Lazy Jane's, Lazy Day ...

Went to lunch with a friend today at one of my favorite spots, Lazy Jane's. (I don't think this particular piece is there any more - it's a vintage metal kinetic toy). Afterwards we took a stroll down the street and popped in at Hatch Art House, where among lots of other cool things we were amused by the paper mache work of Steve Wirtz. They were mostly dogs, with a few cows thrown in, very ... personable. Usually with a sassy sentence or words collaged on their sides. It seems that one can sign up for classes to make your own sassy dogs ... that might be quite fun.

2011 Happened III

It appears that showing up at the end of the day on a Sunday is the 

  way to go. Imagine people winding up and down. They weren't there

                             when we were there! No pictures allowed in the exhibit, so what 

                             follows are the non-exhibit pictures.

I do like it when there is art everywhere. This is the entry booth.

And this is the Mississippi River Visitor Center, just inside the doors of

the museum. And that's Melanie, standing on a map of the Mississippi

                           River Basin, printed right on the floor. Love that.

                        We didn't see a lot of the rest of the museum, as we were there pretty close

to closing time. A lot of the museum is geared towards small-ish children.

                        But this exhibit was tailor-made for me. Little automatons . . . many, many

                        of them. This tiger has a fish swimming around and around in his head 

                        as he's typing.

Cat and cat puppet!

Right outside the museum, the other direction from the charming little square,

is the Mississippi River, complete with steam-powered showboats. 

                       This is the view to the right of the museum on the way out. 

Not picturesque in the same way as the charming square or the Mississippi

                       River, but after seeing this picture I love the lines and colors in it.

2011 Happened II

Yeah, the Mall of America.

It's good if you can get there when other people are not. 

Good luck.

 Checking in with the Lego Store from above is always fun.

Nickelodeon Universe. We didn't do rides this time. 
The first time we (as in the two older daughters) were here was 
when it was called Camp Snoopy and Peanuts characters ruled the day.

Just outside Cirque du Soleil's Ovo

                   A restaurant inside the Mall of America that serves this outrageously 

                   fabulous dessert called a S'more Brownie. 

                   The restaurant is appropriately named Crave.

            Headed for the Science Museum of Minnesota to see the King Tutankhamen exhibit. 

            We found ourselves in this little square just a block away from the museum.

            The street was all brick cobblestones, and right next to the St. Paul Library and just

            as charming and cute as all get out. And the parking was free that day to top it off.

 

            This was the view across the square from our parking space.

 

            And there was a purple car. When youngest was small, we paid her a dime for
            every purple car we spotted. She made a good bit of money that way. (But not a lot!)

 

2011 Happened

           I was telling a friend yesterday that 2011 was kind of a bust for me, which it

           kind of was in certain ways,

           but it turns out as I look back at pictures . . .

           there were some good things that happened that year.

           I cleaned out Studio I. Here is one of the "before" pictures.

           (There are more, but I won't subject you to that. And the "after" 

           pictures will come later.)

           It's actually a work still in progress, but much progress has been made.

           I went to Minneapolis/St. Paul twice.
           Once with my mom, and once with two of my daughters.
           And both times I got to see my daughter and son-in-law who live in MN.
           So that's a big 2011 bonus.

           The most exciting thing I saw in Minneapolis was this statue of
           Mary Tyler Moore flinging her hat into the air.

               "Who can turn the world on with her smile.
                 Who can take a nothing day,
                 and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile . . . "

                "You're gonna make it after all . . . "

             Minneapolis has cool manhole covers. I once had 4th and 5th grades design
             and paint manhole covers on pizza cardboard circles, and then underneath
             the cover they drew whatever imaginary scene they wanted. I put them on the
             floor of the hallway on "Back to School" night and people could lift the cover
             on a kind of hinge I made to see the "world" underneath.

            And stopping in at IKEA.
            Wonder how many think that the toilets are not for display only.

             Hot lunch! (and how many of you are thinking of the original "Fame" now?
             No? Go here.)

And it comes out here ...

