Posts Tagged ‘art’
Gifted Art
What can we say about friends who agree to house-sit and care for our animals, and then leave us gifts of spectacular art pieces to find in unsuspecting places? My friend, Pam (whom I met on the Himalayan trek in Nepal with Jim Klobuchar’s Adventures), and her husband, John, take wonderful care of Asher and the horses when Cyndie and I travel. They both also have a keen eye for creative endeavors.
This wall hanging of pressed flowers and pieces of the never-ending collection of emptied bags that the grains of feed for the horses come in is a wonder to behold.
I was completely oblivious to this beautiful creation hanging in the barn when I showed up to do the “housekeeping” in the paddocks and only learned about it later, back at the house, when Cyndie showed me this picture she had taken.
We will be devising a more robust method of hanging it in the short term, while waiting for a frame with glass to arrive in order to preserve it long term.
While the humidity teetered between 75 and 100 percent yesterday, I sweated my way through an attempt to catch up with the manure composting details that get a little neglected when we are away. We don’t expect others to do things the way we do. Instead, we ask that they simply clean up manure from under the overhang when it’s time to feed the horses.
That means there is always a little catching up to be done when I return to take over equine fecal relocation duties. While tending the composting piles in the sweltering tropical conditions, I noticed how much I wished I wasn’t in the middle of doing it. The non-stop sweat on my face and in my eyes was driving me crazy.
No, I do not particularly like tending to the piles of composting manure. What I truly like is the times when the piles have been fully tended. I don’t necessarily enjoy doing it, but I thoroughly enjoy it when it’s done.
The compost piles almost look like works of art. It’s a gift that I give to myself.
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Sculpture Garden
How many of you know where we went yesterday from seeing this picture?
I’ve written about Big Stone Sculpture Garden twice before because my bicycling friends and I have stopped there when riding the Dakota Rail Regional Trail in the last two years.
This time, Mike, Barb, Cyndie, and I played the 14-hole mini-golf course.
There were a LOT of people playing and we did as much waiting as putting but there are endless artistic endeavors to see and explore to occupy the time.
When the golfing was done, we walked the grounds and I traveled farther and saw more fascinating creations than on any of my previous visits. I’ll share a very select few…
Apparently, pigs can ___…
There were many horse sculptures but the mechanical parts of this one make it unique.
“I am a lone rhinoceros, there ain’t one hell of a lots of us, left in this world…” Adrian Belew (1982). I had to ask Cyndie what they were looking at. She said the artist’s name was back there.
Taking advantage of an opportunity to get off their feet for a moment.
A two-headed beast! Beasts? It’s always hard to pass up a selfie in a distorting reflective surface.
Back at Barb and Mike’s, we enjoyed lunch on the deck before Cyndie and I needed to get home to take care of feeding dog and horses. I did end up driving and stayed awake almost the whole way.
We had a first-rate stay-cation overnight with our friends. Our happiness meter is measuring right near its peak.
Now it’s back to manure management and this afternoon, a visit from the farrier is scheduled. I sure hope there will be a breeze to cool things a little and, more importantly, keep the number of flies harassing the horses to a minimum. They don’t tend to stand patiently when flies are bothering them.
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Another Heart
I believe my latest heart sculpture from a section of one of our pine trees has reached completion, at least as far as I’m feeling moved to take it.
The wood color has a lot of grey to it. More than I expected. The top view shows the star pattern radiating from the center.
There is another view of that center down toward the point at the opposite end of the heart.
I intentionally aimed to avoid having the exact tip be aligned with the center, partially hoping it might reveal a more interesting wood grain. The result did not “wow” me as much as I hoped it could.
One primary feature of the sculpture that the photo is not able to adequately convey is the tactile pleasure of feeling the hefty weight and glossy smoothness of the contoured shape. In the case of this piece made of pine, that feature is more rewarding than the visual of the colors, grain patterns, and knots.
The end result of having created this heart out of pine is that I now have a strong desire to return to a chunk of ash wood for my next sculpting project.
Also, I was very interested in working on a piece where I finish the whole thing without leaving a portion natural. Having done that, I find I have a strong urge to consider a return to my old ways. That is something I can decide when I settle on the piece of wood and a potential shape that will become the result of my next inspiration.
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Different Project
It rained with such ferocity yesterday that water found a way past shingles, and dripped over the toilet in our bathroom. I thought maybe Cyndie had unbelievably made a mess, until I got dripped on and discovered it was coming from overhead.
I drained 2-inches from the rain gauge in the afternoon and Cyndie reported 2-inches more collected by dusk. It hailed, and it thundered, and Delilah barked at the booming all day long.
