Texture Tuesday

I love the look of the sun and the rose leaves and hips showing though the glass in my front door.  It was especially nice since it was late fall and most all the other leaves are on the ground.

Texture Tuesday on Saturday

Spent a lovely day with my wonderful husband and here are some textures I found.

Texture and Pattern Tuesday

I have perhaps developed an obsession for manholes.

Texture and Pattern Tuesday

I have recently been viewing stone sculptures and discovered artist Bridget Polk.  She makes unusual and difficult stacks of stone, temporary by nature.  She then photographs them and sell the photos.  They are stunning.

I mention this because Saturday we discovered the Wire Bridge in Maine.  It spans a shallow river full of wonderful rocks.  Looking down it was easy to see that visitors had been inspired to stack stones.  I of course had to add to the number and quality of the stacks.

While we were there a large family (a family reunion?) gathered on the bridge and in unison threw yellow flowers from the bridge into the river.  It was fun to watch them (the flowers not the family) float down river.  My goal was to make a video of them as they floated but I guess I managed to do that for only a couple of seconds.

These are the patterns and textures.

Ragamuffin Scrap Animals

Like I need something else to start and not finish...

I signed up for Carla Sonheim's online class to make these little darlings.  I always fall in love with her critters.  Here is one off her webpage.

 So far I have only gotten to the first critter which is an owl.  Here is a picture of some owls Carla made.

 

Here is a picture of my first owl.  Be kind, it is only child, orphan owl looking for a forever home.

Texture and Sculpture Tuesday

I found this quote on Belinda DelPesco's blog.  And yep, I got all those voices going on in my head when I look at one of my pieces in progress.  Did you think the artist who created the sculptures below had the critics in her/his head?

Art Quote

To keep his errors down to a minimum, the internal Censor to whom a poet submits his work in progress should be a Censorate. It should include, for instance, a sensitive only child, a practical housewife, a logician, a monk, an irreverent buffoon and even, perhaps, hated by all the others and returning their dislike, a brutal, foul-mouthed drill sergeant who considers all poetry rubbish. ~W. H. Auden

Okay, and now for the sculpture.  When we were in Auburn NY (I think that is where we were) we saw these fabulous sculptures in someone's vegetable garden.

100 Dresses

Have you heard of Crystal Cawley's 100 dress project?  I am participating in it although as usual I have put it off till the last minute.  Here is a picture of the dress I am submitting. It is about 10 inches tall and is glued to the paper provided by Crystal.

I made the dress by layering polyester organza and Lutradur. I would layer one organza piece over one lutradur sheet  and do some decorative stitching.  Then I did it again.  Then I stacked the two stitched layers, added an organza over them and stitched all 5 layers together.  Then, and here is the fun part, I melted it all with my heat gun.  The butterflies are from the second layer and were stitched as decoration into the organza; they did not melt.  I wanted to add a few more butterflies so they few already in the dress did not look so alone.  I burned the butterflies out of another piece of the organza and glued the butterflies to the front of the dress.  You can not see them well but I finished the dress with a few grommets to the bottom of the dress just to give it a bit more decoration, one more texture, and something that was shiny.

Catacombs under the Indianapolis City Market

The Indianapolis City Market opened in 1886 and  is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.  Then it was a farmer's market offering fresh produce.  Now it contains a wide variety of eateries, wine and cheese shoppes, and retailers.  Under the Market are "catacombs" which were originally the the basement and another old building that was built next door.  That building burned down and built over with the basement being sealed off until recently.  We toured the catacombs and here are some pictures.  Some of  them are blurry.  I kinda liked that it gave them a ghostly feel.

Some of the arches were filled in with brick to give additional strength when a new building was built above the basement.

Reflections

It was very frustrating trying to take pictures at the art museums. Many of the pictures were covered with glass that reflected me.  I finally decided to just love it.  These are all of the same photo that I photoshopped trying to make the image more obvious.  Interesting how different they are. I think the first is the original.  The picture in the image is a reflection of the artwork behind us and is merely reflected in the glass.

Schweinfurth Art Center

While in upstate NY we, of course, stopped at the Schweinfurth Art Center. It currently has an exhibit called "Transgressing Traditions."  It is the second annual juried member international show for the SDA. The show will still be up till the end of August so go and see it if you can.

Here are some pictures of my favorites, in no particular order other than my walk around the rooms.

********************************************************************************

This piece has two layers.  You can almost see where the top layer is left loose at the top right corner to drape over itself. 

********************************************************************************

As a printer and a crocheter I have to respect this piece. 

********************************************************************************

Detail of Bittersweet.  Isn't that fabulous?

Many  more favorites to show.  I feel another post coming.