repetition: murakami, warhol & the relief society sisters

a byu student museum intern in andy warhol wig and murakami lapel flower (murakami flower motif #1)

julie turley, it's date night again!

guru's famous sweet potato fries.

and downtown provo was hot tonight--the rooftop concert series, the friday night dance walk, and all the restaurants now have outdoor seating.  which is great in utah, because we have beautiful evenings here.

from our table, we could see a group of dance-walkers on the corner, um, dance walking.

we went to guru's and had their famous sweet potato fries with their signature fry sauce, which has a little somethin' somethin' extra in it.  worchestershire sauce?  we watched the cute young couples at dinner, sat outside, where a whole row of restaurants were also featuring outside seating.  there were lots of people out, which was thrilling after the empty college town summer.

it was almost like a weekend in manhattan, julie turley!

murakami flower motif #2.

after dinner, we went to the opening of the warhol/murakami show at the byu museum of art (moa).  the exhibit had some fantastic pieces in it.  highlights were seeing all ten marilyn monroes together (the way you see differences in sameness when they're all together), as well as murakami's mr. dob series.

murakami flower motif #3

christian found the warhols moving.  maybe in contrast to the flatness of the murakamis?  i need to discuss this with him further.

at any rate, we both thought it was the best warhol show we had ever seen.

murakami flower motif #4--not sure if this was murakami's arrangement or the museum's.  i'm so confused about which motifs came first!

the opening party included it's own decorative repetition: flower-shaped balloons a la murakami.

echoed in the flower cookies

echoed in the felt flowers worn by the student interns running the show.

oh, yeah, and you could sit at tables be-centerpieced with grass in big campbell's soup cans.  & you could bring a soup can and enter a drawing to win an ipad.

long hairs at byu.

there was also a long-haired, barefoot band, whose name i could never find out.  they were very good.  a little zz top-esque, if the members of zz top were cute and twenty.  loud, too.  what's happening, byu?  why are you letting long-haired rock n' roll bands play at your art openings?

silver clouds installation

such a thing would have been verboten when we first arrived here more than ten years.  things are opening up here.  sometimes they close up again, like after julie and i were here in the eighties under president jeffery holland who ran a looser regime and took byu up a notch.  after that. well.  i don't want to talk about what happened after that.

one thing that was fun about the opening was its unabashed mormon-ness.  all the coordinating (not to mention the big silver balloon room--a warhol installation-- and the dress-up photo booth, now fashionable at mormon wedding receptions--is this a thing at non-mormon weddings?) was like a really great night at relief society.  mormon women love their coordinating.

my 15 minutes of fame:  renting a room in ultra violet's upper east side pent house one summer.  and being co-bridesmaids with her in a friend's d.c. wedding.  in violet satin dresses, no less.

just like at the 8-bit show a few months ago, where the pac man-influence of the show was highlighted by the hand-creweled ms. pac man bows worn in the hair  the interns and the faux pixellated lettering on all the signs labeling EVERYTHING in sight.

soup can centerpieces.  

the highly-coordinated opening tonight was both oddly relief society-esque as well as oddly congruous with the repetitive imagery of the show itself.

i love this weird place, and all of its wonderful juxtapositions.