Cherry Blossoms!

This weekend was extra interesting. We managed to get to Hirosaki to see the cherry blossoms in all their riotous glory. But I should probably explain that besides being a fairly productive week for crafting (meaning I finished a really good romance novel) I broke my toe by accidentally kicking the fridge on Monday night. When I say I broke my toe, I mean it was at such a hideous angle that I immediately started going into convulsions out of terror of having it reset. Yah for the team at the UCC for setting it so nicely! What I didn't know is that I shouldn't have feared the setting the the toe but the needles they stick in you to numb it. I'm fairly certain I was doing back bends in pain and the nice people at the UCC let me swear as much as I wanted. It's amazing how therapeutic swearing is for the soul.

So I've been a gimp for the last week and slowly getting better. Much to the frustration of Ginger, she's had to wait for Ian to get home to go for her walks. Let me tell you carrying a 20lbs baby up two flights of stairs on one good leg is a real challenge. But we soldier on for cherry blossoms!

First I should probably explain the mania that surrounds the Japanese cherry tree or sakura. Sakura are spindly, awkward little trees that have lichen growing on them and ugly red/green/dun colored leaves. But oh when they bloom...all I can say is that I immediately start composing haikus in my mind when I see the sakura's in bloom. In all honesty they are the Cinderella of trees. And the Japanese plant them everywhere. You really don't realize how many of them are around until this time of year. There is a tradition of "flower watching" or Ohanami in Japan where you travel great distances to see the sakura in different towns. They also have a map that predicts the start dates of  blooming of sakura throughout Japan. Don't believe me, check out this link http://www.jnto.go.jp/sakura/eng/index.php.

It has been extra cold up here in Aomori this year and it has pushed the cherry blossoms back. Yesterday I would say they were fully bloomed. This corresponded with Golden Week in Japan making our journey to Hirosaki extra crazy. Golden week is the largest paid vacation period for the working stiffs of Japan. Even our construction workers got a few days off. Most people are wise and leave the country for greener pastures. For all of us crazies who stay and even decide to go off base it's a nightmare. I have never witness such terrible driving in my life, running red lights, buses (BUSES!) trying to out turn our station wagon in a traffic jam. Believe me we saw it all. Ian's hypothesis is that they let people drive this week that wouldn't normally drive and they wreak havoc on the senses.

This being said it took us 6 hours to drive what would normally be a 2.5 hour drive. Shoddy driving instructions and all it was crazy trying to keep the kid buckled and happy in the car that long. There were many considerable naps. I thought Ian was gonna lose his cool. Do you realize how hard it is to make my husband flip his business?  But really seeing the castle grounds covered in pink fluffiness was so worth it.

Hirosaki is considered one of the best places to view cherry blossoms in Japan. It was a large castle complex, the administrative seat of aomori prefecture. All that is left is one guard tower but it still have the beautiful moat. There is a lovely red wooden bridge that takes you over the moat but it was so jammed with people we didn't bother because we had been inside the tower on a different tour.

We also brought our friend who is one of Bea's sitters. Her hubby left for TDY and they went to Hirosaki last weekend but it was just so rainy and miserable that she agreed to come with us again. Skyping with hubby while viewing cherry blossoms...hawt! She kept a hobbler like me company while Ian was marching on ahead with Bea. 

On the way home we took a short cut through the mountains on a very windy road with snow on the sides taller than our car. They close this road after dark. We didn't know and were luckily the last car to sneak through. It was a good thing that Bea was asleep the whole time because in between snapping photos we were all on the verge of motion sickness. We are totally gonna have to do this drive in the summer, it's so beautiful!

Loveland Sculpture

I woke up with Natalie Portman's Shaved Head playing in my head this morning. Sigh, back to work.

It was quite the Colorado whirlwind this weekend, between relatives, friends leaving for grad school, and a Celestial Seasonings tour, there was so much great inspiration. The boy and I did manage to meet some friends at the Loveland Sculpture in the Park Show. I went last year and really loved it. There are so many great things there and established artists to talk to about form and color. It always seems that 60% of the show is realistic bronzes of Indians, Horses, and Buffalo. Which is a little depressing, but that's what sells out here with the cowboy wannabes. The show is definitely worth seeing, even if you have to do a little imagery sifting.

