Category Archives: Art

2023, Art, Uncategorized

Public Art

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The main north-south highway route through my town sports a deep underpass beneath the east-west rail tracks that pass through the middle of town. It is prone to flooding, and for many years it was the only way to get from the north side of town to the south side of town when a train was passing.

The underpass has large cement walls. About 10 years ago a civic minded friend, with the blessing of the City and State authorities, commissioned a California mural artist to paint the sides the the underpass. He painted regional images, like Ukrainian dancers, rodeo cowboys, wheat fields, and Badlands on the cement walls. It was really lovely.

Over the years, moisture has leached through the paint and it has become unstable. The paint was peeling off with no way to restore the images. There was surprisingly very little vandalism, I should add. A couple of weeks ago, the city closed the underpass and painted over the murals with white paint. It was sad, but there wasn’t anything else to do. I wonder how much public art we have lost over the centuries due to problems like this.

What are your favorite public art works? What would you want to paint on a mural?

2023, Art, Food, Uncategorized

Decorative Arts

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This is a purely silly post for Friday. A friend posted this on Facebook yesterday, and I was entranced.

Once the Dutch part of me got past how wasteful this is, I was entranced with his creativity. I would have so much fun doing something like this. I am not a cake decorator sort of person. I haven’t the patience. But this seems so satisfying. I wonder if the creation is edible, and how he might serve it.

What is your favorite kind of chocolate? If you could make a chocolate sculpture, what would it be? What is your decorative style?

2023, Art, education, Family, Uncategorized

Silk Purses

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I have no artistic ability whatsoever, and I am amazed by those who do. Husband can draw quite well, and his mother painted landscapes. Our daughter also has some nice artistic abilities.

I don’t think Daughter really liked art projects very much in the early grades, but seemed to really like an art class she took as an elective in High School. One of her projects was to weave a basket. It seemed to start out ok, but just didn’t work out as she wanted it to, and thought she had failed the project. The art teacher, however, saw something more in her failed basket.

He noticed that instead of a basket she had created a lovely Flamenco dancer. You can see her head thrown back, with her orange hair, and the outlines of her body under her dress. Daughter was surprised I still had the dancer. It reminds me that lovely things can come out of what we think are failures.

What kind of art are you best at? What kind of art do you like to have around you and look at? When have you made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?

2023, Art, History, Travel, Uncategorized

Higham Ferrers

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When I was a junior in college, I went on a month long seminar to England, France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland sponsored by the Religion and Philosophy Departments at Concordia College in Moorhead. We studied the transition from medieval to modern in thought, literature, art, and architecture. One of our stops was Higham Ferrers, a small town in Northamptonshire noted for its memorial brasses in the church.

The most famous brass is that of Laurence St. Maur, (pronounced Seymour), a parish priest who died in 1337. The brass dates from that time, and was originally on the floor. In 1633 it was placed on a tomb about four feet off the ground. . We were able to do rubbings of the brass on black paper and gold crayons. It is six feet long and two feet wide. I managed to get mine home rolled up in my backpack, had it framed, and managed to haul it to Winnipeg, Indiana, and North Dakota in one piece. He hangs on our hallway with framed Jim Brandenburg photos. You can see the top part of the rubbing below. It was hard to get a good photo without glare.

He doesn’t look too happy. There is an inscription farther down around his chest, ornately decorated robes, and two active dogs at his feet. He doesn’t have a head dress, but I gather that many brasses did, and the brasses were often used to show the decedent’s sense of style. Animals at the feet were often symbolic of how the person died. Flowers were also popular and symbolic. I read about a brass on someone named St. Margaret of Antioch who had a dragon at her feet. I gather that she was swallowed by the Devil in the form of a dragon, and emerged from his side unscathed.

What inscriptions or symbols would you want on your memorial brass?

2023, Art, Media, Uncategorized

What’s My Logo?

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I am the chairperson of the regulatory and licensing board for psychologists in my state. We are all appointed by the governor. They are entirely volunteer positions. We receive no remuneration for our services. The Board is self funded by fees our licensees pay, and those fees mainly go toward secretarial and legal services. There are only seven of us on our Board, as well as a secretary from an agency we contract for services. I am proud of the work we do protecting the public and efficiently licensing providers in our state.

Our Board must abide by State procurement rules for acquiring goods and services. Because of my role as chairperson, I get all the emails from the Office of Management and Budget Procurement Office that the head of every State agency receives. I was tickled last week to get an unintentionally funny email from the Procurement Office asking if we were interested in purchasing clothing for our agency that had our logo on it. If we were, the Procurement Office would send us a list of vendors who could provide the clothing and logos at State approved rates. They suggested we set up a room where employees/members could go to purchase the clothing. I should mention that we don’t have a logo.

