Portrait painter Alice Neel is one of my very favorite artists, and don’t ask me to explain why, because I skipped Art History too often in college and don’t know how to be articulate about something like a painting. There is a retrospective of her work opening at the Met today, and I’ve already made a date with my mom to go see it.
And while we’re on the topic of art, I’m also looking forward to making it to the Brooklyn Museum for the exhibit featuring work by the street artist Kaws. So OK, now, how about you? What are you hotly anticipating?
I’m looking forward to seeing live music again. We usually went to a show or concert every weekend through the spring/summer/fall, so it’s been sorely missed. I’m not vaccinated yet, but even with, I think it will be a long time until we are dancing without a concern in a crowd of sweaty strangers!
A vaccine (or two) in my arm, tulips in the parks, and sidewalk cafes. It’s been a long, brutally cold and very snowy winter. So anything spring-like appeals, as does being able to see my friends again.
I love Alice Neel. I first saw one of her paintings (I forget the name at the moment, but it’s an older woman in a blue dress seated in a chair) shortly after I was diagnosed with RA. That I could see a beautiful painting of arthritic hands was everything to me. That painting (and the artist) have held a special place for me ever since.
Impromptu plans. Dinner at a friends or eating out without all the mask-sanitizer-camp chair-byo utensils-huddle by the fire pit shenanigans. Getting my haircut and colored.
We have had a wonderfully sunny and snowy winter here in norther New England but I am looking forward to socializing that doesn’t depend entirely on good weather.
I would like to go back to NYC, where I haven’t been in A YEAR and I used to live there!
Here in L.A. art is also part of my dream of the future! There’s an Amy Sherald exhibit opening at Hauser & Wirth and my sister and I are planning a visit to it with lunch after. She’s gotten one shot because she as part of her work as a musician does some teaching and I lucked into extra J&J vaccines on Friday and got the shot. Once my husband is also vaccinated and hopefully my 14 year old in the fall a visit to see friends and family back East is definitely on the list. Though robably too late for Alice Neal 🙁
Going to a Dodger game on a warm summer evening, sunsetting behind the palm trees in Elysian Park, with a frosty cold michelada in my hand.
I’m an Angeleno though not a baseball fun but boy that michelada on a warm summer evening sounds good!
Seeing my mom this weekend for Passover. I haven’t seen her for 6 months, which is the longest period of my life.
I am looking forward to seeing both my husband’s parents and my mom once we are both vaccinated (all of the parents already are). We are both looking forward to being able to fly to NYC and go to the museums again! Longer term, we’ve got a plan to go to check out a couple of places where we think we might like to retire since we’ve spent the last year talking about what that could look like. That will require travel and a short term rental so we can try and get a feel for what it would be like to live there, so that won’t probably happen for a while yet.
Vaccination; meeting up with Q.Morgendorffer and his lovely wife at a state park; finding out if I foiled my nemeses, the backyard oak tree-dwelling squirrels, and will have bluebells this spring under the tree; planning something goofy for May; and finally, finding myself really simpatico all of a sudden with a couple authors (Banana Yoshimoto and Kobo Abe), I am excited about the prospect of upcoming reading.
I love Banana Yoshimoto so much – “Kitchen” will always have a special place in my heart.
Travel, travel TRAVEL. Group exercise class. Going out to dinner. Laughing in public. Not being scared. And planning early retirement.
I’ll be taking my older daughter to college in Pittsburgh. I’m excited for her and I’m excited to see a new city, which I’ve always heard great things about. But I’m not excited that I’ll be going home without her and I think I’m going to have an emotional autumn.
Getting vaccinated. A 90-minute hot stone massage. The end of the online school year for my poor worn-out kids. Bowling. Long bike rides with my friends. Going out to dinner. Reading by the pool. Lots of it will have to wait till after the vax, but some of the best of it can happen now – and it’s wildflower season once again!
Vaccination. The Amtrak quiet car. Visiting my family. Air on my face. Finalizing my divorce and buying a house. Beer gardens. The public library. Synagogue. Museums. Kissing my sweetheart outside, impulsively.
I received my second Covid vaccine dose this morning and I am very grateful and very thankful. Alice Neel is indeed awesome. As for what I’m looking forward to being able to do…simply to be able to go outside or anywhere without a mask––everything else will feel like the proverbial cherry on top.
Now that my parents and I will be fully vaccinated well before I go, I’m SO looking forward to my trip to WI in May to see my parents again! It’ll have been a year and a half – a long time considering their ages. (But anything to keep them safe!) And lots of daughter and grandkids visits this summer – all at the same time, of course, because they want to see each other (In our one full bath house…😏)
Sharing a bottle (or two) of sparkling wine in my backyard with three of my besties this weekend.
To laugh and eat and sit on the porch with my sister in upstate NY. To prepare and share a feast and sit around the table with my twin sons, one who is an RN and one who is a hospital medical technician. To sit on the beach with family and friends sipping iced tea and scanning the horizon for sailboats. So basically, I want to SIT and EAT.
I’m looking forward to being able to be spontaneous. Going out for lunch without a reservation. Getting a pedicure just because. An afternoon drink just because it’s lovely, etc.
Hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail with two friends in July. Meeting girlfriends for a cocktail (or two) on my town’s one rooftop bar. Daffodils.
I’ll explain why you love Alice Neel….. she’s fuckin’ awesome. You don’t need to have passed Art History 101 to see the beauty and immediacy of her work. I love it too.
Is it bad if I say going back to my office? I can’t wait to be merely married to my husband, not coworkers in a small office where everythng seems to be on fire.
On second thought, that sounded like a complaint, which is not what you were asking. But seriously, a nice office and some new stories for a Friday night date sound pretty great to me.
I am looking forward to feeling joyous again.
Getting my vaccine (in California it is taking forever), recalling Governor Newsome, going out without that masky, sweaty upper lip feel, resuming Saturday breakfasts in Brentwood, farmers’ markets, the wind, and sun on my face.
Gah, I love Gavin!
We Californians are an opinionated lot, no? 😉
Taking our new camper out for its inaugural trip next week! Will have no cell coverage in some of the areas we’ll be and this is going to be lovely. Also looking forward to seeing my parents soon, after almost a year, and spring flowers.
Long before I knew him, my husband was a handsome young man about town in New York who collected art and Alice Neel asked if she could paint his portrait. Years later he sold the painting, but kept a small photograph of it. I framed the the photo for him; he’s sitting in the blue and white striped chair she posed many of her subjects in. A few years ago we searched for the painting and discovered it was for sale, for a mere $600,000. We stuck with the framed photo. I’m looking forward to going to New York and Los Angeles to see friends and family, and to some beauty treatments I can’t get in the small Rocky Mountain town where I live. Call me self absorbed and shallow, but I long to have my eyebrows professionally groomed. Aaarrrgh.
Mimi, you have had the most fascinating life!
I have a good 20 years on many of you, and don’t y’all find that by the time we GOACA have lived as long as we have, that’s often the case? As they say in California, “It’s my journey.” A life with high highs and some low lows.
I’m looking forward to actual spring weather here in dreary New England! And with that I’m looking forward to my spring job coaching high school girls’ rowing. After that, I hope a trip to NYC is in my future to see the Alice Neal exhibit and to visit the temporary Frick at Madison.