I'd say it was about 50/50 interesting work and pretentious crap. I like the way it's organized. When you enter a gallery, there is a little box on the wall with 8.5 x 11" laminated cards discussing the artist and the work. Much of the work was actually more interesting to read about than to look at. I did love some of it, including this hard-to-describe string sculpture by Fred SandBack. It looks like mirrors and solid space, but it's just friggin yarn (yay yarn!) Apparently, the artist committed suicide back in June of this year. Sad. His work was really interesting.
I think my favorite piece there was this really amazing piece made from painted metal scraps. The artist is John Chamberlain.
As you can see, it's tremendous and so colorful - one of the few colorful pieces in the museum! It's called Privet but it looks like seaweed floating up from the ocean bottom to me.
The thing about contemporary art is that a lot of it doesn't beckon you to stay and stare at it for hours, to study it. (Not that I often feel that urge anyway, but Ryan does quite often.) So, we were done in about an hour and a half, and headed for some lunch. I had read on chowhound.com that there was a good restaurant called Cathryn's, in nearby Cold Spring. I had the most delicious gnocchi with gorgonzola-walnut sauce. So rich, so good.
After lunch, we wandered the quaint town a bit, but found it very yuppified, and thus too pricey for our desires. A few miles down the road, however, we discovered a cute yarn shop called Knittingsmith, and stopped in for a bit. The woman who runs the place was very friendly. I was wandering through the bookshelves and found my goal - Deb Stoller's Stitch'N Bitch!
As I was thumbing through it, my name caught my eye, which was awfully nice. It made me really miss the whole group. I haven't been to the NY Stitch'n Bitch in far far far too long. Once I moved to Brooklyn and we had a ridiculously cold winter filled with work and wedding-planning madness, I got out of the habit. I would like to start going to the new Brooklyn edition, but we're in the midst of an insane product launch at work so I don't know if that'll happen before Thanksgiving.
Continuing down the road, we realized we were just on the other side of the Bear Mountain Bridge from shopping nirvana, so we headed to Woodbury Common for some outlet shopping. We got there around 5, and had 4 lovely hours to spend. Holy crap, we discovered the evening is the best time to be there! The crowds are gone, it's much quieter, and you can actually get up close to the stuff you might want to buy. I got a shirt and a sweater at the BR outlet, as well as a cute-as-a-button pink sweater with an intarsia bunny face at Lucky Brand. and Ryan scored some great pants and a shirt at DKNY. We also got a really cute lasagna pan, platter with a cute fruit print, and a new bath mat at Williams-Sonoma, using only about $45 of a $140 merchandise credit.
You think this is over? No way, Jose! It's only 9pm and we're only an hour from home. What better time to go to Dave & Buster's? I hadn't been there since I met Ryan, and he'd never gone. Dinner, then we played lots of games. I beat 5 people at the Daytona racing game! We paddled down whitewater rapids, played basketball and skeeball, and got briefly obsessed with that game where you drop the coins down and hope they knock other coins over the edge so you get tickets. We're suckers for that shit. Dinner cost us only $25 and a $25 game card lasted us until half-past midnight, at which point we turned our tickets in for two D&B water bottles and a D&B thermal coffee mug. Ryan even got them to pour him a coke into his water bottle on the way out.
So, we saw some art, some pretty fall scenery, had a great lunch, discovered a new yarn store, bought a fantastic knitting book written by a fantastic person, went outlet shopping AND played hours of video games. How are we going to top that next weekend?!
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