IA Day 5 - Fine Art, Flowers, and Frightful Food
Today I started out by getting some coffee at a great local Des Moines spot called Mars Cafe. They had tons of cool art and vaguely space-themed decorations which made for a fun atmosphere to go with the excellent coffee. As an added bonus, I bumped into one of the comics from the open mic I did in Des Moines earlier this week. He recognized me and we started chatting about comedy and life and it was really nice. One thing he said that really stuck out to me was when I asked him if he had any recommendations for things he liked in Iowa, and he said “I don’t think this is what you’re looking for but the best thing about Iowa is if you ever get in trouble, you just wait, and somebody always comes to help”. I thought that was pretty sweet.
After chatting a bit, I made my way to my first stop of the day, the Des Moines Art Center. The art center is a stunning building which serves as a sort of physical representation of the evolution of modernist architecture as new wings had to be added over the years and each wing was built by one of the most celebrated architects of the given time period. The first wing, completed in 1948, is a very classically stylish blend of Art Nouveau and Art Deco designed by Eliel Saarinen based on designs that he had initially made for the Smithsonian Museum of Art. The second wing, completed in 1968, is a very geometric, sculptural concrete design by I. M. Pei, and the last wing, built in 1985, has a more sprawling and amorphous contemporary design by Richard Meier. With 20 years between each wing, each one’s architecture becomes as much a snapshot of the respective time period as well as a work of art in its own right. I can’t really capture something as large scale as the difference in the architecture with my crummy photos, but the museum’s website has fun breakdown of the different styles with lots of photos here: https://www.desmoinesartcenter.org/about/architecture/
Inside the museum, the galleries more than lived up to the fascinating architecture. The first exhibit, which sadly I lost all my photos of, was dedicated to the soft sculptural works of the legendary Yayoi Kusama. I had seen and really enjoyed Kusama’s Infinity Rooms and intricate abstract paintings, but I didn’t immediately register that these funky looking sculptures were the works of the same artist. I’ve since watched a really amazing documentary about her life, and these sculptures are from a really interesting period where basically everything she did was really innovative (in the 50s/60s nobody had tried to make sculptures out of traditionally soft, sewn materials) but she would not get a lot of notice for it, and then maybe a month or two later a male artist would do the same thing to worldwide acclaim. In this case, Claes Oldenburg really stole her soft sculpture thunder (I’m not sure if he ever owned up to any inspiration from her, but I’m pretty sure Warhol would eventually cop to stealing ideas from Kusama). They’re not necessarily my favorite art work from her, but that’s more of a testament to how much I like her other stuff than a knock on the sculptures which do have a quirky charm to them and I think the historical context adds some greater significance (at least for me). The elephant in the room is how phallic all the sculptures are (and basically all the other museum guests, not just me this time, were giggling about this I assure you) but I liked Kusama explaining that for her sex is a huge source of anxiety and fear so the sculptures began as a sort of way of dealing with anxiety through the repetitious act of sewing (her obsessive compulsive disorder is a large part of all of her work) and her choice of materials literally softens the things that scare her, making them harmless. I lost all my photos, but luckily the works are famous enough that I was able to find some good examples online:
After the Kusama exhibit, I made my way through a gallery of the museum’s permanent collection. I lost some of these photos, but the first photo I do have is a good one of a somber cubist portrait by Picasso called Head of a Woman. I genuinely like it a lot, but I always wonder how pissed the models must have been when they found out that’s what he chose to do with their face.
Up next was another special exhibit, called This Woman’s Work which collected a few dozen prints in various styles by different artists over roughly a 100 period all capturing in some way the theme of “women at work”. I love when an exhibit takes a loose theme like this and then lets the curators run wild because you really get a beautiful survey of different artistic trends from the past century as each artist’s unique POV comes through. Because of this particular theme, you also got a pretty fascinating cross-section of how different artists grapple with ideas of gender, race, and socio-economic status so there was a lot to think about beyond each print being pretty visually dazzling.
