Road Trip: Southeast
Day 5: Sunday, September 25, 2022 - Knoxville, TN
Day's statistics:
Weather:
Steps: Steve 9,139; Linda 6,620
Drove: 238 miles
We're still at the same hotel, so breakfast was equally crappy as it was yesterday. At least in addition to the apple-cinnimon Hostess pastries they had blueberry and cream cheese pastries (these may have been available yesterday, just not by the time we got to the dining area). I had one of those and took a second back to the room for Linda. She didn't want one, so we packed the car, and hit the Burger King in front of the hotel. We didn't want to go back to the Arches due to our wonderful experience yesterday.
It was Sunday morning and the Knoxville Museum of Arts didn't open until 1:00 PM. What to do. What. To. Do.
We started walking over to the World's Fair Park - Knoxville hosted the Worlds Fair in 1982, and this park, along with the Sunsphere,
were erected for the Fair. On the corner, right down the road from Museum was a comic book store called Tallman Comics. This store
had thousands of collectable figurines from a line called "Pop". We never heard of them before, but there was a Pop figure for SO
many different categories that it was ridiculous. We looked around and talked to the owner for a little, then continued on.
We crossed the street, went across a bridge, and then walked around the main water... pond? Yea, let's call it
a pond. Here are some shots from that half-hour stroll, including a couple on approach.
The Sunsphere didn't open until noon, so we still had some time to kill. After our walk, we sat under the massive tent and watched the
performers - they were a teenage dance troup - practice for a show probably later that day. It looked like the venue sat about 1,000.
The Sunsphere opened at noon. We didn't immediately know that we needed tickets. So I ordered tickets with the
phone, and scheduled our visit for 12:30. However, the girl checking tickets let us go up at about 12:10.
There was some history on the inner wall of the viewing floor, and a bunch of windows providing a 360° view of the city.
One of the windows was shattered due to the heat from the sun, but I didn't get a picture of it.
While I took a good amount of pictures - I took pictures out every other window, clockwise, rather than every one. When putting this
together, I found I was able to create a full 360° panaramic (with a couple minor imperfections), looking straight out.
And another full 360° panaramic looking down.
We finished up at the Sunsphere, and headed toward the Museum of Art. We caught this on the way.
We were finished at the Worlds Fair Park, and it was finially time to visit the Museum of Art. The museum is
three stories tall. We entered on the sparce second floor, which at the front of the building, was at ground
level, then went up the the third, and down to the first.
While we aren't huge fans of modern art, here are some of the pieces we thought were interesting.
This nearly entire room work, titled Windward Coast - West Coast Slave Trade, is made of piano keys.
This was a number of, let's say, slices of tree, with images on each flat surface. It's called Wilderness,
by Ailson Mortsugu.
This piece is called Chado, by Karen LaMonte, and is kiln glass. It is hollow on the inside.
This is titled Family Portrait (Mum and Dad), by Marilene Oliver. It is actually prints of digital MRI
scans taken from head to toe, onto stacked sheets of clear acrylic.
This lithograph, titled Procession - You Are On Your Way!, is by Jiha Moon.
Colorful glass bowl.
A Catherine Wiley work. It may be titled Untitled (Woman and Child in a Meadow). That's what the placard reads.
Is it titled Untitled and the museum added the Woman and Child part? I have no idea, but probably.
This is a gelatin silver print, by Ansel Adams, called Dawn, Autumn Forest, Great Smiky Mountains National Park.
This piece, Eclipse, by Charles Rain, is special because he used "glazing and under-painting techniques
to create paintings in which brushwork is nearly invisible... often using brushes with only two or three bristles."
I took a couple close-ups to try to highlight this technique, though the camera doesn't do it justice.
The "shadow" in the last image is actually the cameraman (yes, that's me).
Another piece by Charles Rain, this one titled Etruscan Still Live.
What was interesting about this piece by Richard Clarke, titled Untitled (Rainstorm) (see my comment above
about the use of Untitled). What we liked about this piece is that there are raindrops on the "lens", as
if the image was captured with a camera - but it is watercolor on paper. Clever.
We were done on the upper two floors, and walked down to the first floor.
Overlooking the first floor was this "mobile" hanging from the ceiling.
There was a hallway that had a collection of glass artwork. Here are our favorites.
In the hallway, with the above artwork, there were some children's (think 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade) artwork hanging
on the wall too. There happen to be a family of one of the students that had a piece hanging here.
Next to the hallway above, there was a room that held about nine different diaramas, called [Mrs. James Ward]
Thorne Rooms. She created 99 rooms in all; with the remaining 68 at the Art Instutute of Chicago, 20 at the
Phoenix Art Museum, 1 at the Indianapolis Children's Museum, and 1 at the Kaye Miniature Museum in Los Angeles.
Each was no more than about three feet across - probably closer to two - at a scale of 1 inch to 1 foot.
Here are: American Summer Kitchen, Federal Dining Room, and Victorian Parlor.
On the first floor, in the back of the building, it is at ground level. On either side of the back, outside,
there are sculpture gardens. The gardens were visible from one side of the first floor, but the other wasn't
visible until we were walking to the parking lot. Here are both gardens.
I used to work with someone that lives in Atlanta. We figured we would try to meet with her for lunch tomorrow,
or dinner today or tomorrow. Sadly, it did not work out for either day. So now it was dinner time!
We usually have - when at home - pasta or something similarly Italian for dinner on Sundays. We decided to have
Italian on this Sunday too. Our location, Dazzo's Pizza,
was about two blocks away from yesterday's Soccer Taco.
We almost shared a pizza, but wound up going individual instead.
Linda had the Penna al a Vodka.
I had the Chicken Parmignan with Spaghetti.
After our meal, we walked back toward Market Square because it was so close. Here are a couple sights from
that stroll, including some pictures from a park, in order of appearance.
After dinner, we headed to Atlanta.
One movie we enjoy watching is Twister. There is a line in it wherein one of the characters, Rabbit, is
trying to read a map, and he says "it's like Bob's Road". Usually when we are traveling somewhere and we have no
idea what road we're on, we say "it's Bob's Road". Well, we actually drove on Bob's road before leaving TN.
On the way, we passed another state line (the phone focused on the rearview mirror - sorry, I'm just the messanger
[aka driver and author]).
We found our hotel, and checked in.