Baltimore- Visionary arts, tasty food and a little inspiration

Happy Friday! Last Friday at this time, my mother and I were on our way down to Baltimore from Pittsburgh to visit my sister and her girlfriend. I had never been to Baltimore before and it was so exciting to see where my sister’s living and bop around the city a little bit. We arrived and picked her up from her work (she works for a mediation organization) and immediately headed out for some lunch at the One World Cafe, which had tons of vegan options:

I orded the tempeh reuben, which was pretty good:

But what was really superb was the wrap that my sister and my mom both ordered…It had this amazing pesto sauce/dressing for dipping that I have to try to recreate. YUM!

This was a great little cafe that my sister likes to go to occasionally and the food was totally yummy. After lunch we headed to her house to drop off our stuff, regroup, and meet her new feline friend, Pantalaemon (sp?!). Someone found Pan terrified in the median of the highway as a tiny kitten and asked Lucy and Caitlin if they could take her. Of course they did, and Pan has been happy snuggled up in their house with Caitlin’s cat, Wikipedia, since then. Lucy and Caitlin have done such a nice job making their house a home and setting up the kitchen (which apparently had no storage before) into an awesome, functional space where they can hang out and cook some kick-ass food…like the vegan/gluten-free enchilada we had for dinner that night made with homemade corn tortillas, veggies, beans, and enchilada sauce. SO good!

Contrary to the pictures, we didn’t go straight from lunch to dinner. We spent Friday afternoon at the American Visionary Arts Museum! The Visionary Arts Museum was downright amazing. It’s worth a trip to Baltimore just to see it.

The entire museum on the outside is covered in glass and mirror mosaic and is a sight to behold in and of itself:

Photos weren’t allowed inside, which was probably good because I would have taken hundreds and the camera-ban made it so I could just enjoy the art with my own eyes and not through the camera lens. One of my favorite things about the museum is a sculpture called “Black Icarus” by Andrew Logan. And then there was a giant mandala made entirely of colored paper plates by Wendy Brackman…amazing! But the piece that I couldn’t pull myself away from was the Cosmic Egg by Andrew Logan:

It is truly breathtaking (like Icarus) and we must have spent 20 minutes looking at it. A six foot tall egg covered in mosaic, it changes colors depending on the sky and time of day and each time you look at it you see something new.

I LOVED this egg and it inspired me to want to come home and get back to mosaic. I used to make mosaics with scrap glass (my dad has a stained glass studio in his basement) and I had sort of forgotten about it. There were also these cool birds made out of metal in the courtyard with the egg, which reminded me of these awesome sculptures my sister used to make when she and my dad were learning welding together:

I loved seeing Baltimore, toodling around, and spending the afternoon with two of my favorite people:

In retrospect, going to the museum was a moment of healing for me, I think. It had been a long time since I felt so inspired by beauty for the sake of beauty and these artists have made stunning sculptures out of scrap and recycled stuff–things that other people wouldn’t look twice at. I’m reminded that even as I bury myself in what is at times very depressing work on animal suffering and the sickening oppression of animals by humans, there are also moments when we can stop, revel in the beauty of the world, and maybe even be inspired to create some of this beauty ourselves. To transform the oppressive, fucked up shit in the world and let it move us to be more compassionate, more inspiring versions of ourselves.

Enjoy the weekend and I hope you can do at least one thing that inspires and lights a fire inside you!