Friday, June 15, 2012

Stirring The Waters: Part 2 of 6: Road Trip!


by Boston Sculptor Jessica Straus

There were plenty of things to be nervous about as the date drew near for our departure to Cleveland. Foremost on my mind was the question of whether all of our work would actually fit in the two cars and one rental truck that we had designated to carry the work. After a couple nights of tossing and turning I came to the conclusion that the only way I'd get any sleep would be to do a "dry run". So about a week ahead of time we packed the two cars with 7 artists' work and whew! It all fit, even if just barely (half-obstructed visibility out the back window of my car was better than no visibility)
 


 
At the crack of dawn, well in advance of rush hour on June 6, Laura Evans, Hannah Verlin, and myself squeeze into my car with all our work and head for the Mass Pike.


No need to use GPS--it's a straight shot on Rt 90 the whole way! It's roughly 11 hours each way and we drove it in one day.  Between the drive out there and the ride back we stopped at just about every rest stop along the way-- we think we'd be in a pretty good position to write a guidebook to Rt 90 rest stops--and yes, we had our strong preferences! We can tell you which rest stops have Starbucks and where you'll have to settle for Horton's (a very disappointing cup of Joe), where you get picnic tables and where you can stretch out on a scenic (well, at least it’s green) strip of grass. 

 
Laura was our exercise leader--she came up with this very cool egg-beater, arm-flapping thing that had the three of us drawing on-lookers' attention in the parking lot. No blood clots for us!

We arrived in Cleveland in time to join Marilu Swett and Julie Shepley (who were finishing up their challenging first day of installation) for dinner in Cleveland's "Little Italy" (it is little, but very sweet and several good choices of restaurants right near the Sculpture Center and our hotel, Glidden House. If you go to Cleveland--definitely try to stay at the Glidden House:

 
It's in a turn of the century mansion originally home of the Gliddens of Glidden Paint fame, on the Case Western campus and right across from the stupendous Frank Gehry building (below) on the Case Western campus.

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