This year, I had the forethought to bring a little sketch book to record compositions and designs. I consider cameras to be rude at art events because then you really have a chance to rip the artist off. With a sketch book you really can't copy to the extreme. So I'm sketching a couple of this woman's bronze sculptures because I liked the abstract fullness and movement in her pieces and her assistant comes over and tells me that they don't let people draw their work. I was outraged but I calmly moved down the line. The boy and I have been having this conversation over the last couple of days about intellectual property and copyrights and this got me thinking about that. All the great masters have had people copy them - that's how people learned to do art. Some of the other people were pleased that I was drawing their stuff because I would tell them that I'm an emerging artist and that I really loved their compositions and colors. Isn't emulation the highest form of respect? It wasn't like I was camped out in front of this ladies tent for hours copying everything that she made, and I would never recreate what she was doing because they were Navajo women statues. It's a big debate in my mind about how much an artist "owns" their work, because a lot of artists pull from lots of other sources. It seems like there are two camps on this one, the pro copyright and those that give their ideas out freely. I should have questioned this lady about her ideas. Too bad.

Anyways, here are some of the artists that inspired me:
Carolyn Sato
Ed Hart
Sean & Anne Gillespie

Cherry Creek Art Festival

This weekend...there was so much stuff going on. My mother came down and we went wedding dress shopping in CO, but then decided that we were going to have the dress made anyways and ended up buying the fabric. I'm much happier with the pattern and the things that we can do with it than anything that I tried on. Well, strike that, there was one dress...tightly sequined bodice, huge floor length tulle skirt. This is the dress at David's Bridal that literally stands on it's own. (click here to see it) And when I refer to it as such, every attendant knows what I'm talking about. I saw it when we were dress shopping for my sister-in-law and I drooled. Wearing it was even better. O, the swooshing. But it wasn't meant to be, being that it cost over a thousand dollars.

Then there were fireworks...

But the most exciting event this weekend - that's art related, being as how this is my art blog - was going down to the Cherry Creek Art Festival Monday. It was great! There was so much art, so many good ideas, lots of food/product samples. The Art Institute had a cooking demo tent - pretty tasty. My favorite part was that there were actually two embroiderers at the show. I actually got to talk to Rob Watt. He does these beautifully dense little embroideries that is all couching. I really made me want to explore couching more. I've been reading a lot about it and metallic threads in Chinese, European and Ottoman Embroidery. I've never used it because I have never thought of it as a way to fill space. I'm going to try it out, Rob's embroideries have changed my mind. They have such great texture and design. So, I was drooling. The other embroidery artists are Karen and Eric Shi. Their work was like Asian silk paintings, though their imagery was much more contemporary. I enjoyed their scenes of aspens with all the intersecting branches. It was like untangling a puzzle. Both of these artists made me want to try something new in embroidery.

The pieces that really caught my attention at the show weren't necessarily embroidery though - but they did have craft elements. I was fascinated with a quilt made from jeans and cloth book covers from old books by Joe Decamillis. It's not on his website, but I've seen his work before when I was in college. I think that I ran across it in New American Paintings because he was painting this beautiful miniatures on tin inside mounted books. His works are fabulous and intricate. I'm in love.

The other artist that really took my breathe away was Betsy Youngquist. Her work is little beaded sculptures with ceramic doll faces coming out of them. She had a sculpture there that was of a rabbit and since I'm obsessed with rabbits nowadays it drew me immediately to her booth. Her sculptures are surreal, beautiful, shiny, and a little creepy. It's probably the beading and the way it covers the faces. They are really lovely. I wish that I knew how to bead - or really had the patience and the skill too.

Well, that was my weekend. So many great ideas, so little time.

Quilting Progress

I got more work done on M & N's wedding quilt this weekend. I have so much more to do before the bridal shower. I think that I will add just one more ring of blocks to it and than call it done - These blocks are so time consuming, I can see why it takes so long to get a big quilt done. The center four and going to have the pretty black and white patterned fabric as the large pieces and I'm going to applique a little embroidered piece with M & N's name and their wedding date. I can't even remember is N is going to take M's name or not. Then I'm going to make a border of the black and white around with purple and yellow corner blocks I think. It's going to be a really nice wall hanging.

