Don’t Touch the Art

Have you ever had an irrepressible urge to touch a painting in an Art Gallery? I have.  We’d been at the Louvre for the better part of a day and eventually wandered into the Religious Iconography section. It wasn’t long before I stopped looking at the art and started simply noticing the marble columns on the frames.  I got as close as I could, just staring at those glorious smooth glowing stones and slowly reverted to about 5 years old until I simply couldn’t refrain from touching the tip of my finger to one.  As soon as I did I noticed the wires going up from each painting.  I turned heel and started to walk out of the room.  Two guards were on me in an instant, shaking their fingers and telling me ‘Ne pas toucher!’  I nodded and kept walking.  Sometime later, exhausted and done, and seemingly unable to find our way back to the entrance, we exited the Louvre through a fire exit, setting off the alarm.  My mug is on a file somewhere in Paris…

I don’t recommend leaving the Terrace Art Gallery through the fire exit, but one of the paintings - Pierce - in the June exhibit, Daisy Roller Salutes the Dead, will encourage your touch and interaction.  One of the first trees in Terrace to be attacked by the mountain pine beetles was on Terrace Mountain behind Sunny Hill trailer court.  It stood alone like a red flag amongst the other pines.  The following year it was grey and the surrounding trees glowed red.  Pierce is a tribute to that group of old trees.

The exhibit “Daisy Roller Salutes the Dead” is my homage to the pine-beetled trees as well as an acknowledgement that daisy rolling is about reveling in life and the joy of living and is perhaps the real purpose of life.

Daisy Roller will be in the gallery on Opening Night, June 4^th from 7-9pm, and the exhibit will run until June 26^th.

 Don’t leave by the fire exit, but feel free to manipulate Pierce.