My personal favorites included: a vivid pen and ink sketch of women commuting on the subway by Bert Elliot; a gorgeous scene of three Native American women weaving a colorful reed mat by Charles Pushetonequa; a moody pop-art piece called Spring Cleaning by Nicole Eisenman; a dramatic watercolor called Heavy Baskets by Byron Ben Boyd; an emotional red-tinted etching of the famous dancer Isadora Duncan by John Sloan; a somber schoolhouse scene by Winslow Homer called the Morning Bell; a color lithograph of a young woman selling flowers by Max Klinger; a surrealist woodcut of a pregnant woman morphing into a broom called Sweeping Beauty by Allison Saar; a really lovely aquatint etching by Mary Cassatt of young women gathering fruits; a playful drawing of market women absolutely decked out in bananas by Diego Rivera; a soft-ground etching of a very warm-hearted scene of a grandmother and child by Suzanne Valadon; a sort of cartoon-y nude courtesan by Eduoard Manet; an impressionistic scene of women tilling hay by Camille Pissarro; a beautifully textured black and white photograph of a woman at a delicatessen by Louis Stettner; a hilariously offputting pop-art photo of a Barbie dressed to the nines like a fashion model by David Levinthal; and another etching of hard-working New England women by Winslow Homer.
After the special exhibit, I made my way through another permanent collection gallery focusing on the art of still life. My favorites were more modernist approaches to the classic subject matter including: a very dreamlike flower vase by Thomas Hart Benton; a sweetly impressionistic table setting by Mikhail Larionov; some incredibly unripe bananas by Walter Kuhn; and a minimalist cubist bowl of apples by Juan Gris.
From here I moved out of the first wing and into the second I. M. Pei-designed wing which featured a beautifully tranquil courtyard as its centerpiece. My favorite part of the courtyard was the gentle reflecting pool with an insanely perfectly balanced bronze sculpture by Carl Milles called Man and Pegasus.
The main special exhibit in this wing was a large collection of abstract ceramic works by the artist Sterling Ruby. These abstract works really play with the properties of clay as a medium featuring very loose amorphous forms and multiple glazings to create unusual colors and textures. I’ll be honest for lack of a better word, a lot of these pieces look sort of disgusting, but I guess the fact that Ruby’s able to create such viscerally and uniquely gross shapes and colors is a talent in its own right. I can’t say that they were super pleasant to look at, but I’d never seen anything like them before so I appreciated the creativity and technical skill involved. On a thematic level, I liked that a lot of the pieces feature broken parts from previous attempts reassembled and fired together again so they merge back with the finished piece in interesting ways, which brings in a nice idea of working through mistakes and becoming stronger becausue of them.
Accompanying the ceramics were some works of large-scale geometric abstractions from the permanent collection whose very precise lines and forms were a fun counterpoint to the goopy creations of Ruby Sterling. My favorite were: an angular acrylic piece that plays with your sense of depth called Barnards O.P.H. by Larry Zox; a strangely calming Wall Drawing by Sol LeWitt of different shapes and forms that can be derived from a cube; a very neat stainless steel sculpture of six stacking Hexagons called Terminal by Robert Smithson.
My favorite piece just because I almost totally missed it was this little upside down man made out of small wooden rectangles called Untitled by Joel Shapiro. I like that it looks like a tiny minimalist acrobat just doing flips above the artwork. It adds a bit of whimsy to the space and serves as an important reminder to always look up when you’re in museums.
Leaving this gallery, I passed by two larger abstract sculpture that initially seem like weird architectural elements. These were Isa Genzken’s concrete and steel sculpture called Passage and a very blobby piece called Untitled Balcony by Phyllida Barlow both of which were more impressive as constructions than particularly aesthetically pleasing.
Next up, it was back into the permanent collection with a gallery of works by early 20th century American artists. These pieces showed definite influence from European Impressionists but with an increasing sense of modernist abstraction. Some highlights for me were: a particularly gorgeous street scene called Near East Scene by Henry Ossawa Tanner; a very cubist stone sculpture of a man by John Bradley Storrs; and an evocative minimalist scene by Milton Avery called The Blue Plate.
