I also had a fresh, home-made cookie with the chocolate still melty-fresh from the oven. YUM! They use fresh ingredients from their own garden in Plato, Minnesota. And everything is made-from-scratch delicious! We had a perfect, outside table in a corner, in soft shade, with sweet little butterflies flitting around while we chatted. I felt like I was in a novel.

The three of us did an experiment (for us as an impromptu group)- we each made a block and then the others added to it. Tuesday was our day to meet and return them to their owners.
K and hers

B and hers

me and mine

After lunch I discovered this museum: The Museum of Russian Art. B's two kids are adopted from Russia.. though she was no longer with me, I decided to stop in. Here's the museum. It used to be a Congregational Church which was built in this Texas mission style because its first pastor had done some work in Texas and loved that style. It's very unusual for church architecture in Minnesota. Inside, there were two exhibits going on. One exhibit was Soviet painters (most done between 1920 and 1960) and the other was a Ukrainian American who made his way to Minnesota after WWII and painted many beautiful Minnesota scenes as well as others. I loved them both!


Here's a sampling of some of the art. Click on any of the photos to get a bigger, closer look.


All the paintings below are by O. Bulavitsky. This is the poster of his exhibit:
Below, the South Minneapolis neighborhood Bulavitsky saw from his upstairs window:

After all this wonderfulness, I went to visit my Little Free Library (at church), pulled out a lawn chair, and sat down in the lawn to read. It was such a perfect day to be outside reading.

All in all, it was a glorious summer day, and a great way to spend my time.
P.S. Today is another equally glorious day! Fabulous!

3 comments:

Geri said...

Your exchange blocks all turned out so well, and your lunch looked delish. I really enjoyed the Russian art, especially the picture of the milkmaids relaxing and having a laugh, I would love to know what they are laughing at.

Anonymous said...

Love the Russian Art Museum! There was no third exhibit in the small room? Just curious. I missed the samovar exhibit, but saw the Faberge Egg exhibit a while back. Loved it. Thanks for sharing some pix of the current exhibits. The food at the restaurant sounds wonderful!

Carol E. said...

Re: the Russian art.. apparently that painting of the 3 milk maids sharing a laugh is the most popular in the exhibit. Soviet painters at the time had a model they were supposed to follow of showing the communal farms and work places in a positive light. Hence the happy milk maids. I still love it, even if it is kind of forced into a Soviet model.

Gram: the Russian exhibit was on first and second floors. The Ukrainian American exhibit was in the lower level. The little room you must be talking about is a gift shop. That must be its new identity.