On the Write Track: Meet Ups

February 8th-9th, 2014

Milestone: I went to my first meetup.com Meet Up.

My first two, actually. One was in a dinner and a movie group, and the other was in a walking tour group.

The movie we saw was Monument Men featuring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, and John Goodman, among others. It takes place in WWII, and is about a group of men who went to Europe to save precocious and historic pieces of art from Hitler and/or being destroyed in the crossfire of war.

My favorite part of the movie experience was actually how many art people were in the audience, so at just the right moments the whole theatre would gasp.

Afterwards, we walked down the street to an Italian place called Trattoria Trecolori. It's a little pricey depending what you get, but I got the cheapest entree and I dunno what the other entrees tasted like, but mine was fantastic! Penne with a spicy pepper red sauce... I know I want to try out a bunch more restaurants when I'm in the city just to get a better feel around for what's good, but I would not mind going back there, either! The staff couldn't have been nicer, especially given that there were at least 40 of us shoved in the back, and we didn't even arrive until 10:30 pm, and definitely stayed until a little after midnight. I left after that, although many people were going to The Playwright bar another block or two down.

The other group toured around the Chelsea Galleries, hopping from place to place. We all gathered--and there was a lot of us, even though several people didn't come that said they were going to--at 12:15, and the tour was said to go until 5:30ish (though the site said the latest it would go was 8:15--I left around 4:10 or so).

In the other group, I was definitely the "baby" because I won't be 21 until June. This group, I'm pretty sure I was still the "baby", but there were a few more people at least close to me give or take a couple years. And we actually have plans to hang out in Brooklyn next weekend just the few of us and check out the Brooklyn Museum on our own. Yay for making friends! It also helped getting to chat not just over art but over some super delicious Thai food at Thai Chai Yo. Also a place I want to go back to. And it was cheaper!

One of the first museum's we went to is currently featuring a display by Richard Serra.

This does not do it near enough justice, but it's basically a big squiggly maze made out of a material that looks like wood, but is actually steel. Also it feels like suede, and the only reason I knot that is because the security guard only told us not to touch it after the act. Oops. Still cool. (Oh heyyyy I'm in this picture!)

The next place we went featured Iva Gueorguieva. Not all of hers were 2D canvas, some she actually built in a way reminiscent of wild shipwrecks on the walls, but all of her stuff was textured. When you look up close, it's not all splatters and lines, but strips of canvass matted over top of each other, and on top of the base frame/canvas. It's pretty cool! And, call me uncultured, but if it were smaller, it looks like something a normal person might have in their house over their couch. Well. Depending the rest of the decor, of course.

The third place we went was an exhibit on Andrew Moore. I have no idea if Moore used photoshop or photorealistic painting, but they're still cool. They were available to purchase, too--if I had upside of 20,000 or so to drop on it.