[INSTALLMENT 1]
Welcome Explorers, to the very first installment of The Daily Explorer. In this soon-to-be series, I, Emi Gruender, will traverse the unknown in search of never-seen-before places. Interesting, cheap, and preferably entertaining, to be exact.
With these soon-to-come journeys, I hope to encourage the readers of the Shield to wander the town they grew up in– there’s always something new to explore. Who knows, you might learn something new about the city you’ve lived in for years!
Keep an eye out for some of your favorite writers from The Shield, as some may accompany me on these adventures in the future.If you have any favorite places, restaurants, parks, etc, please email me at 558971@my.cuhsd.org to issue a recommendation. Your name and input about the place in question will be credited.
Without further ado, buckle up and enjoy the blog-style ride of The Daily Explorer!
SUNDAY, MARCH 31
3:42 pm, Winchester Station
As the very first adventure of this series, I will be traversing Downtown San Jose alone to explore the one and only San Jose Museum of Art. Today is Easter, so suffice to say, I am a little bit worried that the museum might be closed. To my surprise, it is not.
With hours from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm, this museum is only open Friday through Sunday, at extremely low prices. Youth, teachers, and seniors waive the usual $8-10 fee at the entrance, under the condition that you present proof of some kind.
To get to Downtown San Jose in the first place, I decided to take the Lightrail from Winchester Station to the Civic Center on the Green line. Surprisingly, I arrived at the San Jose Museum of Art muh more quickly than I expected, given the stigma around public transportation for being “slow” and “dirty”.
4:16 pm, San Jose Museum of Art
After a quick chat with the front desk employee, and showing them my Canvas portal as proof of student-hood, I promptly accessed the galleries upstairs. This time, the theme for the main hall was entitled “Encode/Store/Retrieve.” The idea was to explore how “Human memory has changed dramatically over the course of the digital age.” (Juan Omar Rodriguez, Assistant Curator)
Art revolving around foggy modern photographs, motherboards soaked in ink, antiquated leather-bound books, and a rusting cathedral around a pristine statue of Jesus all point to the same idea– how memory warps and changes over time. I enjoyed several pieces, the titles and pictures of which are attached below.
by Beverly Rayner
“The remembering of dreams” 1994
Perhaps this is not as universally relatable as I find it, but no matter how hard I try, my dreams always are tinged around the edges, like a vintage vignette. I’ve never seen a physical manifestation of what my dreams look like, but I guess I have now! I liked the choices of the photos; it seemed to tell a story.
by Chryssa
“Plaque”1965
Perhaps the most appropriate for a newspaper article in The Shield, this piece represents the fragility of memory– drawing a connection between memory and easily-discarded newspapers. However, this vintage printing-press has been cast in bronze to forever immortalize the words etched within, unlike their usual fragile nature.
My favorite piece(s) from this section was a pair entitled “Portrait of my Father” next to “Portrait of my Mother” by Jim Campbell, 1956. A custom glass box encased a photo each– one of the artist’s father; the other, his mother. The photographs flickered in and out of sight as the glass grew translucent and opaque according to the two small boxes attached to them.
On the box with wires attached to the mother’s picture, it is written “My breath” along with a date in 1956, when he breathed into a sensor for about 12 hours to sync with the opaque-ness of the glass box. As a result, his mother’s photograph floated in and out of vision, but her face was always very clear at the climax of each breath. It was calm.
The other box, however, with the photograph of the artist’s father, is labeled with “My heartbeat” along with a date, when he recorded his heartbeat for 12 hours. His father’s likeness was much more difficult to pick out, as the heartbeat was too quick and sporadic to conjure up an accurate image of the artist’s father.
Though this piece can be interpreted many different ways, I felt that it spoke to me on the grounds of how memory inevitably fades after time. It felt like the descriptions of people before the age of the photograph forgetting their own parents’s faces as time passed by. However, for one reason or another, one face is much easier to conjure than the other. No matter what Jim Campbell intended with this piece, I was touched.
By Jim Campbell
“Photograph of my mother” + “Photograph of my father”1956
PHOTO ALBUM:
5:44 pm, Downtown San Jose
Now officially done with the art museum visit, I grabbed a Lime scooter and went to a nearby cookie place, before wheeling all the way back to the station. Seeing as it’s downtown San Jose, I did feel a little bit unsafe– being alone and all. The light rail showed back up a few minutes later, taking me back to where the journey began– Winchester Station
THE VERDICT
- I really enjoyed this experience. It was quiet and very peaceful inside the museum, most likely because of it being Easter sunday.
- Next time, I will make sure to bring somebody with me– for the purpose of company, safety, and differing perspectives.
Join me in the next issue for yet another adventure, hopefully starring a fellow journalist.
Signing off until next issue,
The Daily Explorer