Another beautiful day for the Summer Band Jam in the park.

I love the way the trees are reflected at the top of this instrument.

David Hockney's Fresh Flowers

via NPR

Catching up on NPR podcasts . . . I just listened to a show from December about an art show featuring tiny works by David Hockney composed and displayed on the screens of iPhones and iPads (In Paris, A Display From David Hockney's Pixelated Period : NPR).
A few things that I liked or wondered about:

1. When Mr. Hockney first began making these little works of art, he emailed them to about two dozen friends in the morning after they were finished. (Imagine being on the email shortlist of David Hockney? And what happens after you get one of these digital paintings . . . should you save it forever? Wouldn't you feel just awful if you accidentally or on purpose deleted it?)



via NPR



2. The paintings were made with various painting/drawing apps for the iPhone/iPad, including an app called Brushes. Here's a look at what other artists at the Brushes site and at a Brushes exhibit of art in Austin, Texas, which opened on March 10, are doing with the app.

3. Hockney would get so into the "painting" process on the iPad that he would sometimes wipe his fingers on his clothing, as if cleaning the paint off. He prefers using his fingers to using a stylus for different effects, and sometimes will use the fingers from his non-dominant hand.

4. The 20 iPods and 20 iPads in the exhibit were on 24 hours a day, and occasionally Hockney would email a new painting to one of the devices, swapping out images.

5. . A quote from this article on the BBC site (which includes a video of Hockney talking about the show) -
"Drawing is rather like playing chess:
your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make."

6. There's a companion app that creates a video as you're using the Brushes app, and that's how these videos of drawings from start to finish were created. Portrait videos by artist Olechka are here, and a New Yorker magazine cover here. This cover was drawn in May of 2009 by Jorge Colombo while standing outside Madam Toussaud's Wax Museum in Times Square. (I'm sure we passed by this very spot, or close to it, when we were in NYC in the summer of 2009. We could see the Madame Toussaud golden hand from our hotel room!)

April in Chicago

An overnight trip to the Chicago Art Institute and the Field Museum. We spent most of our time in the African and Asian wings.

We missed seeing the Pirates exhibit at the Field Musuem, but we plan to return in the fall.

More Artistamps

An homage to Wilson's in Door County, made to go with the postcard below. Just a cropped unedited photograph with text added. I think I had the pinhole perforator when I made this, but for some reason chose to use the old Fiskar's postage stamp edger instead. The perforator might have been buried under the leaf blower and other lawn-related junk as it lives in the garage right now.


A Wilson's hot fudge sundae (pencil/colored pencil, pen), with A- waiting for me to take the photo in the background. My kids are very tolerant of my quirks, generally speaking.

This is the first artistamp I ever made, I think. No graphics software, so just text printed on cardstock, and then the sisters were collaged together on top of gold tissue paper, glued onto the background, swiped with a gold inkpad, flicked with gold paint, and then reproduced by color copy. It was made for a book group invitation to a discussion of Wuthering Heights.

Breaking Dawn Masquerade Ball

Barnes and Noble announced a masquerade ball for the book release party of Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, and we decided to make masks for the event. M. and friends gathered on a Friday night and decorated paper-mache covered plastic masks with paint, fabric trim, feathers, sequins, jewels, etc. We made a fine mess.














I decided to make one at the last minute. You never know when you might be invited to a ball.














At the ball, there were many fans who were dressed in prom/homecoming type dresses or vampire black and fancy and not so fancy masks. I don't think I've ever been to a midnight release party, but it was kind of fun. I pulled up a footstool and browsed through several art/collage books after admiring all the finery. We chose not to dress up, but did carry the masks with us.















This young couple, who had made their masks that day, using plaster strips to form them, allowed me to take a picture of them. They and we were at the very front of the line, along with others who had submitted art (M.s friend!) or had been to all three of the release parties.















At one minute to midnight, the wrappings were torn off the cases of books waiting behind the counter. By 12:05 we were out the door and on the way home...
M. finished the book before she went to bed tonight. I still have two more to go before I can read it.