Basically confined to staying under a roof all day, I puttered around in the shop. I finally got around to using power tools to cut and grind old shovels to give them a clean edge again. I cut off the broken metal tines of a rake that has been lying around for a couple of years because I couldn’t part with the perfectly good handle.
Then I spotted the wood sculpting project I started a couple of winters ago and decided to spend a little time with it again.
The idea for this came from a high school art class assignment I did over four decades ago. I figured, if I’m still thinking about that piece I did that long ago, the idea deserved revisiting.
The concept is to create the piece by removing the background wood around the shape. Relief carving.
“To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane.”
I made the shape of a fish in high school. I remember that I wasn’t able to make the tail fins look real, so I morphed them into a small ‘cartoony’ version of a fish tail.
I think it worked, in the end. Gave the finished piece a kind of primitive-folksy look. What I remember most about the project was the surprise of how the grain looked after I sanded everything smooth.
The lines from the flat rise up with an accented grace over the shape that is carved.
I’m going with the tear drop shape this time. That way I won’t have to figure out how to make that tail.
Now I just need another day of monsoon rain to confine me to the shop for long enough to bring this project to fruition.
Don’t hold your breath. As much as I love working on projects like this, this gem could easily rest on the window sill for another couple of years, if history is a reliable reference.
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Shadow Gradient
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An image I found interesting.
Just because.
Feel free to interpret as a statement on right vs. wrong, or the oppression of the masses, or our cosmic inconsequence in the universe, or a celebration of the marriage of nature and industry, or the wonders of color and time.
But really, it’s just a picture of shadows I thought looked interesting.
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Value
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If I’d had a chance
to think of that
maybe I would
who can say?
a picture on the wall
painted as art
worth more than the house
to the right beholding eye
a simple line
and a dot
some colors
not all that good together
from what I could see
but somewhere along the line
the painter became a name
and value simply followed
like rain drops rolling together
into larger and larger pools
into streams flowing down
dollar signs piling up
suddenly a picture
becomes like diamonds
a fancy kind of watch
melted bars of gold
they are things that don’t really matter
unless people decide they do
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Photographic Decay
Something about the puzzle-like visual of decaying wood and metal really grabbed my attention last weekend when we were snowshoeing in the woods and came upon the trash dumps. So, naturally, I took a picture of it. I’ve noticed since, the photo has captured that same allure for me. I can’t stop looking at it.
I think that says a lot about the success of a photograph. If you find yourself wanting to look at it again and again, you must have done something right.
I can’t really grasp what it is that draws me to it. Maybe that is a part of the attraction, …the mystery of it.
Admittedly, the curious cutouts are attention grabbers, but I think the shadow plays a big part for me, maybe just as much. Throw in the clean-looking snow, the spindly branch above, and the bark-like appearance of the disintegrating wood, and you get a combination of features that keep my eyes coming back for more.
There is a juxtaposition that I like in the discarded item having been left for decay, now transformed to a new use as the primary feature of a photographic image.
Everything old is new again.
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Precious Gifts
We endured one heck of a nasty day of weather yesterday. It produced another inch-and-a-half in the rain gauge, which may not be entirely accurate, because much of the rain was moving horizontally due to significant wind. There were way too many scarily powerful gusts. It was a good excuse to have a fire in the fireplace, watch a rented documentary movie up in our loft, and putter around with indoor tasks. We finally hung some pictures that have accumulated over time.
The inspiration to hang pictures came from having brought home a precious gift-upon-gift after visiting our friends’ house yesterday. Mike Wilkus had already gifted us with a watercolor portrait of a horse in motion which he painted, and that we absolutely love. When I explained that I had some old barn wood that I hoped to use for a frame, but no experience or tools to cut a mat and build a frame, he accepted the challenge without hesitation.
We gave him back the picture, handed over the barn wood, and he created a superb, professional quality framed work of custom art. The result is the epitome of priceless to us. It is all that I hoped for, and so much more.
We moved a couple of things around to make room for this picture on our wall, and once on a roll, were able to get another precious portrait hung that Cyndie recently put in a frame. Marco Morales gave us a pencil drawing portrait of Delilah that he did during his visit this winter.
We made a spot for it right beneath another priceless creation that our friend Nancy Olmsted made and presented to us. She created a picture using sewn fabric that depicts an image of our house and incorporates the labyrinth and cardinals, symbols from a weekend visit here with Cyndie and a group of friends.
Our house continues to evolve to become more and more our home. Being blessed with so many precious, personally created gifts of art is deeply enriching for us. These are all gifts that really do keep on giving, over and over, every time we see them.
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Relative Something 