Up next came some more modernist 20th century works which started to get stranger and more up my alley. My favorites here included: a mixed media assemblage by Joseph Cornell featuring a diorama of collaged bird illustrations dramatically shattered by a bullet hole; a hazy abstraction called P73#2 by Jack Tworkov; a swirling emotionally charged piece by Georgia O’Keeffe; a moody painting of a corn crib by Arthur Dove; a truly wild and vaguely terrifying portrait of Pope Innocent X by Francis Bacon; and a jazzy abstraction called Ecstasy by Agnes Pelton.
At the center of this gallery was a spindly surrealist bronze sculpture called Man Pointing by Alberto Giacometti that did oddly tie the room together.
Next up were some more modern surrealist works which were a lot of fun. My favorites included: a doofy looking caricature called the Villager with Close Cropped Hair by Jean Dubuffet; a sleek pop-art-y painting of Steel Plant by Ralston Crawford; a gently surreal painting of Herbert Hoover’s birthplace by Grant Wood; a jazzy mixed-media collage called Blues from the Old Country by Romare Howard Bearden; a cubist portrait of a woman’s head by Alexei von Jawlensky; a strange mish-mash of abstractions and symbols called Night Scene by Adolph Gottlieb; a stunning, lonely painting of a young woman at an Automat by Edward Hopper; an incredibly charming watercolor of a street scene in Chicago by Reginald Marsh; and a colorfully expressive landscape scene by Marsden Hartley.
One of my favorite pieces in the whole museum, because of its blending beautiful surrealist art with an equally surreal backstory, was called “A PANIC THAT CAN STILL COME UPON ME” SALVAGES II by Jess. The vividly wacky painting was comprised of strange dream-like figures including a banjo player, a matador, a reclining nude, and naturally a half-man-half-goat all seamlessly blended into an existing antique oil painting of a verdant landscape. The painting is wonderful, but then when you read about the artist you get a pretty wild story that is a treat in its own right. The artist Jess was born Burgess Collins, and while young Burgess was drawn to art, he chose to purse science and eventually ended up working on the Manhattan Project so he wasn’t exactly a slouch in that field. However, in 1948 he had such a vivid nightmare about the world being destroyed by nuclear bombs that he fully quit science all together and moved to San Francisco to be an artist full time. While in SF, he met the Beat poet Robert Duncan and the two began a relationship that would last until Duncan’s death in 1988. The journey from closeted Nuclear Scientist to out and proud avant-garde artist is one of my favorite career left turns I’ve encountered.
Accompanying these two-dimensional works were some very cool modernist sculptures.My favorites included the very elegantly minimalist marble sculpture Torse Gerbe (Sheaf Torso) by Hans (Jeans) Arp and Barbara Lekberg’s very dynamic bronze sculpture East River Divers which had a great sense of motion that looked extra neat in the piece’s shadow.
From there, I entered the third wing of the museum which housed the museum’s contemporary collection. First up were some pieces that made clever use of text. Highlights for me were: a print by Nancy Spero featuring various famous women from art history with the text “We are Pro-Choice”; and some stylized neon art by Tracey Emin in the form of the sentence “I Promise to Love You”.
From outside the window, I got a peek at a wild sculpture that made me do a brief double take because for a second I thought deer really were starting to make a pyramid. Turns out it was just the very aptly named piece Animal Pyramid by Bruce Nauman.
Next up were some minimalist contemporary sculptures which were quite odd but weirdly captivating. My favorites were: a study in contrasting textures by Eva Hesse called No Title which featured slightly amorphous windows made from wire-mesh coated in polyester resin and gauze with ominous rope tentacles snaking out and onto the floor disrupting the normal distance between viewer and artwork (sadly it was one of the last pieces she completed before her untimely death from a brain tumor); an Untitled sculpture by Paul Thek that plays with the idea of Catholic Reliquaries with woods, metal, and resin sculptures designed to look like slabs of meat in a decorative glass box; and a minimalist sculpture by Lousie Bourgeois humorously entitled The Blind Leading the Blind despite sort of looking more like a giant comb.