Husband thought we should order berets. (He is the Board complaint investigator by virtue of being married to me, and the Board not having anyone else who would do it pro bono. ) I thought mortar boards would be fun. I also thought our logo could be a brain with lightening bolts coming out it. As there are so few of us, though, it probably wouldn’t be cost effective to put in an order.

Did you ever wear special clothing for your workplace? What do you want your logo to be?

2023, Art, Movies, News, Uncategorized

Scrap Artist

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I ran across this yesterday. This artist lives in Lemmon, SD, about 80 miles south of where we live. I have never heard of him before.

https://www.kfyrtv.com/2023/04/19/lemmon-sd-artist-gets-international-attention-new-documentary/

The Scrap documentary highlights people who have found uses for objects that are no longer needed. For eample, one of the stories involves a British man and his family who have restored more than 2000 British phone booths that have turned up in all sorts of locations in England. Another team of architects has turned abandoned ocean liners in a cafe and a church. I think it is great the documentary film maker also highlighted the sculptor in Lemmon.

Having been around farmsteads for much of my life, I can imagine that there is scrap metal galore to use for projects like this. I think about all the things that got thrown in the groves at my grandparents’ farms. You often see old corn pickers and threshing machines parked on top of hills out here as monuments to the past. I just think it is wonderful that he can do this in Lemmon.

Do you know any actively working artists? What are some ideas you would have for repurposing things we don’t use anymore, like telephone booths? Ever done much work with blow torches?

2023, Art, Poems, Words

Spring Haiku

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I was browsing through my poetry binder last weekend and, of course, came across my favorite haiku:

Fan Piece for Her Imperial Lord

O fan of white silk,
Clear as front on the grass-blade,
You are also laid aside
Ezra Pound

It made me wonder if I could find some fun haiku for spring.  There are actually quite a few but I like these two:

Rise from winter’s nap
Stretch to feel the sun’s warm rays
Spring is among us
Shannon Schofield

The temple bell stops.
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
Basho

Any spring poetry that you like?  Written any haiku lately?

 

2023, Art, home, Kids, Mysteries

Fridge Update

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Had my annual check-up yesterday.  Nothing momentous and I was only gone from the house for about an hour and a half.  When I got home, bearing Taco Bell, YA informed me that she had taken the handles off the refrigerator to wash them.  Apparently when she wiped the handles down, she felt there was dirt in crevices that she couldn’t get to without removing them.

I’m torn.  It’s nice to know she’s handy and can figure things out (apparently there was some YouTube assistance) but there’s also bewilderment that she would be driven to this task.  I’ve looked closely at the handles and honestly, they look the same to me as they did this morning.

Refrigerator magnets/artwork – yeah or nay?

2023, Art, books, Food, Travel

Decisions Decisions

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As you all know I love cookbooks.  And you all also know that I have too many – neither my wallet nor my shelves can handle my just willy-nilly buying of any and all cookbook that look interesting.  But a quick perusal doesn’t cut the mustard either – you need to go though a cookbook thoroughly to know if it earns the right to displace another cookbook on my shelves.

The way I deal with this is to check out prospective cookbooks from the library.  Then I can leisurely go through them, look at the recipes, ingredients, level of difficulty, etc.  If a lot of recipes look interesting and I can envision cooking from the book, then I have to decide if it’s enough to replace an existing cookbook on my shelves.  If there are only a couple of recipes, I copy them and add them to my big binder.

When I was in Tucson, we visited a few places that had cookbooks on display.  One was an amazing cooking shop in the arts colony of Tubac.  We spent quite a bit of time there as Susan was texting photos of various tea towels to a friend who was in the market.  This shop had A LOT of tea towels; it would have been very easy to over-indulge.  Wandering through a cooking shop is not a punishment for me and I came across a handful of cookbooks that looked interesting.  I took photos and then when I got home I requested them from the library.  Three are in transit, so hopefully in the next few days I can relax with some hot tea or cocoa and go through them to my hearts’ content.

How do you decide which books to buy and which to not buy (or borrow)?

2023, Art, History, Mysteries, Nature, Travel

Where in the World is VS?

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  • Population of 22,000 but at least five large golf courses.
  • Titan Missile Museum (also known as Air Force Facility Missile Site 8 – Arizona Aerospace) – deactivated in 1984.
  • Arid Garden – flora that is local to Arizona and states with similar geological features. Open 24/7.
  • Casa Grande Ruins National Monument — dating back to the early 14th century, the monument showcases the ruins of a walled compound, remnants of a village and the irrigation system used by early farmers.
  • Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory — once called the Mount Hopkins Observatory, but it was renamed to honor American astronomer Fred Lawrence Whipple.
  • Mission San Xavier del Bac — Completed in 1797 as part of a Catholic mission, the church is the oldest example of European baroque architecture in the area and features incredible original statues and mural paintings.

Where in the world is VS?