Fritsches, Flicks & Asian Art

Tobin’s taking two masters classes this quarter. For one of them he has to go around and look at local art museums, etc. Yesterday was the free day at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, so we went. Keep in mind that Tobin and I went to Asia a few years ago and took in such things as the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Huaqing Hot Springs, and the Great Wall… So a lot of the stuff we saw looked a bit familiar to the things we saw in China and Thailand.

Unfortunately, there was no photography inside the museum. I’m sure I’m biased as I carry my camera everywhere I go, but I’m kinda of the opinion that if you can see it, it’s fair game. I’m glad we didn’t pay to get in, ’cause with my huge camera around my neck, I ended up getting followed around the whole museum by a picture Nazi. *sigh* I’m sure that contributed to my overall opinion of the museum, but I was a bit disappointed by the whole thing. There were really only about 7-8 rooms with Asian artifacts in them, and then the other half of the museum were modern works of art. (I’d much prefer to see ancient stuff to something an artist did last year. You burned some paper? Come on!) I just think that a lot of the more modern art doesn’t take the skill level of most of the ancient things we saw… I have to say though that the last room was pretty cool, with rice paper and Chinese characters written all over. There were scrolls hanging from the ceiling too. We were admiring the artwork when the picture Nazi showed up again and chewed us out for being too close to the “art”. With that we left.

The area around the museum is quite nice. There’s a retention pond that you can walk around. There is a large circular sculpture that you can view the Space Needle through, and there are some large camels right outside the doors of the museum. That’s one of the camels (large picture above) that we posed on. :) Also on the grounds is a brick water tower that you can walk to the top of. We did that, it was cool. :) There is also an arboretum, but we didn’t have time to visit it. That’ll be a future trip!

After leaving the Asian Art Museum, we headed over to Gorditos in Greenlake. We were just there a few weeks ago with Margie Lou and Kevin. Well this time it was just as good, and the food was as huge as ever. :) After gorging ourselves at Gorditos (that’ means fatty by the way in Spanish), we drove over in the general vicinity of Jet City Improv. We were early so we ended up walking all over the University district. We ended up at a place called WOW Bubble Tea. It must be Christian owned and operated. The atmosphere was really nice. They had Christian worship music playing, and we played a few rounds of Outburst:Bible Edition while we waited. I got a green apple/lemon smoothy with tapioca pearls. Yum!

From WOW, we booked it back to Jet City Improv and watched a Twisted Flick, She Demons. It was definitely different from other comedy improv, but it was a fun experience (and they got brand new seats, they were nice!). So that was our day. It was fun – it’s always a fun time with Terry and Stina. :)

Check out all the pics here.