February 7, 2007

Gateway


Often I miss the deeper meaning in things as I go through my day-to-day tasks and mostly this is a result of my failure to ask questions and seek out meaning when I could. For instance, when I visited New York City two years ago, I walked through Central Park for about an hour. It was covered in snow and beautifully landscaped. There were plenty of diverse plants, statues, monuments, memorials (like Imagine for John Lennon), lakes, trees and paths throughout the park. But above those paths, there were also huge orange gates throughout the park. I took a few pictures of them, but it wasn't until two years later that I would learn they were quite famous to a large number of people. At the time I knew they were put there by an artist at no charge and with no money coming from them. What I found out this week in Art class, two years later, was the name of the artists and the purpose behind all of their works. I am very impressed with Christo and Jeanne-Claude and am very lucky to have seen one of their works in person. Even my art teacher, who loves them, has never been able to do that herself. I hope I can not only keep my eyes open each day, but truly appreciate what I am seeing.