One down, many more to go!

Last weekend I finally took a trip to the Getty Center. It has been one of those things that has been on my “to do list”, but has always seemed to get pushed back to the bottom of the list and ignored. I am taking an Art History class in school and our teacher assigned us a museum assignment, which is to go to a museum, pick a work from an artist we’ve been studying and sit in front of it, in person, and write about it. Leave it to a school assignment to force me to fulfill some of my life aspirations… how embarrassing. Anyway, the trip to the museum was a blast. I thought it would be fun to take someone with me so I asked my step-mother Katherine. She is amazing. She’s a very intelligent person and is someone who finds enjoyment and beauty in the world around her; I knew she would like and appreciate the arts there. Upon asking her one Sunday evening at my parent’s house, my dad’s ears perked up overhearing our conversation. “I want to go too”, he said with a little pique in his voice. One of my eyebrows shot up, “really?” I honestly didn’t know that my rock and roll listening, car loving, beer drinking father would be into standing around in an art gallery contemplating the brushstrokes of a Rembrandt, but apparently, I was wrong. So we all went. I was glad to have my dad there though; he contributed some different and interesting views to art I had never thought of myself and I was glad to have his comic relief in the somewhat stiff atmosphere. We walked around for a while staring in awe at the all of the Renaissance and Baroque period art works. However, only one thing was on my mind; I was on my search to find… The One. That one painting that would blindside me with its exquisite beauty and complexity and yell out to me, “WRITE!” I eventually stumbled across such a painting shortly into the first building. It is called The Entombment by Peter Paul Rubens. It is a pretty graphic painting of Christ being put to rest in a tomb by his loved ones. If I were to have come into this museum before my life as an Art History 1B student, I probably would have given this work a quick glance and thought…meh. However, with my keen and educated eye, I now possess the ability to appreciate the work the artist put in to his…um…work (too many “work”s). I honestly did have a really great time. Later, we ate dinner at Clancy’s were my brother works and …Dum…Dum…Dum, I ordered fish, a food I’ve vowed to boycott after being forced to eat fish sticks all throughout my childhood. I’m not going to lie, it was tasty. All in all, it was a pretty good day spent with people I love. Next on the list for me to do, sky diving. I’ll have to do this one all on my own though….they don’t offer any classes at school, I've already checked.