On a recent afternoon, I enjoyed Mindful Monday: Cultivating Empathy and Connectedness, presented online by the Education Department of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

The exhibition explored, with mindful meditation briefly at the start, Light, Space, Surface: Selections from LACMA’s Collection, the art of Light and Space and related works with highly polished surfaces often referred to as “finish fetish” from the 1960s and 1970s. Principally, it detailed some of the showings by Peter Alexander and Helen Pashgian.

We were invited to examine and define a womb-like construction by Ms. Pashgian, but, as always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I also saw New Zealand, clouded skies, a toilet seat (!), a window into a new world, a view of the ocean and more before turning our attention to Mr. Alexander’s works.

And here we saw through the eye of a lens, where “context is everything,” and the view was refracted color stripes.

What does it all mean?

As I say in my recollection of many life and transformational events and people, BLESSED BY THE BEST (Amazon),  “…my second piano teacher pointed to a drawing on her apartment wall. She said, ‘All art inform good or great piano playing’ and told me I must go to symphony concerts, art exhibitions, the ballet, theater — all of it. And so I did. And continue to do.”

So after the class, I turned immediately to my screenwriting, motivated by the art class and contemplation of sculptures. I dug into my character examination in relation to the entire story and forged ahead with my rewrite of the screenplay, VESUVIO.

Art has always inspired me, and my dear friends from Arcadia, Ron Pettie, the artist and teacher, and Martin Huld, the college educator (both are academics) and I often have visited the area’s museums and art exhibitions, from the Huntington Library to LACMA.

And this encounter with art further inspired me to write this column for my blog.

Meet you at the museum!