The passing of time is surreal. Sometimes it just stands still and sometimes it speeds by. We’ve made a conscious decision to chase it while we can. So before we embarked our absurd idea to dip our toes in the Arctic Ocean this summer, we sought inspiration from the master of bizarre.
Thirteen years ago we were venturing around Washington DC for our Just Us cherry blossom wedding. We ratified our Constitution of Marriage on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, vowing, among other things, to challenge our status quo and invent ways to keep growing together. Surreal to think about what our former selves aspired to as a future selves couple and to look back in the blog for evidence on how we’ve acted on it.
Anniversaries are annual passages of time marking significant life events that merit reflection, generate reminiscing and take you back in time to consider your then and now. What better way to do that in our 13th year, than to visit the legacy of the surreal artist Salvador Dali to dig into his obsession with time and memory through the subconscious mind?
St. Petersburg, Florida is home to the Dali Museum, a place the Spaniard never lived but fills the bill of being of artsy, quirky and madly crafty (in its beer scene at least.) Art collector Reynolds Morse had been amassing Dali pieces on the cheap and was running out of room to show them at his injection molding factory in Ohio. Dali was still alive back then, but it was hard to tell if his work was going to be famous or just infamous. In 1982, Morse convinced the city of St. Pete to renovate an old marine warehouse on the bay into a surrealist destination for the influx of tourists, retirees and hipsters to coastal Florida. Forty four years later, the rational concrete building is adorned with an irrational 75 foot geodesic glass bubble daring Mother Nature to “bring it on.” And that is how we wound up spending our 13th wedding anniversary in the Dali Museum painting each others’ portraits, mixing primary colors and finding value in the process.
The day began under less than auspicious circumstances. Heavy rain gave way to hurricane winds as we attempted to surf the local breweries in search of our favorite ale. Fond memories of brewery hopping and a killer Philly-worthy roast pork sandwich had us quietly coveting a move to The Burg through periodic Redfin scrolling. Unfortunately, The Burg left us behind with its hipster lavender sours and fruity lambics. When we finely tripped across an Abbey Dubel strong ale, the keg was nearly empty giving us two ounces of foam. It’s just as well. We would need to keep our wits about us if we were to expertly handle paint brush and canvas later.
Popping on and off the free Central Avenue trolley, we crawled through the Creative Reuse art supply store in the gritty arts district, but unfortunately it was a bit smaller than our own Creative Reuse garage supply store at home. It was cool to be back in a proper city, but we began to question all of that previous Redfin scrolling. It was probably just a slow Tuesday afternoon after a heavy rain, but not to lie, our desire to abandon Lakewood Ranch and embrace a bohemian life in “The Burg” had dampened. How often would we actually dine at Mio’s Turkish restaurant for healthy Mediterranean fare when we could be touring Costco for samples and playing unlimited amounts of drop-in pickleball?
Although not required for the portrait class, it seemed appropriate to get into the spirit of Dali by taking in the full museum experience. The descent into Daliworld began with a $15 add on ticket to the surround-a-vision movie in the 360 Dome which is just about as disorienting as it sounds. Images of Dali’s work spun around and across the interior of the dome for 30 minutes or so as fast moving reading passages highlighted the milestones of his life and career. Interspersed throughout the movie were Dali-sims that are either his brilliant snippets of wisdom or his mad ramblings depending on your point of view. We left dizzy and hoping the museum tour would make sense of it all.
A verbose critic of the Surrealist movement who was ultimately kicked out by his peers, Dali is actually recognized as the most famous surrealist of all time. Make that make sense. A tour of his works made it clear as day that surrealism is not intended to be made clear anymore than the images from a nightmare are likely to make much sense should you try and write them down. Dali is famous for saying “The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” We are not so sure about that. Nevertheless, the immersion into his world had had its intended effect. We had been shaken awake to a world of out of this world; our creative juices flowing and ready to express our true selves in our portrait art class.
To say that teacher/artist Shawn had a lesson plan is a huge understatement. She was so elementary in her approach she could have gotten art out of a room full of chimpanzees. Capturing a famous pose by Dali, we followed the expert tutelage of the master and put paint to canvas. Shawn had a method that included color mixing, finding values, and implementing concepts of light and dark that went right over our (Eric’s) head, but in the end produced satisfied results. We painted each other rather than doing self-portraits, because after all, it was our anniversary.
The museum declined to display our work so we took it home and created our own surrealist portrait gallery above the cabinets in the corner of the kitchen. There it reminds us of Dali’s other famous saying, “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” Keep it surreal!
