A Pleasant Saturday in San Jose (California)

On a sunny Saturday in San Jose, I happened to run into a great art gallery located on The Alameda.

The lobby looked strikingly similar to the entrance of a beauty shop and the lady looked up and asked if I wanted to see the exhibit.  "Yes," I said.  She replied she would go in and turn on the lights.   

The gallery was situated below a beauty salon. The lady was connected with the salon which explained why she had little to say about it beyond asking me if I wanted to see it.  It was early yet, and I had the whole place to myself.

The gallery did not appear to have a name.  The artist was a Vietnamese man named Trieu Hai Dao, and I had the most enjoyable time looking at his artistic creations.   

A binder sat on a table in one room of the gallery showing me a glimpse of other artwork by the artist, photographs of exhibits he had held in the past.

San Jose has great art, at least  I like what I've seen.  I've seen wonderful southwestern ceramic patterns on the side of a bridge on Santa Clara Street, and wonderful sculptures on 5th Street across from the Civic Center.  I've visited the San Jose Museum of Art when the early photography of Ansel Adams was featured, and I've been delighted by the displays of handmade books I found once on the 5th floor of the downtown Martin Luther King Library.  Yes, I think that San Jose can be called a good city for the arts.  

What I like about Trieu Hai Dao's art is the calmness I feel when I look at it.  His art--at least the paintings and sculptures I liked the best--were large, solid, and colorful.  Some of his work seemed "cosmic"--featuring outlines or shapes of humanoid figures, and creatures, and bright balls that could be planets  or suns. I tend also to be attracted to art of an "organic" nature"--paintings and sculpture with lots of soft curves and gentle grays and browns, which his was. 

Walking around the gallery on The Alameda was a visual smorgasbord.  The natural lighting, the synergetic arrangement of the pieces, the maturity and quality of the art work made for an outstanding experience.  Unplanned and unexpected, it made for a pleasant Saturday in San Jose. 

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Related links:

Dao Hai Trieu website - http://www.daohaitrieu.com/

"San Jose artist Trieu Hai Dao's retrospective shows 40 years of art," San Jose Mercury News, October 28, 2010, mercurynews.com

"Trieu Hai Dao Art Exhibition: a pleasant day in San Jose," You-tube video, by Dollydharma, 8 min, 4 sec, April 17, 2013

"Trieu Hai Dao Rose Garden Gallery," You-tube video by Neopsyph, 2 min 8 sec, October 16, 2010

 

 

 

 

 

Trieu Hai Dao Art Exhibition (below Ayjere Salon)

1345 The Alameda

San Jose, California

NASA Updates at the Sunnyvale Public Library

Last night I attended a talk at the Sunnyvale Public Library about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's planetary projects.  These "NASA Mission Updates" occur on a regular basis.  This was my second one.

It makes total sense to me that these would take place since Moffett Field and NASA Ames are located just down the road a ways.  In fact I watched the Endeavor shuttle float over the Sunnyvale Community Center (to be laid to rest along with the rest of the shuttle program) last September (2012).

Mr. Eric Norris, a volunteer "ambassador" to the public for NASA comes to speak on a regular basis.  Some people in the audience were regular attendees as it turned out.  He provided a somewhat casual but entertaining discussion of some of NASA's programs.

It turns out that the third rover on Mars "Curiosity", which landed on Mars, August 5, 2012 , is doing fine.  Because it is on a two year mission, they are taking their time and being sure that all instrumentation is in good working order.

The previous Mars rover "Opportunity" was sent up on a 90 day mission to collect data from Mars.  It has now been crawling slowly around the MARS surface for ten years.  Some of the data collected by it suggested that water once existed on this distant planet (though it is our neighbor, revolving around the sun slightly further away than earth.

Curiosity has a drill connected to it and it goes around drilling holes in Mar's surface to obtain samples to send back to earth. Data collected recently verified that water once existed on Mars, and not only that, but that it was non acidic water, in a form that biological organisms similar to earth's could have consumed.

The other interesting thing I learned about the rovers was that Curiosity is run on nuclear power.  It has Plutonium 238 in it.  So does Voyager I which is a rocket that we sent to collect data from four planets while they were in a rare alignment.  Voyager has now travelled 115 astronomical units which is 115 times the distance of the sun is from earth.  Voyager is about to reach interstellar space which is the same as saying it is reaching the heliotrope, the area where our sun will no longer have an influence which they are also calling interstellar space.  This will happen sometime this year.

The other thing I find fascinating is how they get these rovers to land on another planet.  When I watched footage of "Opportunity" and "Curiosity" land I was in awe.  NASA designed "Opportunity" to bounce around like a big rubber ball, and Curiosity used a combination of parachute drag, vertical thrusters, and cables.  Still, it is great fun to watch them.

OPPORTUNITY LANDS, version 1, version 2 - Interestingly the bouncing ball bounces differently in Version 1 and 2.  Still, you get the drift of how it happened.  High praises to Opportunity, NASA tends to anthropomorphize their rovers, for it was sent on a 90 day mission to mars and has now been up there 10 years!

CURIOSITY LANDS - this is animated but extremely cool, as NASA published it and has installed little commentaries to explain what is happening as it happens.  Love it!