Next up were some minimalist paintings with my favorites being: the calming color abstraction Whirl by Kenneth Noland; the very accurately named Colossal Torso by Leon Golub; and a the sunny Yellow Blue by Ellsworth Kelly.
The next gallery had more minimalist sculptures with my favorites being: a very clever and pointed sculpture called Ton Pied, Mon Pied (Your Foot, My Foot) by Romuald Hazoumé which uses a discarded canister used for smuggling gasoline from Nigeria to Benin and some carefully arranged black fibers to create a face in the style of more traditional Western African masks; a gorgeously exploded porcelain vase by Steven Young Lee entitled Maebyeong Vase with Mushroom Vine which takes a very literal deconstructionist approach to a traditional Korean vessel; and a deceptively simple piece called Escombro (Debris) by Teresa Margolles which blends some of the artist’s Mexican artistic heritage with contemporary tragedies by gently placing a shard of wood from a house destroyed by a 2008 Earthquake in china on a small expertly crafted solid gold holder making for a very simple but effective juxtaposition of elegance and tragedy.
Taking a drastic turn away from minimalism was the delightfully busy and chaotic piece by Nick Cave (not the musician) called Rescue which featured a ceramic Doberman on a dramatic throne decked out with birds, flowers, and lights to strike quite the regal figure.
Next up were some pieces that played with mirrored surfaces and the idea of reflections. My favorites were: an elegant decorative piece entitled Iago’s Mirror by Fred Wilson which features intricate patterns made from gorgeous black Murano glass; and a seemingly simple portrait of a man taking in an abstract sculpture entitled Man with Chamberlain Sculpture by Michelangelo Pistoletto that happens to be made from painted paper carefully applied to stainless steel so that every viewer also becomes a part of the piece with their reflection.
Tucked among all the contemporary works, there was a stunningly emotional sculpture by Auguste Rodin of a nude classical hero turning his head away from battle in a moment of uncertainty. It was a bit of an outlier but an incredibly powerful piece nonetheless.
Next up were some more minimalist contemporary paintings. My favorites here included: the breathtaking oil painting Landscape by Gerhard Richter which looks like a photograph of misty mountains at first glance; a playful take on the old woman/young woman optical illusion called Swing Time by Glenn Brown which is made almost entirely out of swooping lines and swirls (I’m fairly confident there is not a single straight line in the entire painting); and a mesmerizing geometric abstraction called Samurai Tree (Invariant 1) by Gabriel Orozco.
Up next were some larger-scale contemporary sculptures including: a pop-art piece called New Shelton Wet/Dry Triple Decker by Jeff Koons featuring three vintage vacuums in sealed glass cases with fluorescent lights elevating the humble appliance to a kind of sterile elegance; a humorously simplified wooden sculpture by Joel Shapiro that looks sort of like a man perpetually falling on the ground; a sculpture called Solitude by Isamu Noguchi that deftly balances order and disorder with a perfect marble cube resting on long amorphous legs of bronze; and the slightly horrifying sculpture called Ariyoshi by Petah Coyne which features a small female figure with twisting coils of horse hair spilling out across the floor.
Next up were two pop-art-y pieces that really blew me away with just how much layered imagery they contained. The first was like a puzzle piece of abstract forms and different landscapes called Mesokingdom Six (Lost) painted onto line by Carroll Dunham, and the second was a surrealist blend of abstract expressionism, graffiti, and street art by the late great Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Along one wall was a giant untitled piece by Anselm Reyle that featured captivating and dynamic hodge podge of aluminum, chrome, and crushed glass all held together an unified by an almost other-worldly aqua patina glaze.
