A trip to the Mint

The boys and I took a trip to the Mint Museum the other day and spent a couple of hours gazing at paintings, woodcuts, and more. What a treasure of a museum we have in our city. We didn't talk much as we walked through. We just wandered, mostly separately, at our own paces, looking at whatever we wanted.

I loved the current exhibit, "Quiet Spirit, Skillful Hand: The Graphic Work of Clare Leighton." Just the title of the exhibit drew me in. Here's what the Mint website has to say about the exhibit:

Born to an artistic family, Leighton studied wood engraving in Great Britain before moving to the U.S. during World War II. Settling first in Baltimore, she moved to Chapel Hill in 1943 and served as a visiting art lecturer at Duke University from 1943-1945. During her career, she wrote 15 books and created more than 700 prints. The natural world and her surroundings were a continuous source of inspiration. Her timeless images reveal an abiding interest in and respect for the earth and those who tend it, advocating the virtue of hard labor and the rhythms of nature. On the surface, her subjects are simple working people -- the ploughman, the washerwoman, the net mender, the cotton picker -- but Leighton portrays them and their labor with dignity and reverence.

Scything by Clare Leighton
Woodcut, 1935

The exhibit is up til September 14. If you're in Charlotte, go!