Done Sailing for the Season, Back in Washington

On Thursday (July 29), Peter and I packed two suitcases apiece (one of his contains only tools) and personal bags and worked on getting everything ready for hauling out the boat on Friday. Among the jobs were getting all the lines off the deck to keep them cleaner (my task) and pulling the two outboard motors out of the forepeak so that Peter could get them ready for storage until next spring. On Friday (July 30), we got up at 6 a.m. to do final tasks. I needed to launder all the sheets and towels we had been using as well as a load of our clothes, and Peter had to shut down systems and do other jobs. The boatyard was ready to get started around 9:30. We cast off the lines and motored over to the travel lift. I dogged down all the hatches and closed all the durades while Peter coiled lines and got other things on deck ready. And then Mantra was lifted out of her natural habitat, the water, and put up on tripod stands on the hard. Forlornly, she rests on the land, longing, I am sure, for the open sea. 

Mantra on the hard

While the boatyard people were getting here secured on land, Peter and I went out to lunch at Capsize Restaurant nextdoor to the marina. Then, I finished laundry before joining Peter on the boat far above the ground, to drain the water tanks, secure the protective tarp and do final preparations for abandoning her in Maryland. Peter will be back on the fall to work on hatches and deck repairs and many other items.

Then we drove to Washington, D.C., arriving at 8 p.m. at Lori's house, where she had prepared a delicious dinner for us of a squash casserole and a colorful salad with produce from her garden. 

This morning, we slept in and enjoyed breakfast and conversation with Lori before departing around 10 a.m. for downtown. We caught a bus to the Renwick Gallery, a jewel among the Smithsonian museums. On the first floor is exhibited the works of the four winning artists of the Renwick Invitational 2020: Forces of Nature. The first installation was composed of hundreds of suspended rows of squares of cotton dyed with indigo in subtly different values. The artist, Rowland Ricketts, grows and processed his own indigo in Indiana, having apprenticed with Japanese growers and dyers, and then creates his art installations in collaboration with others.

The second artist, Laren Fenterstock, also exhibited a single piece entitled The Totality of Time Lusters the Dark. Stylizied clouds and a glistening comet with a tail stretching to the end of the piece are suspended over a garden comprised of ponds among grasses and other plants, all in shades of black. Encrusted in crystals, glass and obsidian, the room-size piece of art is glittering and ominous. 

The Totality of Time Lusters the Dark

The third gallery contains a stunning series of four trees--a magnolia, a cherry, a winter plum and a wisteria--glass sculptures by artist Debora Moore. Colorful, luminous, peaceful and amazing in their fine detail, they awed us with their beauty, and we circled among them for some time. 

Magnolia bloom in glass

Magnoia tree

Plums

Wisteria

The works in the final installation, by Tim Horn, takes inspiration from seventeenth century jewelry patterns, baroque decoration, and patterns found in nature, such as those made by lichen and coral. While some of the works are crafted from bronze and glass, others are made of crystallized rock sugar over frameworks of metal and wood. One of these is a ornate chandelier while another is a carriage modeled after one found in the home of Alma Spreckels, the wealthy wife of a man who made his fortune in the sugar industry. 

Gorgonian

Crystallized sugar carriage

After being wowed by the art on the first floor, we visited the second floor of the Renwick to enjoy the contemporary crafts on display there. I have seen these works during previous visits, but they are well worth viewing again. Peter was particularly impressed with The Bureau of Bureaucracy, a large piece exhibiting superb carpentry skills as well as whimsy and satire. 

Janet Echelman's 1.8 Renwick

The weather in Washington today was magnificent, warm and sunny but not hot. There are many, many more tourists than there were just a couple weeks ago but it still did not seem crowded. I don't think the tour bus industry is in full swing. We walked past majestic federal buildings and the White House and encountered a memorial sculpture for the Boy Scouts of America. We walked along the Mall to the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art, where we had a satisfying lunch at the cafe there. 

Peter at the Monument to the Boy Scouts of America

Peter was interested in going to the Rodin sculpture garden, but I assured him that it did not exist in Washington. He was sure that it did, and I finally realized that he was remembering the Rodin sculptures in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden, so we walked across the Mall and strolled around there, admiring not only Rodin's Burghers of Calais, Walking Man and Balzac as well as work by other modern sculptors such as Henry Moore and Jean Arp. 

Peter and The Burghers of Calias

We caught a bus back to Glover Park and returned to Lori's, where she and her "friend" German were preparing a dinner of pisto (Spanish vegetable stew), rice and salmon. It was nice becoming better acquainted with him over a fine meal.

More museums tomorrow!