Up next were some pieces across different media that played with black-and-white contrast. My favorites included: an elaborate etching evoking surrealism and mythology called Animal Spirit (blue) by Grayson Perry; a gorgeously composed photograph called Two Men Dancing by Robert Mapplethorpe that is almost classically romantic but was considered challenging at the time for its explicit embracing of homosexuality (albeit far less explicit than the artist’s most notorious photos); and an amusingly avant-garde video piece by Martha Rosler called Semiotics of the Kitchen, a feminist parody of cooking shows and the idea of the “traditional housewife” using linguistic concepts and winkingly deadpan performance art to deconstruct ideas of domesticity. You can actually see the whole amusingly unhinged video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuZympOIGC0&ab_channel=Everythinghasitsfirsttime
Up next were some clever sculptural pieces: the very punnily named Comfortable Abstraction by Tony Tasset which is almost like a parody of abstract expressionism using leather cushions and the surprisingly politically pointed piece Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds) by Ai Wei Wei which consists of what looks to be each a pile of sunflower seeds, but each seed is actually an individually crafted and painted porcelain sculpture made by the artist and 1600 Chinese laborers as a way of examining the intersection Chinese history (both porcelain and sunflower seeds are historically meaningful substances) and the contemporary rise of mass production.
After the more monochromatic works, the next gallery was a burst of color featuring bold abstract pieces that included: the glowing neons structure Untitled (For Ellen) by Dan Flavin and the garish but oddly captivating geometric painting Fire in the Sky by Peter Halley.
The next gallery was dedicated to works by iconic pop artists. These included: an opulent double portrait of legendary dancer Martha Graham by Andy Warhol coated in a glittering power made of crushed diamonds; a large portrait of the composer Morton Feldman smoking a cigarette by Philip Guston that strikes a fascinating balance between abstract expressionism and comic strip art; an expansive lonely painting of a cocktail party amidst a stark black background by Alex Katz; and a multi-media piece entitled Tormented Self-Portrait (Susie at Arles) No. 2 by Ashley Bickerton that forgoes the traditional self-portrait for a collection of different logos and brand names of products the artist consumes.
Next up was a playful yet very convincing forgery of a fake historical exhibit called Museum Storage: Please Do Not Remove the Labels by Josiah McElheny that features 11 blown glass vessels meant to look agent with text labels to support the fib despite the work being made in 1994 (like me!).
Next up was a collection of prints that I absolutely loved called Tales of Tewa Suspense by Tewa-artist Okuu Pin. These pieces reimagined various stories from Pueblo history and folklore in the style of classic comic books to elevate oft-neglected Native-American myths and heroes into the exalted realm of superheroes. Even if there wasn’t really meaningful thought behind the pieces,the vibrancy and detail of the imagery would still make them great works of Pop-Art so the series was a big highlight for me.
Next up were some works of contemporary photography, which played around with the supposed objectivity of the medium. My favorites included: a hypnotically warped portrait called My Blue Lake by Kiki Smith; a photographed recreation of a scene from an aborted terrorist attack that a youth group had intended to commit in Germany in 1977 until the member in charge of the explosives had a change of heart entitled Attempt by Thomas Demand; a series of haunting black and white aluminum print photographs mysteriously entitled Sunday Drive 2000 by Anna Gaskell; and a lavishly staged family photograph (where the youngest daughter adorably did not seem to get the memo to look serious) entitled Wanda and Daughters by Deana Lawson.
Also playing with the idea of portraiture was playful but also hugely impressive self portrait by Ai Wei-Wei made entirely out of legos:
At this point, nearly two hours into hanging out at the museum, I finally realized “Oh maybe I should take a moment to photograph this casually stunning architecture”":
Next up came up some more early 20th century works, which were older but no less strange and inventive than the more contemporary pieces. My favorites included: a very surreal and nightmarish oil painting called The Path by Hannah Hoch; and a really warm and lovable cubist portrait called Woman with Flowers by Agnes Weinrich (one of the rare cubist portraits that could possibly be described as flattering).
