Frugal Traveler: In Washington, Art and the 6-Year-Old

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 04 Juli 2013 | 17.35

Seth Kugel

The author's nephew Grady sketches near "Jolly Old Soul," a sculpture by the artist Jackie Ehle.

I enjoy exploiting children for journalistic purposes — though only if they are blood relatives. So when entrusted with Grady, my 6-year-old nephew, during a recent visit to my brother's family in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I decided to design a kid-friendly frugal day out.

It would have to be different from the time I took my nephew Leo, then 7, on a whirlwind cheap eats tour of immigrant restaurants. Leo, like most Kugels, has energy to spare and a stomach that expands on demand. Grady is different. He's a lighter eater but an insatiable drawer and art lover. He's also a specialist in relaxation, a meanderer who has never seen a patch of grass he didn't want to lie down on. So I planned a slow-paced day of two free arts destinations broken up with a stop for lunch, all via the Washington-area Metro.

We packed Grady's sketch pad and pencils, water and snacks and hopped on the Metro. On our hourlong train trip to Alexandria, Va., Grady's output included seven works, ranging from "Fat Bird by the River" and "Slimy Monster," to "Gangnam-Style Dude Who Is Naked" and "Relaxing Computer," which featured a laptop with arms and legs lounging on a desk — to my eye something of a self-portrait.

We were headed to the Torpedo Factory Art Center (torpedofactory.org), housed in a building that produced torpedoes for the Navy in the decades after World War I. Today, it combines galleries with active studios, so you can both ogle finished art and watch the artists at work. It's also in an extraordinarily pleasant place, of more interest to me than to Grady: on the waterfront among the 18th- and 19th-century buildings of Alexandria's Old Town.

The King Street Trolley (dashbus.com/trolley), actually a bus, runs from the King Street Metro stop into the Old Town and practically to the doors of the Torpedo Factory. I had calculated that a working artist could not possibly ignore a 6-year-old with a sketch pad and a pushy uncle. Turns out I was right. At the second gallery we entered I asked a woman reading a newspaper if she was one of the artists. She was: Susan Finsen.

Ms. Finsen was game, and asked Grady what he liked to draw. "Weird people," he answered, presumably like a Gangnam-style dude who is naked. She thumbed through his work, lavishing praise. She explained to Grady that much of her work was influenced by outsider and folk art, which gave it an un-self-conscious childlike feel that I'm betting Grady related to. We had definitely stumbled on the right artist.

She also noted that Grady's work — especially a football-shaped head that was among his best work of the morning — reminded her of an artist named Bob Hoke, and showed him some of Mr. Hoke's work on Facebook. It's hard to know what Grady is thinking sometimes, but I'm going to go with: "Wow, his work is like mine, I could be a professional artist some day!" It's also possible he was thinking about lunch.

As we wandered around the center a bit more, Grady was instantly taken by a panda sculpture constructed by the artist Jackie Ehle entirely out of recycled materials — white bottles, black headphones, a tire. He promptly sat down next to it, broke out his pad and started sketching.

More art having been made, we headed to lunch. When I had asked Grady a day earlier what his favorite foods were, he had responded: "If it's not fast food, salmon. If it's fast food, cheeseburgers." Cheeseburgers it was; salmon generally fits my budget only when I'm camping and a bear catches one swimming upstream and tosses it to me. On the way back to the Metro, we stopped at BGR the Burger Joint (bgrtheburgerjoint.com), a chain that's based in Washington (but expanding), where a burger, soft drink and fries lunch special goes for $8.99. I could give you BGR's line on its hormone-free dry-aged beef and locally-made buns, but Grady was far more impressed by its soda machine, the Coca-Cola Freestyle, which allows all kinds of flavorings to be added to sodas via touch screen. He went with a combo of Lime Fanta, Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper and Peach Sprite, and was cruel enough to offer me a taste.

Our final destination was the (free) Smithsonian American Art Museum (americanart.si.edu) in Washington proper, a straight shot on the Metro's Yellow Line. The man behind the information desk told me children generally loved the contemporary art on the third floor. But then he looked down at Grady, and looked back at me, dubiously. "He's looking a little tired," he said. That was an understatement. Grady was leaning against the desk, head drooped to one side, with an expression approaching stupor. I figured it would be a quick visit.

Turns out contemporary art is like a shot of espresso for young Grady. Just out of the elevator, he spotted a video installation and ran over. It was "Six Colorful Inside Jobs," a 1977 work by John Baldessari, in which a man paints the walls and floor of an elevator-size room six solid colors over six days. (The process is condensed to 30 minutes.) Grady focused on it intently — though at one point he was distracted by a black-and-white video on a smaller screen nearby. "Look, it's somebody shaking his booty!" he said. Or, as its creator, Bruce Nauman, called it, "Walk with Contrapposto."

For kids, of course, screens are an easy sell. But Grady also gazed intently at Louise Nevelson's "Sky Cathedral," a wall sculpture of wooden objects painted over entirely in black, though he noted it didn't look anything like a sky or a cathedral (once I told him what a cathedral was). We were both amazed by "Monekana," a horse sculpture by Deborah Butterfield that appeared to be made of driftwood but was actually bronze. His favorite work, though, was David Hockney's "Snails Space with Vari-Lites, 'Painting as Performance'." Displayed in a darkened room illuminated by hidden theater lights, the work features swirls of textured colors that spill from the wall onto the floor and are constantly transformed as the lighting changes from above.

He was so entranced that as soon as we walked out, he insisted we return. After staring a few more minutes, he asked me for my phone, snapped a picture and sent it to his mom with a note that read: "Look at that art."

He had literally found something to write home about. I took that as a pretty good sign that the day had been a success.


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