NEW MEETS OLD: Contemporary African Art by Leilah Babirye at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA

Masks by Leilah Babirye at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

A new exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in San Francisco, called We Have a History, features the art of Leilah Babirye. At first, Leilah Babirye’s sculptures look like traditional African forms, but on closer look, the complex decorations turn out to be a colorful mixture of found objects—can tops, electrical wire, extension cords, PVC pipe, and whatever else she has happened to find. 

Auntie Muzumganda by Leilah Babirye, Ceramic, wire, and found objects.

Detail.

Leilah Babirye, born in Uganda, works in New York, creating busts, masks, and figures from ceramic and wood. This is her first solo museum show in the United States. Her work highlights the connection between the past and present in African art.

R. Peaceful Bride of Mwanga II, Leilah Babirye, Wood, wax, nails, wire, glue and found objects.

I saw Leilah Babirye’s exhibit when I was at the de Young Museum in July. Her art is displayed in the Art of Africa gallery, alongside the permanent exhibits of masks, paintings and other objects, thus tying Babirye’s work to the larger African tradition. 

Dance mask, Bogadjin people; Headrests, Tami people.

I was intrigued by her use of ordinary household objects and the way they become transformed into vibrant art when incorporated in the sculptures.

Carved wooden figure, Leilah Babirye.

Included in the exhibit is a video installation where we see Leilah Babirye at work in her studio. We see the intense and energetic way she attacks materials, turning them into the forms she intends. As she works we hear her talk about them.  Leilah Babirye’s sculptures, busts and masks are portraits of her LGBTQ+ community. Each one speaks for itself, inviting the viewer to take a closer look.

The exhibit, on the second floor of the museum, runs through October 26, 2025. 

For more information about visiting the de Young Museum of Art, click HERE.

EDITH RENFROW SMITH and the Celebration of Black History in Grinnell, Iowa

Grinnell, Iowa. Wheat paste murals depicting Edith Renfrow Smith's college graduation (1937) and as a two-year-old.

A week ago my husband Art and I were in Grinnell, Iowa celebrating the dedication of Renfrow Hall, a new Grinnell College dormitory and community center, named in honor of Edith Renfrow Smith, the oldest graduate (Class of 1937) and first Black woman to graduate from the college. After graduation she moved to Chicago, where she has lived ever since.

Edith Renfrow Smith at the dedication of Renfrow Hall, September 28, 2024.

Born in 1914, Edith grew up in Grinnell, the fifth child in one of just a few Black families in town. Now, at the sprightly age of 110, she was the star of the show.

Parade welcoming Edith to Grinnell. Edith rode in a red convertible and waved to the crowd.

We joined friends, family, college and townspeople as Edith was welcomed with a parade led by the high school band, a gala dinner followed by a party in the park, and numerous other events and exhibitions.

Wheat paste mural depicting Edith and her sisters. Edith is second from left. They had two brothers. All six graduated from college, although Edith was the only one to attend Grinnell College.

Posted around town were large wheat paste murals depicting Edith's early life and scenes from that period in the town's history. The murals, created by Iowa artist Isaac Campbell from historic photos, enlarged and printed on rolls of blueprint paper, were then fastened to buildings with wheat paste. They will last about a year.

No One is Better Than You is available at the Pioneer Book Store in Grinnell, and on Amazon.

Both Art and I had a chance to chat with Edith. I was especially eager to meet Edith after advising on the wonderful children's book about her life, No One is Better Than You, written by Monique Shore. During the weekend, Monique gave a reading of her book at the Drake Community Library in Grinnell. After the reading, tours were given of the Hazelwood Cemetery, highlighting areas connected to Renfrow family history.

Fourth Avenue in downtown Grinnell has not changed much in the last 100 plus years. Most of the buildings are on the National Historic Register. The store with the striped awning was once Arnold's Shoes.

The whole trip to Grinnell felt like a trip back in time as Art and I recalled our own years as students on campus in the 1960s and as we visited places connected to Arnold family history from earlier generations. Art's great great grandparents first came to Grinnell in the late 1800s. Art's father grew up in Grinnell. Art was delighted to learn that Edith recalled his Uncle Don (a classmate) and the Arnold shoe store on 4th Avenue.

Art chatting with Edith before the dedication ceremony.

Renfrow Hall, under construction.

Renfrow Hall, located off-campus in downtown Grinnell, will be both a dormitory for students at the college and a place for community activities. It is scheduled to open in 2025.

Edith paved the way for more Black women students at Grinnell College. Delabian Rice Thurston, my roommate in college, was honored with a banner at the dedication of Renfrow Hall for her work with Parents United in Washington, DC.

Delabian with her banner at the dedication.

It was a thrill to meet Edith and to be part of the celebration of her remarkable life and of the role she and her family have played in the Grinnell community.

The house on First Avenue in Grinnell where Edith was born.

This building was the Grinnell High School and Junior High attended both by Edith and her siblings and by Art's father and his siblings. It has now been converted to a hotel and this is where we stayed during our visit for the Renfrow Hall dedication.

