Color Hunting at the DIA: A Sweater Stripe

Ceramics class has been on hold since last year, so I’m not getting out of the house as much as I used to. So today, after successfully purchasing a single (good) ticket for Max Richter’s upcoming Detroit show, I took my ass to the Detroit Institute of the Arts with one mission:

Find this color (I call this taking a “color journey”):

The seafoam green-y one in the middle. My friend Erin is knitting a sweater, and this is what it looks like (up close). I love stripes, especially on shirts and especially when they are horizontal, so I’m excited to see the finished product.

But first, I found this color in so many places in the museum. Like, before I even walked in:

This is gonna be a photo-heavy post. In fact, I was gonna try to make it all about the photos, but I cannot do that, because I love words too much.

Okay, so, two things:

I have aphantasia, so my brain had a hard time remembering the exact shade, so I got close a lot. But not exact.
- Yes, I could look at the photo, but that got to be too much scrolling after a while, so I did my best.
- I also printed out a photo, but it was not the right shade, so it was no goddamned help at all, was it?
A lot of these photos do not do the actual shade justice. Like some of them completely washed out all the blue, while others deleted the green somehow.
- So you’ll just have to come to the museum with me, okay? It doesn’t even have to be this one! I’ll come to your museum! I love them all (but I love this one most because at the DIA it’s always a “two-shark” day.)

I ate lunch at the DIA Cafe before seeing one bit of art, because I planned to walk a lot and wanted to have something to pull energy from.

I got a kids’ meal.

And honestly, it was great. A+ and thank you to the fella behind the counter telling me to get a kids’ meal. I got a juice box, and he was delighted by that, and so was I.

I put in my beans and put on my Julio Torres Immersion playlist because it is magical, and so is art. This was the first song that played, which I took to be a good omen.

It was. I had a lovely day.

There were schools there, elementary-aged. The kids were so well-behaved. Sometimes I paused my music to listen in to truly passionate teachers, uh, teach their students about art.

There were also couples there, retirement-aged. I saw them discussing art together and giggling over champagne in Kresge Court.

Like I said, a lovely day.

Okay, here are some pics. In no particular order. If you want to know more about a piece of art, just ask. I took pics of all the information and was very organized about things… which honestly I was very proud of. I might go in and add them in captions if I get bored one day, too.

You’ll see that I included close-ups so that you could see what shade I was looking at in particular.

Here are some more photos:

I am trying to break up a shift in styles with some text, but looking at the photos makes me want to look at more photos, so here are some more photos.

I love my “home museum” so much. There is such a variety of artists and styles and time periods. And every time I visit, I fall in love with something new. This time it was the Dutch collection. (these next photos are not from the Durch collection)

And this next set of photos is what I would consider the best examples of the color I was hunting for, including an entire half of a room simply engulfed in it!

And here are some of my favorite non-color-journey pictures that I couldn’t leave without capturing on (digital) film. Including but not limited to: jesus giving the feet away for free and some pretty incredible marionettes.

And in conclusion, my favorite two pieces at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I never leave the museum without visiting these multiple times. In fact, I was tickled during this visit when a fella looking at one shark asked me if I knew where the other shark was, and I could say yes!