A New Year outing that was small but perfectly formed

Tom was in school. We'd run an errand south of Boston and had a few hours before pick up time. Richard said "this place gets great reviews". And so off we headed to the Fuller Craft Museum which is an extraordinary building staffed by extraordinarily friendly people and full of intriguing bits of American art.

The contraption on the left is called "Sounding" - and apparently it "evokes" the world of "Moby Dick". 

Two years ago, two sculptors from San Francisco made a wire table, filled it with beach rocks and lowered it into the sea for two months. They recorded the ambient sound with a hydrophone. Now when you stand directly underneath the funnel, you too can experience the underwater atmosphere. Puzzling. Do I hear you say pointless? But cool. A passing volunteer told us how excited her groups of  school children get when they see it - she said they all "see" different images in the installation.

There's much more.. glass planets... copper quilts... bronze bison...porcelain photographs... and a lot I can't really describe. On your right, a parakeet sits in a cage. But the bird is on a video screen, and as you watch, it preens and flutters, flies out of sight and returns. What does it mean? I don't know but it's hard to stop watching.

 The museum building is all cedar shingles and jaunty angles, braced against the chill off Porter's Pond - right now just a sheet of ice.  I glimpsed bits of sculpture outside and resolved to go back after the thaw.