Art

Henry’s first art piece. I call it “The Mermaid and the Sailor.” The sailor sits on a rock, bereft and forlorn, as the mermaid reaches her arms out longingly for him.

Medium: Kool-Aid on craft paper

A few weeks before we went to Portland to visit my family, there was an article in the N&O about being “Carless in Portland.” In one part of the article, the article mentions the public art project in the Pearl district.

You’re probably familiar with the public art projects that have been cropping up in major cities the last 10 years or so. The city will pick an icon, such as a wolf, a catfish, or a mermaid, then ask local artists to paint these oversized beasts and place them throughout the city. At the end of a specified period of time, they have an auction for all the beasties. Well, Portland, a city where it’s not uncommon to see bumper stickers that say “Keep Portland Weird,” decided to do it a little differently.

According to the website for the horse project, the artist Scott Wayne Indiana “knew about the horse rings in many Portland sidewalks and thought it was a shame that we don’t tie our horses to them anymore. Scott decided to change that and tied his first pony to a horse ring in the fall of 2005 in the revitalized Pearl District in Northwest Portland.”

I had told my brother about it, and sort of wanted to hit the Pearl to find a pony. But my brother and his wife, who’ve lived there for years, had never heard of the horse project before. Our last night there, we were finally in the Pearl district, wandering our way toward dinner when look what I found!

Everyone else had already walked by it when I spotted it. I was so happy!! The best part is that they want you to help. So if you live in Portland, go adopt a ring, donate a steel cable tie, and put out your own horse!

See more photos at the all the tiny horses pdx photo pool on Flickr.

I liked the juxtaposition of the green and black stools with the black and green shirts. Cristin, where were you with your mad photograhy skills?

Here’s Amy, fixing my new fabulous Bowie shirt that arrived with a few holes in the seams.
The three of us, ready to take on the day.
Given the opportunity to climb a rock wall, I always will.
Some fab art I picked up at the Virginia Highlands art festival. Sooo cute!
Amy’s glamour shot at dinner.

Saturday afternoon we went to Artsplosure! It was a cute little art festival held in downtown Raleigh. I bought some earrings from a guy who makes them out of spoons, knives and forks. Fun!
And we saw this cool owl and hawk.
Then to the Flying Saucer for dinner, and to continue drinking.


And yeah, there were some Civil War reenactors there, so we got their picture with KerBear.

Here are my “arty” photos - I think these are pretty.

This is super fun, thanks to Jenny for this. I think I like my choices.

Check out the art on this wall. It’s a scene that’s partly paint and partly bottle caps. Amy, I was thinking of you!

I had a very productive Saturday! I balanced the checking and Visa accounts, filed a huge stack of paperwork (which took hours, really), mailed a few late Christmas cards, finished my laundry, washed all the sheets and remade both beds, washed all the towels, picked up some more litter, got Dave’s birthday prezzies, changed the cat litter pails, ran some errands, and got some of those shredder lubricant pages from Staples.

My mom came over on Saturday night. She added a few decorative pillows to the pillow arrangement of our bed. These go with the picture she gave me as a Christmas present - I’ll show you that in a separate post. We ordered pizza from Pizza Hut, yum, and looked through some of my scrapbooks before we watched our girlie movie, “Shall We Dance?” It was a nice night!

I also gave her her Christmas present, two pairs of “Thai fisherman’s shorts.” She loved them! I was so glad, I thought she’d love them as lounge pants. I’m sure she’s going to start wearing them out of the house next!
This morning, we had breakfast and then we worked on an art project. We painted wooden letters and affixed magnets to the backs to make a Monday through Friday to-do list on our magnetic board, which is in fact the door to our garage. I think everything turned out very well. We also made a D and a Q magnet for Dave and I. I made the bottle-cap magnets as a gift for Amy, who is arriving on Friday.
I don’t know how it ever got to be so late in the day. Somewhere between breakfast and 5 PM we killed a bottle of champagne. Oh, and I finished my angles puzzle, very tricky.