Fox Games

         You know what's a big outing in my family when we gather over the holidays?

          A trip to the art museum! Yay!

          I am only being moderately sarcastical. We love us some art museums. Even the young persons. Even my sister's east-coast-centric partner, press-ganged into family togetherness in the western wilderness, far from jug-handle turns and other comforts of civilization.

          So, on New Year's Day, we went to the Denver Art Museum. There was an exhibition of posters from AIGA's archives I wanted to see. B, my sister's east-coast-centric partner, wanted to see a Chuck Forsman photo exhibition. DAM has a gorgeous collection of Native pottery that my potter father never tires of looking at. Mom enjoyed Thomas Moran's Yellowstone chromolithographs. My sister was wowed by Roxanne Swentzell's monumental sculpture, Mud Woman Rolls On.

          And my charming niece? When I asked one of the friendly security guards where the poster exhibition was, M said, "The foxes, Aunt Nancy. Ask him where the foxes are."

          I'd forgotten about the foxes, but M remembered them from a visit several years earlier when she and her brother had walked through the crimson exhibit space that resembled a cafe dipped in red paint. Everything—walls, tables, chairs, dinnerware—was red. Except for the gray foxes, frozen as they rolled and jumped and pounced on one another among the tables and chairs.

          One reviewer characterizes the work of Sandy Skoglund, the artist, as narrative surrealism. The kind of compelling weirdness that drives viewers to invent the stories that seem to be lurking near every fox and under every tablecloth.

Who let the foxes in the cafe?

Is it a game? Or is it a battle?

I want to live in the world where grey foxes romp in red cafes.

          The joy of going to a museum with M is how excited she gets when she sees something she likes. She likes the foxes very much. We took lots of photos. M shared hers with her friends on that thing that's newer than Instagram which I am far too elderly to ever have used (Snapfish? Snapchat? Snapdragon? Something like that). I'm sharing my photos with you here. You'll have to come up with your own stories.