Paper Zoo at MFA Boston

                                 photo by Michael Poster of Michael Poster and Rodrica Tilley under the Sargent murals in the rotunda

My husband and I drove into Boston yesterday to spend a day at the Museum of Fine Arts. We had a few specific special exhibitions we wanted to visit: Paper Zoo, The Allure of Japan, Manet in Black, Beauty as Duty and Passion and Precision in the Age of Revolution. 
They were all good, but Paper Zoo was my favorite; 6 centuries of photographs, prints and drawings on paper of some members of the animal kingdom. I saw L'escargot by Toulouse Lautrec, Toad by Picasso, Spider by Louise Bourgeois. A sleeping puppy by Rembrandt was about as cute as this show got. Woodcuts, lithographs, etchings. It's there until August. Go. You won't be sorry.

Last Dance Amaryllis

I have an old collection of large flowered amaryllis. This is Royal Velvet. It just gets bigger and bigger with more and more blooms and some offsets each year. Before the holidays I re-pot each one (but I'm thinking this is unnecessary), bring it from the basement or greenhouse bench, water once and wait for the heat to warm it up. I bring two up at a time and in two weeks, another two. That way I will have blooms for a couple of months at a particularly dreary time of year here in the north woods. When signs of growth appear, I water and wait with anticipation each year. I cut off spent stalks as they occur, begin fertilizing, continue watering. When the weather is settled I move them outside in a semi-shaded location and water until September. Then I withhold all water, turning the pot on it's side, let the foliage die and move to cool storage before freezing until early December.

This subject of this 20 x 16 pastel is one of my beauties sitting on my dining room table. I was looking for subtle colors in all but the bloom and I like the texture that Sabretooth pastel paper imparts. I will be framing this under museum glass. If you are interested in seeing it, let me know. Thanks for looking.