Blue Monday: Blues for the New Year

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.

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please head on over to her blog.

So, 2016. And my first Blue Monday of the year. Now that Christmas and New Year's and the hubby's birthday are over, we're beginning to get back to normal around here. Finally took down the trees and all the holiday decorations and stowed them away for another year. And we managed to finish up the puzzle we've been working on for the last couple of weeks (no blue there, but a nice nostalgic picture):

It turned out to be a LOT harder to put together than we expected it to be. All those dark pieces looked exactly alike!

We ended December with a visit to the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas in Austin, to see the exhibit of Latin American modern interior design they have going on right now (I think it's there through January 17th, if you're interested). It was a good time to go -- classes were out for the winter break, so parking wasn't a problem and the campus was very quiet. I remember when we were students at UT back in the Pleistocene era, we always loved that time during vacations and between semesters, when the other students cleared out. We were Austin residents year-round, so we got to stick around and enjoy the slower pace.

The exhibit was fun -- lots of interesting mid-20th century decor, which I love. Wonderful furniture, paintings, wall hangings, and ceramics. And a lot of the walls were painted a lovely turquoise blue, my favorite color and very appropriate to the time period. (Sorry if they look a little greenish on your screen -- it's a difficult shade to photograph.)

There was also a lot of art glass I coveted, like this 1950s blue glass table lamp:

Before we left the museum, we browsed another exhibit -- paintings of the Virgin Mary from 18th century Bolivia and Peru. One of them (Our Lady of Cocharcas, 1751 by an unknown artist) included some nice touches of blue (although I think it was supposed to represent a silver processional cart):

And on our way between galleries, I snapped a couple of shots of George Segal's life-size sculpture Blue Woman in Black Chair. I'm not sure exactly what he was trying to achieve, but she was several lovely shades of blue...

and kind of spooky close-up.

So, I guess now I'm ready for 2016 to begin unfolding. And I'm hoping for more blue skies like the one we had yesterday....