Trip to Quebec - pt2

So... to continue with my list of memories from my whirlwind drip to Quebec? 

3.  Saturday lunch with Claire L'Heureux-Dube

Birthday flowers from her daughter Louise

Saturday, it was the judge's 92nd birthday (her birthday is a week before mine!).   

What a treat to go spend the lunch time hours with her.  

We spent it in the most relaxed of ways:  doing the business of ordinary life.   We walked down to the shopping street in her neighbourhood (she has a lovely place looking over the Plains of Abraham), where the local tailor sewed a button on a blazer for her, and we picked up her dry cleaning.  We wandered over to the grocery store for figs and bananas, wandered past a bunch of lovely shops, and headed to her preferred patisserie for coffee and croissants (and a yummy lobster bisque).   

Choosing a birthday necklace

She is a most perfect and entertaining host, and started up conversations with people sitting at the tables beside us.   We met a lovely woman who was originally from Peru, and a man who is a professional translator in Montreal, and who had driven up to Quebec City for the last day of the Miro exposition (see below).   

Ah, she chose from the cedar series! Like Arta!

So much fun!  It was a holiday of sorts, so the streets were also closed to traffic.   A stage was set up in the middle of the street, where a group of musicians played a host of wind intruments.  

My only moment of sadness is that I had mistakenly left my phone at her apartment during our stroll, so did not have access to my camera to take pictures of all the activities of a perfect and relaxed day wandering in the neighbourhood. 

On our return, it was time for her to pick a birthday necklace.  I was a bit bummed out that my original plan did not work out:  I had brought enough for the 12 of us who were scheduled to have dinner together after the talk.  I had thought it would be fun for us to share a gift for her birthday, but my lost luggage made that impossible.  Ah well.   Since my primary target was HER, that just meant a shift in plans.  :-)   I loved it that her choice was from the same Cedar series that Arta had enjoyed (and indeed, had smuggled a bunch of them out of my hands and into her jewelry box!)  

4.  Musee national des beaux-arts du Quebec - Miro!

Sunday was the final day of the exposition on Miro in Mallorca.  We got there first thing in the morning, so we could register for one of the guided tours:  we spent the first 1.5 hours wandering on our own, and then spent another 1.5 hours with an artist taking us through, and talking about Miro, his life, his studio, his art.  It was amazing.   Here are some photos from the show.

An explosion of a canvas.  Leaves me thinking of "traces"

detail of a handprint on the canvas

The eye in the middle of the painting

work influenced by Gaudi!

Paintings and Poems printed together

the lithographs turned into tapestries!

Our guide... who looks remarkably like my PhD student Mark!

The influence of japanese calligraphy is palpable

the sculptures are as fun as the paintings

from the blue phase?

the other 'blue' painting!

One in copper, the other a mixture of materials

I adore how the horizon continues through these three paintings

The black and white paintings really grab me

and a touch of red to send us back out the door.