Next up was the last of the contemporary galleries, featuring works by female artists that explored themes of race and gender. My favorites included: a dreamy but unnerving triptych called Sea Island Series (Thomas) by Carrie Mae Weems which repurposes historic daguerreotypes originally used to pseudo-scientifically support ideas linking race to intelligence and presents them as family photographs to look at lasting generational impact of racist beliefs like this; a minimalist but emotionally charged silhouette piece by Kara Walker depicting horrific over the top acts of violence against slaves in a light-hearted traditional 19th century medium to highlight how ignored these acts of violence have often been in media; a beautifully eclectic and textually complex collage entitled Left Behind Again 2 by Mickaline Thomas; a deceptively simple series of pieces that bridge the gap between decorative arts and sculpture called Dispersions by Anne Wilson, which the artist took intricate antique damask cloth and turned tiny tears that had begun to emerge over the years and carefully resewed them into perfect circles which she then decorated with hair and thread to give the appearance of burns and bullet holes introducing a sense of violence and disturbance into the traditionally domestic artform; a dark and spooky untitled piece by acclaimed sculptor Lee Bontecou; an oddly absorbing series of lithographs printed onto felt depicting different hairstyles and hair products entitled Wigs by Lorna Simpson; a powerful charcoal drawing of a mourning couple by Käthe Kollwitz; a fascinatingly blank-faced Untitled photograph by Cindy Sherman; a beautifully sleek bronze sculpture of a Water Woman from East Aftican mythology by Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu; and a series prints and works on paper by Kiki Smith that reimagines imagery of genitalia, femininity, and reproduction in dark and intentionally confrontational ways.
Last but not least, as I passed by the earlier galleries I was caught off guard by how hilariously mundane yet oddly beautiful this painting by Isabel Bishop of a nude woman clipping her toenails was:
After all that museum-ing, I decided to make the most of a lovely July day and check out some cool outdoor spots around Des Moines. My first stop was the Better Homes and Gardens Test Garden, which is where the famous lifestyle magazine stages many of their photographs. To allow the magazine to stage photos that look like they could be taken all around the country, there’s a real variety of trees, flowers, shrubs, and herbs, and it makes for a really vibrant viewing experience. I really couldn’t have asked for a better day to visit either, as the sun was shining and most of the flowers were in bloom.
Accompanying the natural beauty of the gardens were some pretty snazzy manmade structures, including water fountains, pagodas, and homey 1950s looking white picket fences:
One garden even had tons of fresh vegetables, including peppers, tomatoes, and tons of herbs, and it was pretty neat to see them growing:
Across from the test gardens was the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, an expansive 4.4 acre outdoor sculpture garden affiliated with the Des Moines Art Center. The park features over 2 dozen sculptures from iconic artists like Keith Herring, Robert Indiana, and Louise Bourgeois to name a few. It was great getting to work in a nice lab around the park while taking in stunning works of art at every turn.
My favorite sculptures included: a monumental 27 ft. tall piece by Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa depicting a plaintive crouching figure made out of a lattice of swirling steel letters; a humorously minimalist piece called Decoy by Martin Puryear that uses a simple cast-iron circle with a little periscope to imply that something much larger and perhaps more ominous is lurking just below the surface; a charmingly doofy looking cast aluminum face by Ugo Rondinone; and a giant bronze, polka-dotted pumpkin by the great Yayoi Kusama.
One sculpture however, William Tucker’s Gymnast III, made me laugh much more than any of the others for reasons I’m sure you can guess. Supposedly it’s an abstraction of how gymnast’s move, but I buy that as much as Georgia O’Keeffe saying they’re just flowers.
Even the parking lot I stayed in had incredible public art such as this giant pop-art mural by Jordan J. Weber called Pearl Clutcher/Snatcher.
For lunch, I stopped at the delightfully absurd undead themed restaurant, Zombie Burger and Drink Lab. I had read that it was a must visit for both the outrageous food and atmosphere, and I must say I was won over by the art before I even sat down.
The food was somehow just as crazy as the decor, and perhaps on-brand for the restaurant’s theme I thought I might die after my meal. That’s not to say it was bad, in fact, everything was actually very delicious (and I love that they call their burgers GOREmet), but I foolishly went way over the top in attempting to try both one of their signature burgers and a signature milkshake. Like Guy Fieri flying too close to the sun, I ordered the Walking Ched Burger which featured a burger, bacon, and macaroni and cheese on two patties made of deep-fried mac and cheese, and I washed it down with a Zombie Joe milkshake (naturally) which featured vanilla ice cream, jet fuel coffee syrup, whipped cream, and a shot of Bailey’s (if you ask for it spiked). Frankly, I thought I thought I was going to have a heart attack, and I’m not sure exactly how I dragged myself back to my car, but I am sure glad I tried both the burger and the shake even if both at once was a bit of hubris.