A PLACE OF QUIET BEAUTY, MONASTERY MARIANELA-Atyra-Py, Paraguay, Guest Post by Tom Scheaffer

Marianela Atayla-Py Monastery in Paraguay.

On a recent trip to Paraguay to see an old friend, my brother Tom visited the beautiful monastery Marianela-Atyra-Py. Designed by an Italian architect and inspired by Medieval monasteries in Europe, its gardens and buildings now serve as a retreat and meeting place and is open to visitors. At the end of your tour you can enjoy coffee and snacks in the onsite Cafe. 

Here are a few photos Tom took on his visit to the monastery. 

Tom. An arched colonnade surrounds the octagonal chapel.

Colorful tiles decorate the floors.

Corridors open to the surrounding lawn. Even the brick walls are patterned.

Wooden carving of Saint Francis.

Tom's friend.

For contact information go to the Marianela-Atyla-Py Facebook page.

More photos of the Marianela complex can be seen HERE.

 

NATURAL BEAUTY IN ORLANDO, FLORIDA: Exploring Leu Gardens and More

Shaded path at Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida.

In August, my brother Tom spent several days in Orlando, Florida, before and after his trip to Paraguay. While most people think of Orlando as the home of Disney World, the city has much natural beauty too. One day Tom and a friend visited the Harry P. Leu Gardens, and sent me these photos.

Tom at Leu Gardens

Tropical plants flourish at Leu Gardens.

Colorful potted plants.

On another day in Orlando Tom wrote: Today I saw two cranes just in a park. Also, today we went to a natural spring, which was very beautiful. Water comes out of the earth--millions of gallons a day--and forms a river. We saw two manatees and there are also many fish that you can see.

Look for the large silhouettes in the water to see the manatees.

Tomorrow we will go kayaking at another spring. It is very hot here in the afternoons and humid!

With many thanks to Tom for sharing his photos of Orlando.

Go to the Leu Gardens website for information about hours and admission.

From the website: Explore an amazing botanical oasis nearly 50-acres minutes from Downtown Orlando. Each garden is designed specifically to further our mission: inspire visitors to appreciate and understand plants. The garden and historical home were deeded to the City of Orlando in 1961 by Mr. Harry P. Leu and his wife, Mary Jane. We hope you enjoy your visit.

AROUND THE WORLD WITH PLANTS at the UC Botanical Garden, Berkeley, CA

View of San Francisco Bay from the UC Botanical Garden, Berkeley, CA.

Fifty years ago, my daughter Jennifer and I posed in front of the sunflowers I was growing along our garden fence in Millbrook, New York. Several weeks ago, on our visit to the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley, Jennifer posed in front of a sunflower again, planted in the Crops of the World section.

With Sunflower, 1974.

With Sunflower 2024.

When Jennifer was young and we lived in a house in the country, we planted a huge garden, growing flowers and most of our own vegetables. Today, I still enjoy growing flowers in pots on my patio, but I buy my vegetables from our local Farmer’s Market.

A trip to the Botanical Garden in Berkeley is always a favorite outing with family and friends when we are at our house in Oakland. The 34-acre UC Botanical Garden is the third largest in the United States, featuring more than 10,000 kinds of plants from around the world. It specializes in plants that thrive in a Mediterranean climate similar to that of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Cactus bloom.

After buying our tickets at the front gate, we began our walk, first visiting the exhibits of orchids, cycads and carnivorous plants in the glass houses located just beyond the entrance. 

Gunnera tinctoria, also known as Chilean rhubarb.

From there we followed the paved and gravel paths through the deserts of the Americas, then upward through the Africa, Asian, Australasian, Mediterranean and South American sections, ultimately reaching the garden of old roses with its magnificent view of the garden and San Francisco Bay beyond. It was a warm, but overcast day, perfect for photography. 

Here are a few of our favorite photos from our expedition.

Cactus fruits.

Cactus viewed from above.

The garden was abuzz with bees collecting nectar.

Eryngium Paniculatum, from Argentina.

Sundial in the Garden of Old Roses.

The UC Botanical Garden has a lovely gift shop as well as a garden shop with plants. It puts on many programs for the public, including a monthly Butterfly Walk in summer, which we enjoyed a year ago. (Click on link for my blogpost about the butterfly walk.)

For directions and more information about the UC Botanical Garden, go to their website.

 

ANGEL ISLAND IMMIGRATION STATION: Poetry on the Walls

View of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay from the Tiburon Ferry.

Angel Island sits in the middle of San Francisco Bay, not far from the much smaller island of Alcatraz. It can be reached by ferry from San Francisco, Oakland, or Tiburon (in Marin County). In 2013, when I visited Angel Island, I took a tram tour and heard about the island's long history, including the story of lighthouse keeper, Juliet Nichols, and how she kept the fog bell ringing by hand on an extremely foggy night and day in the summer of 1906. That became the inspiration for my children's picture book, Keeper of the Light: Juliet Fish Nichols Fights the San Francisco Fog (Cameron Kids/Abrams, 2022).

