Wow! What a night! I had the great opportunity to meet and listen to a contemporary master artist tonight. Eric Fischl gave a lecture at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in DC. The lecture was followed by a meet and greet and an hors d'oeuvre reception in the atrium. It was a great experience, made even greater by being able to attend it with a wonderful art teacher friend of mine. I was able to talk with Mr. Fischl for probably about 20 minutes. This kind of access doesn't come around very often. We talked painting, teaching, a whole host of things. And it was especially fitting that my art teacher friend was able to speak with him, because Fischl gave a lecture to his class during grad school almost 30 years ago! He was very kind and down to earth. The evening was topped off by meeting a person who works in art fraud across the world. They're trying to get a system up and running that would attach DNA to the back of modern works in order to track their provenance to curb fraud/forgeries. The DNA could be scanned using a smartphone. What a neat and novel idea!
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What a great weekend with the family. We started off on Saturday, braving the elements to catch the Blue Angels fly in Baltimore. We tried avoiding the big crowd at Fort McHenry and went back to Canton Waterfront Park, like we did two years ago. Although it rained, and the show was delayed by 90 minutes, I'd do it all over again just to hear the roar of the aircraft, and my children. Today, we tried making it to see the landing of the Blue Angels at Martin State Airport. I knew we'd be cutting it close, because I teach senior citizens every Sunday at Heartlands in Ellicott City. I took the fam with me to class, and then rushed to try and make it. Unfortunately, we were stuck in traffic because of an accident. And then upon arrival, parking was a bit of a problem because the folks directing traffic weren't being very nice about accessing the parking lot. So we missed the actually landing. However, we were able to make it so that the kids could meet one or two of the pilots as they were on the flight deck shaking hands and signing autographs. We didn't have anything for them to sign, but it worked out just fine. The pilot of the #2 plane actually grabbed both of my children (one at a time of course) and held them in order to get their picture taken with them. The grins were from ear to ear. It was so nice of the pilot to do that. I won't forget it for quite some time. I'm about to send a thank you email because the pilot truly went above and beyond for my children... |
B.D.SchmittHusband, Father, Archives
November 2015
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