More Art! Pile it on, folks!

I had a fun day one of the days between the art fair and this post running around to Cass Art, L. Cornellson and Sons, and a fancy paper store with Emily, picking up various art supplies at each place.  It was beautiful and brisk and exciting.  Wandering London is cool.

Moving on...

We went to visit the Courtauld Gallery.  It's part of a university, I believe, so we got in free since we're a university (and because when they asked Peter if we were London-based, he didn't lie about it and they were impressed).  The Courtauld is cool because, although it's a rather small museum, they have things like Van Goghs (self portrait with bandaged ear) and Picassos (little girl with a dove, beginning of blue period) and Cezannes (one or two of that mountain he was always doing) and Manets (lady at the bar) and...you see where I'm going with this?  It was really interesting to be able to see them in person and I touch my forehead to Mark Johnson, my old art history professor, since I got some of what was going on, but no more than that because he was a boring professor and made it a boring subject and hence I didn't know more.  Sorry, but it's true.  We were talking about composition; how shapes, colors, values, and so on create the composition and affect how you see it.

There was a lantern festival that evening, so a group of us hopped a tube and headed over.  It was pretty fun; they had a procession with paper lanterns that had transparent/translucent circular faces and an LED light inside that made them glow very nicely.  The sides were strips of paper, and this whole little bundle was hung from the end of a dowel rod, and they followed a group of drummers around the park for a while.  It was very pretty to watch and the rhythm was very catching.  Unfortunately, that's about all there was to that, so we were there for maybe half an hour if not less.

And then I managed to get a runny nose and sat there cursing it for most of the weekend.  Good times.  Especially during Stake Conference on Sunday--half of the group went to the same place for once on a Sunday.  It was a very good Stake Conference.  I believe there were probably about 500 people, at a guess.  As you can tell from that statement, I'm very very sure of my numbers.  *cough*  I also think it was due to the cold that, despite bringing paper with the intent of making sure my fingers stayed occupied so my brain stayed focused, and paying attention up through the sustainings, I suddenly found myself waking up just before the rest hymn with no memory of having fallen asleep in the first place.  But the talks that I heard were very excellent.  And one of the members of the stake presidency said he'd put one of their youth up against any 10 in Europe.  (Don't tell the other youth in Europe...)