Arriving at the dock in Ayala Cove on Angel Island, August 2024.

A few weeks ago I visited Angel Island for the first time since Keeper of the Light was published. It was a beautiful day and the ferry from Tiburon was crowded with people going to Angel Island for a day of hiking, biking and enjoying the out of doors in the state park.

Map of Angel Island. We followed the blue perimeter road to the Immigration Station on the north side of the island.

On all my previous visits to the island I had focused my attention on the southwest side of the island where Juliet’s lighthouse had been located (marked with a yellow X on the map) and where the story of my book takes place. But this time I wanted to visit the former Immigration Station on the other side of the island, where thousands of immigrants, mostly from China, had been detained between 1910, when it was built, and 1940, when it was closed after the main administration building burned down. So, after disembarking at Ayala Cove, Art and I followed the path past the Visitor Center and up the hill to the perimeter road, for a half-hour walk to the entrance of the Immigration Station.

View of Tiburon from the perimeter road. Can you find us in the reflection?

At 12 square miles, Angel Island is the largest island in San Francisco Bay. When Juan Manuel de Ayala y Aranza, the first European to visit the island arrived in 1775, he encountered the indigenous Miwoks, who had been coming there to hunt, fish and gather acorns and other wild plants for thousands of years. Over the next half century, the regional Miwok population was decimated due to resettlement and introduced diseases, and their use of the island as a hunting ground ended. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, California became part of the United States. Two years later the Federal Government became the official owner of Angel Island.

Dormitory in the Detention Barracks as it might have looked while immigrants waited for decisions on their cases. They slept in bunk beds, six between each set of poles.

The Immigration Station on Angel Island opened in 1910. It was the West Coast’s primary immigration facility, where immigrants, mostly from China and Japan, but other countries as well, were brought to be interrogated, often being detained for weeks, months or even years, and in many cases deported. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1882, prohibited most Chinese from immigrating to the U.S. (It was repealed in 1942.)

Detention Barracks are in the upper left of the photo. In the lower left is the large water tank which provided fresh water for cooking and bathing. Both the Detention Barracks and Hospital Monument are now museums.

In 1962, the military left Angel Island and soon after it became a California State Park. The former Immigration Station is now open to the public. In the Detention Barracks Museum you can see rows of narrow bunk beds in the large room where detainees slept, examples of some of the clothing and items they had brought with them, games they played, the guards' office, and more. While most of the detainees at the Immigration Station were men, there were also women and children, who were kept separately. (Note that there is a $5 fee to see the Detention Barracks Museum. It is well worth it!)

Examples of the writing on the wall.

What is most unique about the Detention Barracks Museum is the writing on the wall. Many detainees wrote or carved their thoughts into the wooden walls of the barracks. These inscriptions, many written as poems, form a personal record of their experience and have become a unique and valuable record of the immigrant experience. Over the years, the walls were painted, obscuring the writing. When we first walked into the room we said—but where is the writing?—until the docent showed us by shining her phone light onto the wall to catch the shadows of the engraved characters. Poems were everywhere!

Island of Sadness. You can press the button to hear the poem read aloud.

Signboards provide information about different kinds of Chinese poetry and give examples. And one display allows you to listen to a poem being read aloud in both English and Chinese. When you listen to the Chinese, even if you don't understand the words, you can hear the rhythm and rhyme.

Fog Bell at the Immigration Station Memorial. 

The Immigration Station also had a giant fog bell, much like the one Juliet Nichols rang on that foggy night in 1906. Unlike Juliet’s bell, which is inaccessible, but still in place on the rock where the bell house once stood, the Immigration Station bell is part of a memorial to the immigrants who once came to the island. It has a clapper, which you can swing to make the bell ring. We ate our picnic lunch on a shaded bench next to the bell.

The Immigration Station on Angel Island was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997.

During my visit I finally got to meet Park Interpreter Casey Dexter Lee in person, who had been so helpful with my research for my book. It was a pleasure to talk with her and learn more about Angel Island’s history.

Keeper of the Light is for sale at the kiosk gift shop.

Before we caught the ferry back to Tiburon, I visited the kiosk gift shop near the dock, where I was pleased to see Keeper of the Light displayed. All profits from sales in the gift shop go to support the Angel Island Conservancy.

Ferry landing, Tiburon.

For our visit to Angel Island we had bought our ferry tickets ahead of time online, showing the QR code as we boarded in Tiburon in the morning and where we were given a ticket for the return trip. We made sure to be on time for the 3:20 ferry back to Tiburon, the last trip of the day. If you miss the last ferry you are stuck on the island! And unless you brought camping gear, there is no place to stay. There is a small café in Ayala Cove, but services are limited on the island.

For more information about Angel Island and the Immigration Station check online.

View from inside the Detention Barracks.

For my post about my visit to Angel Island in 2017, click HERE.