I went to a museum today, because, you know ... Art

Yesterday at work we ended with a secure perimeter lockout based on a credible threat to schools in the Denver metro area. Today, we woke up to all schools in the metro area closed while police and the FBI conducted a massive manhunt for a young woman who flew to Colorado from Florida and purchased a shotgun and ammunition after making verbal threats about school shootings.

So ... yeah.

With no school and no desire to spend the day watching the weirdness unfold on television and social media, I went to the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, where I spent a few hours immersed in beauty and light and color. MCA is hosting a fascinating exhibit of Amanda Wachob, whose "innovation in tattoo art" has opened a new frontier in abstract art and body painting, and I spent some time just pondering how we can occasionally think nothing new can happen in the abstract world until someone comes along and leads us down a new trail, looking over her shoulder with that "yeah, what about this" kind of glance.

And, then of course, I meandered through the showing of "Aftereffect: Georgia O'Keefe and Contemporary Painting," in which numerous artists are exhibited with a focus on their connections to O'Keefe and her influence.

Aftereffect: O’Keeffe and Contemporary Painting brings together a select group of artists whose work resonates with that of Georgia O'Keeffe. From her formal innovations, to her ambition to transcribe her ideas and emotions, to her distinctive approach to abstraction and the landscape of New Mexico, O'Keeffe's legacy is identifiable in the work of several generations of painters. These artists share her interest in capturing what Jerry Saltz refers to as the "objective and subjective all at once." That is, in their art, the physical world is neither subjected to, nor victorious over the imagination of the artist, but rather, the two are continuously at play.

And things are better now.