During the China 2.0 blogger’s tour, we visited the grounds of the Summer Palace in Beijing, where we watched dragon boat ferries and a gentleman writing in Chinese characters (using water) on the stone walkway.

One woman was writing in more elaborate Chinese characters, but I didn’t get my Flip video camera out fast enough.  Further away was this man writing in a more cursive style, so I filmed him.

For RSS readers and those who cannot see the video box below, here is the URL for the video on YouTube.

[Still working on getting the video box embed to work - it plays havoc with the blog’s template for some reason. The video URL above does work, however.]

One of the things I love about living in Christchurch is that you never know what you’ll run across when you head into the city center. Sometimes it’s festivals. Other times unique works of art.

Yesterday’s trip into Cathedral Square was no exception. I was looking for coffee but found, instead, a giant purple sperm  sprawled out in front of the Cathedral.

Turns out it’s part of the 2008 SCAPE Christchurch Biennial of Art in Public Space, an outdoor art exhibition that features the work of 25 artists from 15 countries. The giant purple sperm, known as Darwin,  is the work of Joep van Lieshout, and apparently is meant to imply power, status, expansion, and reproduction, reflecting ideas of survival in all aspects of life, both biological and corporate.  It’s positioning in Cathedral Square, the so-called ‘heart of the city’ is a statement about new life and regeneration of the city center.  I’m not sure, however, that kids see it the same way. They just seem to see it as one more thing to walk and roll all over. 

SCAPE art is scattered around the city, often making you do a double take when you walk past.

Not quite sure of what you are seeing, you stop and contemplate.

And then, suddenly, you’ll notice the red SCAPE sign that explains the who, what, and why of the exhibition that you’ve stumbled across.

With only an hour to kill, I didn’t have time to check out all the exhibits. But luckily, SCAPE is running until 2 November 2008, giving me a great reason to return for more coffee and art in the central city.

Sometimes our readers can provide more interesting material than I can come up with on my own, especially after a night when the baby decided that sleep is for the weak and two in the morning is a ripe time for playing peek-a-boo.

The entry on advice for women’s use of the squat toilet generated a hefty pile of comments, but none more thought-provoking than this link sent by Kim from Galavanting magazine: an ad for a paper cone designed to let women pee standing up. Take a look and see if you don’t agree with Kim’s assessment as interesting, a little creepy, and possibly very useful. I suppose I’ll have to give it a shot, but … brrr, it’s just kinda weird. All I can say is take that Freud — penis envy no longer.

And in response to my post on Calvin Beale, Kathy Kassel sent a link to the rural America demographer’s incredible collection of photographs. Beale was fascinated with architecture and rural small towns, interests he combined in his photos of county courthouses all over the country.

National Public Radio this weekend ran a fascinating story, a memorial obituary of one of the most interesting and dedicated travelers you’ve never heard of. Demographer Calvin Beale worked for the US Agriculture Department for 55 years before his death on September 1st. Beale didn’t think of himself as a traveler — he simply spent decades cataloging life and images in rural America as part of his job and the work he loved.

Beale had a knowledge of rural America that is unmatched. He helped guide federal policy because he knew of the changes in farmland, heartland, and small towns years before the Census Bureau became aware of them. Isn’t that what we ask of the best of our travelers and travel writers? That they pay attention to the places they see and the people they meet? Paying attention seems to have been integral to Calvin Beale’s nature.

NPR’s website is still running a memorial to Beale, and as part of that they’ve reposted links to an incredible collection of tales, photos, and videos, some from Beale himself, some of Beale himself, and many part of the story “On the Rural Road” that journalist Jim Wildman worked on with Beale five years ago. The photos and video interviews are particularly interesting. Beale was evidently a photography enthusiast. His fascination with rural county courthouses deserves a place on Perceptive Travel’s increasing catalog of America’s quirkiest, rarest, and most interesting art.

I like nothing better than finding excellence in places that are dismissed by those who think they know excellence.

One of the largest contemporary and modern art museums in the US is not in New York; it’s the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

The 2002 building that houses the collections was designed by renowned architect Tadao Ando; the glass boxes floating on a shallow reflecting pond are quite stunning. I wish we could have seen them at night (which you can on First Fridays, with live music and cocktails, or the free Tuesday Evening lectures and presentations.)

One of the best views of the complex is from the award-winning Cafe Modern inside the Museum.

The Modern is located in Fort Worth’s Cultural District; I visited recently with my daughter to see the first full-scale American museum survey of the work of contemporary artist Kara Walker.

Her cut-paper silhouettes on black paper look like pretty Victorian fripperies, until one carefully examines her quite explicit depictions of racial and sexual tension woven into powerful narratives of the antebellum South.  It’s almost too unnerving to look at closely, but I learned a lot by reading Walker’s typed thoughts on note cards, which are part of the exhibition. They appear to be how she “thinks out loud” about the history that she wants to portray.

My teenage daughter didn’t see the point of such emphasis on American slavery in an artist’s work (”OK, it was 200 years ago, she ought to get over it….”) but as Walker says, “As long as there’s a Darfur, as long as there are people saying, ‘Hey, you don’t belong here’ to others, it only seems realistic to continue investigating the terrain of racism.”

Modern art is edgy, unusual, controversial, often uncomfortable but always thought-provoking — that tradition continues proudly today in Fort Worth.

Related posts:

• Unexpected art: the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City
• Ten terrific museums that you’ve never heard of
• Baby, you can drive my (art) car