Out and About -- DMA, A New (To Us) Bakery, and Kalachandji's

S A T U R D A Y -- day.  I know, that's not how the song goes, but it's in my mind this morning.  It's errand day as tomorrow means the mass cleanout begins at home.  Fun times ahead.

At any rate, we are going to spend the day together and have some fun along with checking things off the list.  Mister has located a "new to us" coffee shop on the way to Mom's.  9 Rabbits Bakery is in the Harry Hines district (something to remember for future shopping trips) and quite unique.  It's an Asian bakery and so there are so many new and fun items to enjoy while sipping on a cup of coffee.  Take a peek at the shop -

It also has a nice, large dining area.  Room for all.

As I go down the aisles looking at the various treats, this one catches my eye and must be bought.  How delightful.

Yep, banana bread shaped like little bananas.  It just adds a little element of fun.

Yummy and cute -- what a great start to the day.

Now that bellies are full --- onto the grocery store and a stop at Mom's to help out with some stuff.

When that task is finished, we are off for some lunch and then to the DMA, where the "Cult of the Machine" exhibit is on Mister's list and today is the last day.

As soon as we enter the room, this great little pop-up where you can make your own "player piano" tape and see what your tune is takes our attention and my sweet man has to play.  I should have gotten a better picture, but it is what it is.  Now, onto the exhibit itself.

The Chanin Building Gate (1928) is the first thing to catch my eye.  The card reads, "With its symmetries and radiating arcs, this pair of ninety-inch-wide gates epitomizes the Art Deco style.  The gates were designed by sculptor Rene Paul Chamberllan for the office suite of Midtown Manhattan's Chanin Building, an Art Deco-sytle brick and terra-cotta skyscraper built between 1928 and 1929 by architect, designer, and real-estate developer Irwin Chanin.  Incorporating cogwheels and segmented borders comprising stacks of coins, the gates evoke the widespread glorification of industry and business in the Machine Age."  I think it's just pretty cool and missed the coins below until I read the placard.

An oil painting is the next to pull me in.  Entitled "Incense of a New Church (1921)," it is by Charles Demuth.  "In Incense of a New Church, Charles Demuth equated the swirling smoke of the Lukens Steel Company plant in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, with the burning of incense during religious worship.  His ironic correlation of industry and religion may allude to the widespread idolization of the machine in 1920s America.  Brilliantly satirized by Sinclair Lewis in this 1922 novel Babbitt, the 20th-century 'religion of business' was famously encapsulated in President Calvin Coolidge's statement 'The man who builds a factory builds a temple . . .  The man who works there worships there.'"

My sweetheart brings my attention to this next one by stating that he could see it easily being a wall quilt. He's so right and my mind is already at work in how to implement it.  It is also by Charles Demuth and during the same year.  Entitled "From the Garden of the Chateau" it is also an oil on canvas.  "Exhibited in the 1927 Machine-Age Exposition, this piece presents a view of the Lancaster Laundry, as seen from the artist's family home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Although Demuth's title - evoking the sumptuous resplendence of a French manor house  - seems to mock the false pretensions of provincial American society, his idealized and emotionally resonate depiction of this modern utilitarian landscape may point to his affection for his subject matter.  Yet Demuth expressed deep ambivalence about his native country, writing to Alfred Stieglitz, 'What work I do will be done here; terrible as it is to work in this 'our land of the free.'"

Have you visited our home?  If you have, you will understand why this exhibit draws my sweetheart in.  It's almost as though he is standing in our own hallway.

The adjacent room holds a treasure indeed and it is just oh so pretty.  Dang.  It is the Cord 812 Supercharged "Sportsman" Cabriolet Coupe, circa 1937.  Just look ---- oh my.

We are almost to the end of the exhibit and I spot this piece of furniture and it literally stops me and freezes me in place.  I even try to walk past, but return to it.  I love it all and this time I do see a quilt.  Oooooh, ideas abound.  "The streamline forms of skyscrapers influenced the Art Deco style, which found widespread expression in the fine and decorative arts after World War I.  The Austrian emigre designer Paul Frankl incorporated their shapes in his "Skyscraper" line of furniture, which he developed in the mid-1920s and showcased in his Manhattan gallery.  This bookcase incorporates a series of stacked cubes and rectangles that convey the vertical thrust of these towering structures, as well as their distinctive stepped profiles."

With a quick stop in the Creative Learning Center, we discover that the project today is to make a quilt.  How fun.  It's everywhere and the children in the room are having a great time.

A few more exhibits and we are ready to move on.  Mister would like dinner at Kalachandji's but they don't open for a bit, so we make a pit stop at On Rotation, enjoy a beer, discover that their crowlers are dang cheap, buy a couple and head to dinner.

If you live in Dallas and have not visited here, you really should.  Tonight, we are on the patio enjoying the beautiful evening.  Not to shabby for the beginning of January.