It is not often that I experience San Francisco when the weather is great. Luck was on my side and yesterday I took a mental health day and went on a personal field trip. Life is so much easier for me in the summer and not to mention that it is August, which sadly is drawing toward the end of summer. Now is the race to do all the things we have not done before school starts in two weeks. My son BA has been asking me to take him to the San Francisco Skate Park Potrero del Sol for a few weeks now. The city built a beautiful skate park on Potrero Hill and it was finished a few months ago. I love it when cities put money towards positive things for teens to do. There are so few places for them to hang out.
I got my mom points for taking BA to the skate park with a couple of friends, and of course they don’t want me to hang with them at the park so a girlfriend and I spent the afternoon at the SFMOMA. After dropping them off, we went directly to the museum. The SFMOMA is in a really wonderful location in the city adjacent to the Yerba Buena Gardens and culturally there is alot going on in this area. It just makes you feel good to be there. I don’t treat myself to days like this very often and usually miss the traveling exhibits so I was thrilled to be going to see the Frida Kahlo Exhibit which will be in town through September 28. I did not know much about her before attending the exhibit, but her self portraits and the tidbits I have heard always intrigued me. If you can’t make the exhibit here is a little bit of information about her and her art.
She is known as “Artist. Icon. Revolutionary” . She and her husband, the well known muralist Diego Rivera, spent a few years in San Francisco during the 1930′s when he was commissioned to paint murals. He was one of the most famous artists during this time and Frida obviously an artist in her own right lived in his shadow. She is best known for her self portraits, which I don’t think make her look the most becoming, and that may have been intentional. But contrary to her self-portraits if you ever see photographs of her, she was very exotic and beautiful. As most artists, for some reason, she lived a chaotic life, polio at a young age, a tumultuous marriage, miscarriage, and later a divorce and then remarrying Diego only to divorce again!! She also had many physical ailments later in her life and died in 1954 at the young age of 47.
Her career was definitely dwarfed by her husband’s fame, and she became known as a “Surrealist”. Which she denies stating
“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my reality.”
She was definitely misunderstood. Many of her paintings can be seen and were thought of as disturbing, interestingly, after her miscarriage she painted specifically about the death of her unborn child and her feelings one would have of suffering and isolation during this time. Amazingly these feelings had never been graphically depicted and her objects symbolized various aspects of her physical pain and psychological anguish. Which to some would not make the most aesthetic paintings. In her own way he was a powerful woman during her time and was always at odds with the traditional roles assigned to middle-class women, she was independent and had a bohemian attitude. Obviously the feelings she expressed in her art were unheard of during this time, or if they were felt, they were not displayed or expressed openly. She was truly a leader for her time.
That was Frida’s life, not always the best, but she was a trail blazer. Going to the museum is like walking through a picture book of history, I always learn so much about those who have gone before us.
Leaving the museum, it was time to pick up my son and his buddies at the skate park. Boy can they smell in the car after a day at the skate park. I guess I will have to put up with it, not only am I grateful that I had the opportunity to spend the day with a special friend, but most of all I am grateful for my freshman son and that I can trust him to spend the afternoon in the city, unchaperoned with a couple of friends and not get into trouble. What a gift! After my experiences with my first teenage son, I am just so thankful for a “beautiful teen day”. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying I am not thankful for my older teen son. That would be the furthest thing from how I feel, believe it or not through all the hard times he has given me some of the greatest gifts of having a child. With that said, it does sadden me when I think of him at a residential treatment boarding school, many miles from home missing out on days like this.
What’s next? Tuesday night BA and I are going to the Giant’s Baseball Game. That is another place I have to give the city credit for. I am not a big baseball fan, but I love going to AT&T Park. Our kids are only teens once! =)
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