After falling into a bit of a food coma, I woke up and set out from Des Moines to check out other sights nearby. I dove up to the quirky town of Mason City to see a few wonderfully eclectic spots there. First up was the boyhood home of the man who wrote the music, lyrics, and book for the classic musical, The Music Man, Meredith Wilson. I was too late for any tours of the home, but outside there was a great statue of Wilson conducting a grand parade, and the exterior of the home was suitably kooky as to seem like a fitting spot to foster the outsized personality of its most famous resident.
Continuing my tour of charmingly off-beat home exteriors, Mason City also featured the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Stockman House. The home was the first Wright-designed building in all of Iowa, and it is noted for its more compact form of Wright’s signature Prairie style (it was originally intended to be more attainable for middle-income families), with a sleek symmetrical design, cantilevered roofs, and a veranda and trellis on either entrance. It is open for tours, but again I was too late so I just enjoyed its pleasantly simplified aesthetic from across the street.
Next up I visited one of norther Iowa’s largest pieces of outsider art, a funky garden decorated with dozens of bicycles and local artwork known as Rancho Deluxe. The garden started as a simple stone garden for its founder, Max Weaver’s, wife to sip wine in, but his love of dumpster diving and eccentric sense of humor soon took over and the project expanded to include space for a stage, added works by other like-minded artists, and of course tons of bicycles all salvaged from being thrown away. It’s very silly, but there’s a really joyful sense of playfulness at never knowing what to expect, and it’s a great example of one man’s trash truly being another’s treasure.
A big highlight for me was these large stones where different artists painted, graffitied, chalked, and carved whatever struck their fancy in a range of styles that would alternate between cartoony, and beautiful with wild abandon.
My favorites blocks tended to have either humorously angsty slogans or odd pop-cultural references and they included: a block that simply said “Sigh” over a dripping line of spray paint; a block that said “I desire the things which will destroy me” in a kinetic free-hand scrawl; a charming painting that reimagines Elton John’s Rocket Man as a prom-posal; and a pretty faithful recreation of Paladin’s business card from the show Have Gun Will Travel.
Oh and naturally there was a bathtub full of bowling balls because what garden could truly be complete without one?
Leaving the garden, I tipped my cap to the security guard Puss in Boots. I’m not sure if an artist made this special for Rancho Deluxe or if the founder just stumbled across the statue somewhere, but either way it does feel like it just makes sense there.
Understandably after that horrifying lunch I had, I didn’t exactly have room for more food but on my way home I did stop at a cool coffee shop in Ames called Burgie’s Coffee and Tea. They had a really hip aesthetic and they were open relatively late which made them a great spot for a college town like that, and they had some tasty coffee to get me through the rest of the night which consisted of writing, watching random Netflix shows, and patiently waiting for my arteries to unclog at my Air BnB for the night.
Favorite Random Sightings: the hilariously poorly-named Agape Pregnancy Center; an advertisement that said “Thumbs Wanted”; an antique store fascinatingly named Hanks Fuzzy Guitars and Furniture; Pink Beaver Waxing Boutique (a pretty gross pun, but you gotta respect them getting away with it)
Regional Observations: Des Moines has really cool bridges which I was unfortunately unable to photograph, but their High Trestle Trail Bridge is a real showstopper:
thank you google images
Albums Listened To: Now that I’ve finished listening to things in alphabetical order, I just put my whole iPod on Shuffle
Random Joke of the Day:
One guy at the bar proclaims: "Now my grandfather, he knew the exact day of the year that he was going to die. It was the right year too. Not only that, but he knew what time he would die that day, and he was right about that too."
The Bartender said to him, "Wow, that's Incredible. How did he know all of that?"
The man replied, "A judge told him."
Songs of the Day:
a classic patter song
I know the artist Nick Cave is a totally different guy, but I didn’t really get into the musician until after my road trip so I figured I’d randomly put one of my favorite songs of his here
a great theme song