On coming back from a tour of the US art scene, Amira El-Naqeeb put together a collage of her own "We are the to-do people," said Gary Weaver, the founder of the Intercultural Management Institute, speaking to participants in the International Institute of Visual Arts and Journalism programme I attended last month. After spending time in over 34 art spaces all over America, I could relate to this all-American self definition, too. But the idea behind the event being cultural exchange, it was the non-Americans -- South Africans, Latin Americans, Filipinos and a Bosnian as well as two Egyptians -- who demonstrated the proactive intermingling that goes into the American spirit. Overwhelming as it was, the experience of being introduced to the full gamut of the American arts scene left several strands of thought hanging very clear in the air. In a house owned by the 1970s Doonesbury- comic strip collector Richard J Kelly, for example, the Kelly Collection comprises illustrations and -- many from the Jane Haslem Gallery in Washington DC -- and book and magazine art done on commission and, as Kelly himself explained, conceived in reaction to the fine arts mores of the time, at that time, when many associated working on commission with being compromised. Strangely the most rewarding part of the viewing experience was the collection manager Elizabeth Marecki Alberding's ability to tell you a story about each and every piece you pointed to -- what it was done for, where it came from. All over DC admission to art spaces was free, with the open-park atmosphere of the city itself, with live gazelles on the streets, a far cry from the notion of Capitol. Also at the Capitol was the Irvine Contemporary art space -- practically an alleyway where a mural by Shepared Fairey, finished in October 2008, seemed sizzling with energy still: an Asian solider carrying a gun. Hand-stenciled compositions formed Fairey's "Duality of Humanity 2" wheatpaste mural. Fairey's Obama portrait shot him straight to fame and fortune after it became the face of the national campaign. The feeling of freedom that I feel whenever I pass a wall that has street art on it is inexplicable, but graffiti and street art in this place seemed wildly informal, personal even -- a register I am particularly comfortable with. Philadelphia was different again: The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) showcases a more intimate approach to fabric than I had ever thought possible; texture invokes touch, and for me this is an integral part of the "viewing" experience. One piece in particular was memorable: The Apple of Adam's Eye (1993) by Carrie Mae Weems, a big blotch of orange with royal blue underlining the image of a suggestively shrouded woman silkscreened onto the fabric and flanked by side panels seemingly overgrown with vines. Elaborately embroidered in gold on the panels are the words "She'd always been the apple/Of Adam's Eye" (front) and "Temptation my ass, desire has its place, and besides, they were both doomed from the start" (back). But it is perhaps The Apprentice training programme that is worthiest of mention in this museum. A beehive of wannabe fabric artists of all ages. Still, it was during my turn on the couch dominating the centre of the hall and upholstered with different patches of fabric that I pictured my face as part of a complex collage. Taking the subway in New York implies the unique experience of four or five languages overheard at once, yet the smallness of myself amid the crowds and skyscrapers was alienating. The MoMA was all anyone could hope for, however, and as luck would have it we went straight to the opening of a new show by the Chinese conceptual artist Song Dong: "waste not". An opening at the MoMA is no less glamorous than a Hollywood premiere -- and it seemed somewhat disappointing to be thrown in the middle of a Sex and the City set after the peaceable vastness of DC. As it turned out, "waste not" was the contemporary art scene's answer to the Cairo Friday flea market, which I suppose is contemporary conceptual art at its involuntary best: an inventory of absolutely every item owned by Dong's mother, a compulsive hoarder, who together with her son painstakingly categorised the items after the death of the father last January. The cumulative effect of everyday items arranged in such meticulous display is a dizzying tribute to a life. It gave me a bit of a headache, too. At Yayoi Kusama's exhibition in the Gagosian Gallery, also in New York, I felt enlightened. The floating sensation induced by the "Infinity Room" was more or less literally an out-of-body experience. An optical system gives the impression of countless candles endless reflected and refracted to produce a very real feeling of suspended gravity. Hi-tech art this most certainly is, but its only object is to touch the soul. Kusama, 80, wants to liberate the viewer. And every single person came out with the same expression on their face: "I am free." Still, it is as part of the variegated group of participants that I had the most distinct artistic experience -- of being part of a living multinational collage remarkably like the Art scene in America. It is this that I miss the most.
