A Quiet Weekend

The wet weather has finally arrived in Boulder. I say wet- I mean damp. Even weather it turns out is relative and I guess when you live in a city known for its 300 days of sunshine a year the faintest hint of moisture in the bone dry atmosphere is enough to drive everyone indoors sulking. The streets of Boulder are deserted today. So I had to make my own amusement.

I visited an authentic Target store (pronounced with a soft second syllable in a faux-French manner) as well as a Walmart. Both were pretty much as one might expect- labyrinthine aisles laden with low cost items manufactured in Malaysia and China etc. I’m not quite sure what I imagined but sadly I’ll never get that 45 minutes of my life back again.


Much more enjoyable was my visit to Boulder’s Farmer’s Market. I strolled leisurely through rows of seasonal produce and gazed admiringly at the other-worldly shapes, textures and colours of the heaped piles of Pumpkins. I ate orgasmic dim sum before getting lunch in Boulder’s famous Dushanbe Tea House. It’s a magnificently carved and meticulously hand painted structure that took 40 artisans from Tajikistan over 3 years to construct. The Teahouse was a generous gift from Dushanbe’s mayor in celebration of his city’s twinning with Boulder. Upon asking what Boulder had given in return I was saddened to hear that the answer was nothing as yet…but a small cyber café is tentatively penned for 2010- I wonder how many artisans it will take to create?

What other discoveries have I made this week? Well, I learned about the heraldic symbolism of Colorado’s state flag: The blue bands correspond to the enormity of Colorado’s sky, the white band to the snow capped mountains for which the state is so famous. The yellow circle is of course the sun that so dependably shines and the red ‘C’ relates to the colour of the earth in much of Colorado. Compared to other state flags I think Colorado’s is pretty cool. It manages to comfortably occupy the space between a seemingly contemporary corporate logo and a bold nationalistic icon.


I also learned that Boulder like the rest of the world has its fair share of dreadful contemporary art galleries. Each one without exception is stuffed to the gunnels with wannabe Rothko’s (but of course in much ‘happier’ colours, occasional Mondrian geometric composition rip offs artfully découpaged with oblique newspaper cuttings, and the odd Hepworth homage. More disturbing still are the increasingly numerous garden-friendly steel globes that would have Antony Gormley shaking with rage. Oh and based upon last nights exhibition opening coupled with past experience it would seem that all small town galleries are run by rabidly libidinous 45 year old divorcees whose carefully cultivated sense of aloof cool (cue: floaty black dress and over sized gold jewelery) always gives way to conversational bitterness and self loathing following one too many lipstick smeared glasses of chardonnay and the odd obese line of coke.

Anyway I’m holding out more hope for tonight’s art and music performance by the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. Whilst the orchestra plays several artists paint in real time inspired by what they hear. If I see Rothko’s or Pollock’s start to appear I suppose I can always close my eyes.