I was on the road a lot this weekend. I went over to Laramie for an ARBA show. I miss bunnies so much! I really want to get into angora rabbits and show all over Colorado. I want to raise Satin Angoras or maybe English Angoras - or at least have a Flemish Giant House Bunny. I did see one English Spot at the show and it brought back memories. There were a lot of Himilayas, Satins, and Rexs. The angoras were going for $50 a pop. I was surprised because I didn't remember rabbits being that expensive when I showed, but that was 5 years ago.

I took the highway up through Shirley Basin to get to Casper. It was so beautiful. Those rolling sage green hills and the red rock. The windmills outside of Medicine Bow were so beautiful and alien. It was like I had stepped out onto another planet. I saw a lot of windmill parts on the backs of trucks. The propellers always remind me of whale flippers. Like they are carting around chunks of whale.

While in Casper, mom and I went wedding dress and ring shopping.  First of all, what they don't tell you is that wedding dresses are extremely heavy. And that climbing in and out of them makes you very hot and sweaty. They are so darn hard to figure out how to put them on. It didn't help that I was standing around holding up the bodice while an entire group of boys was being fitted for tuxes. Yeah, I saw them looking at me. A little secret, Wear Your Best Underwear! We only found three dresses that were really nice - I'm definitely not a get-married-in-pure-white girl. One was this beautiful pink taffeta that changed colors depending at the angle that you looked at it. Another was a soft mocha color. I'm just not sure that I really want a floor length gown, but I wouldn't mind having a dress made of the taffeta.

Ring shopping was horrible. There was absolutely nothing that I wanted. I don't really like diamonds. Mom said that I should just get a band for my engagement ring (which is diamonds - but really unique and lovely). Nothing the stores had would really fit, so I'll have to have something made. I decided that I would have a band of alexandrite put on each side. Alexandrite is a dark purple stone that changes colors with the light to blue, or green. It's very rare, they only mine it in Russia. So the alexandrite in my ring will be man made.

All this wedding stuff is frying my brain. More art must be done!

My Love of Machines

I have a confession to make - I really love machines, especially big powerful construction machinery. I love motors that are bigger than my car and are so loud that I can feel them in my stomach. I love the colors, the ways that they are bolted together, watching them move, the jobs that they do. I often stop dead in my tracks to watch backhoes tear up streets. I want to run away and become an airplane mechanic (combination of my love of machines and flying!) but I really don't want to go to school...thus I stay here. I could always run away to work construction but I wouldn't do well out in the weather all the time.

When I was visiting the folks for Thanksgiving, my brother showed me around the gas plant that he works at - I was in machine heaven, a waukeshaw the size of my van! I loved the way everything shook and vibrated. I realized that I'm really inspired in my work by the designs of the machines that I take pictures of. Thus in honor of my new found name (my father is an agricultural mechanic and gear head)I'm posting some of my favorite pics of machines I've taken.

From the Back of a Pseudo Fire Truck I saw in Hell's Half Acre



This was from a some sort of construction machine in my alley - I can't even remember what it was...was a couple of years ago. Gotta love that yellow! and the other one reminds me of a colon...





This is the seat from that machine - It was all tore up - I was interested the variation in texture.



These are pics of a heater core that I got from a junk yard trip with my dad. Some wicked awesome things can be had from junk yards. It was made into one of my favorite pieces in high school. Eventually, I moved and I had to get rid of it. I was going through my pattern and repetition phase in photography.




Ok, so these aren't machinery but they are still awesome. They are huge spools for cable for a telecommunications company. Look at those colors!



The repetition, colors, and forms are just so inspirational - and functional. The great thing is that such beautiful things are used by a bunch of sweaty dirty people to make things. I'm in love!

Hell's Half Acre

I drove home for Thanksgiving and had a little adventure. Usually, when I drive home it's a five and a half hour straight shot, only stopping for gas and restrooms. At first I stopped at Ayres Natural Bridge, but it was closed for the winter. The next place that I stopped was Hell's Half Acre, cause I had never actually seen it. Of course, everybody in Wyoming knows that the battle scene from Star Ship Troopers was filmed down there. I definitely needed pics.

It was freezing out there, with this really nasty wind that kept shaking me around. I'm surprised I got clear pictures.




The strange things was that there were four deer heads hanging out in the parking lot for no apparent reason. But, they made great pictures. I think of them as sleeping beauties, a little bit romantic and whimsical.



Special Forces was out there to blow up a building so I stayed to watch. They had also been using the restaurant for target practise, but more on that later.

Pre-Explosion:

Exploding:

Exploded: