PJ and I had a fun weekend over September 8-9.Visited the Phoenix Art Museum mid-day Saturday (September 8). We had wanted to see an exhibit titled "Mexico and Modern Print-Making (1920-1950)". And really enjoyed this. Those three decades were of course pretty turbulent times, and it seems particularly so in Mexico. In addition to color, composition, etc., these folks were using this type of art for pretty overt political statements. There was a fear of Nazi-type ideology taking root in Mexico; thus, there was a poster in support of the Red Army as it fought the Nazis in Germany. There was quite a bit of sympathy for Communist principles in Mexico (as in many other places in those days). Many posters dram
atized the plight of the poor, or the displaced natives. We thought it was pretty powerful stuff, and much of it just made you feel sad. The conventional understanding is that Mexico seems to lurch from one form of centralized power to the next (to this day), and the works also illustrated this.Afterward we went to Richardson's New Mexico restaurant (16th Street and Bethany Home) - the only shortcoming for this restaurant is that it's almost impossible to get in, but we solved that problem by showing up at about 2p on a Saturday. Delightful. I had three enchiladas with a (fairly hot) red chili sauce, PJ had a dish with shrimp wrapped in bacon. Almost made us overlook the dreadful Notre Dame loss (against Penn State, which we watched at home).
On Sunday afternoon, we went to a faculty recital down at ASU (summarized on my other website). Later in the evening, had another tremendous meal at the Roaring Fork in Scottsdale. This guy named Robert McGrath came up with a bunch of wonderful SW recipes, many in reasonably-sized portions on their "saloon menu". I had a "kettle" of green chile pork; we also shared seared scallops on soft cheese grits with some type of mushroom/bacon combination. Fun all around.
