Haley Greenwald-Gonella

I have been given a gift.  A gift of time–and one of travels and wanderings.  I was not able to attend the opening celebration for Victor Raphael’s show at USC’s Fisher Museum, but today I celebrated anyway.  Today, I was allowed to go out and find art.

I thought I would find it in the studios near the architecture school, but there was too much talking and explanation going on there for me to find anything of interest.  I traveled past the studios.  A large banner that read “open” beckoned me.

I consciously and carefully opened the right door and then I was freed.  Pen and notebook and a small gallery-of-a-museum.  I  felt like my mom should have been there–pointing out this work and that one.  I could almost hear my sisters complaining about  being dragged to yet another museum in the background, but then a single breath and I was back–unwrapping the gift of Victor  Raphael’s Travels and Wanderings 1979-2009.  I was pulled into his rich metallics of “unique iris on canvas” and the playful  landscapes of “Central Park UFO” and “Painted Desert UFO”.  I walked past Raphael’s less ethereal-looking “Floating World  Series” featuring Japan.  I was “[called] to prayer” in the largest synagogue in Istanbul by the Muslim call to worship, but for  much of the last hour, I was in space.

I felt at home in the white boarders surrounding the 20 majestic framed Polaroids in Raphael’s “Space Field Series”.  I was sucked into tiny black holes and miniature milky ways featuring barely-there gold-flecked planets.  I stopped reading the plaques detaining the materials used and I just enjoyed the art.  I wanted to sit on the floor and just stare at the work on the opposite wall.  I thought that this might be in poor taste considering the group of senior citizens who were utilizing wheelchairs while we explored (the) space together.

I crossed the hall into Malibu, found the Getty Villa–the “place [Raphael] uses as a refuge and resource for peace of mind.”  I met up with diminutive Venus de Milo and a silhouette of Winged Victory.

Raphael believes that “you have to leave room for the exceptional and extraordinary.”  And sometimes, on a day like today, you also have time for exceptional and extraordinary art.

USC’s Fall Semester 2009 is over.  Oh yeah  🙂  I find myself at home, in Northern California–Modesto, CA to be exact, in a significantly colder clime than what I’ve gotten used to in Santa Monica.  Going home during a break from school brings with it the usual:  doctor appointments and a few trips to Merced, CA to visit my best friend and Noni, my little Italian grandmother.  Today (and tomorrow) I’m back to working with my dad, this time in a different capacity than my Administrative Assistant/ Foreclosure Specialist position that I held last year in my dad’s real estate office.  Today and tomorrow I’ve been given the opportunity to teach my dad’s real estate agents about utilizing social media sites and blogging in order to “go viral” with their brand.  I love teaching, today was great!