Little Scenes

I love this so much!

The entire blog is here.

animated gif time!

I unknowingly broke the rules when I made this series of photographs of Brian Knep's piece "Healing #1" at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Ooopsie, but they are too cool not to turn into an animated gif. The installation was incredible to interact with.

Franconia Sculpture Garden

A month or so ago, we went to the Franconia Sculpture Park. This was my favorite piece - a dilapidated structure hanging from ropes. The inside is just a massive web of rope.

Laurie preferred a large metal structure that resembled fecal matter. Is anyone surprised?

THE COLLECTION

Here they all are. Aren't they strange? And some of them got beat up. And, I'm not sure - but am I supposed to be missing the card of 5s? I put the receipt in place of them.

WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE???

They just keep coming. WHAT are they??

West Coast mail art

We're at it again! Road trip mail art!
In the last two weeks of May, Laurie and I will drive from LA to Seattle. Who wants mail art? Send us your address.
Here's hoping for no adventure bunnies.

Kinetic Animal Sculptures

AMAZING!

What is art?

This is 7 minutes and 12 seconds of hilarity.



Via: Conscientious

find public art

I sure do moan and groan a lot about living here, but for some things, like art, Minneapolis is a really cool place.
I just found this map that identifies all the public art around the city.
Impressive.
And Start Seeing Art has a google maps mashup.
All via: Minneapolis Metblogs (which is also super cool, btw.)

one down, three to go

I am *almost almost* done with my first semester of social work graduate school.

One more 30-page paper and then I'm done with school for a month.

OMG!

I'm feeling energy from thinking about all the SINGING and COOKING and ART MAKING and PHOTO TAKING and RANDOM THOUGHT THINKING and SEWING and KNITTING and LAUGHING and MOVIE WATCHING and CREATIVE NEIGHBORHOOD WALKING and all sorts of other FUN things I get to do REALLY REALLY SOON. (Here I almost come with knitting needles in hand, Martha and Nancy!)

Writing Dear Sasha has been getting me through this end-of-semester intense time.

It's almost here! Vacation! AAA!

!!!!!

bug art

This bug art reminds me of when Hugo tried to get his kitty, Kafka, to paint.

We have a draft horse at the vet hospital who paints with his hooves. I intend to get one before I leave here in May.

funniest image roll overs ever

The MIT Architecture school has a pretty funny menu. Make sure you roll over and down the choices.

best furniture at the crawl

Sanguinetti A! and I went to the St. Paul Art Crawl last night. We came across this gem of an ottoman in Kevan Wellington's studio. He found it in the Mississippi River and it took three people and a pulley system to hoist it up to his fifth floor living space. It was dusted with a delightful blue that didn't come out well in the photo. Those are Sanguinetti A!'s great socks in the background.

this large wall sculpture i've been working on

I have this large wall sculpture I've been working on, and then not working on, for a few weeks. After a dry spell I just now got some ideas for how to continue it. Thought I'd post what I'm working on just because I felt like it.

and... i'm off!

May this be the most creative backpacking/camping/sightseeing road trip ever! If you signed up for art mail, I've already started to generate ideas for you and your mailbox. Keep an eye out! I'll reconnect with my blog mates in about two weeks.

Last chance to sign up for creative roadtrip mail

Two days and counting until I set out for my pilgrimage to the Twin Cities, MN from Oakland, CA. Last chance for art mail! Sign up! Let me know by sending your address to me at sillouetteamelia at gmail dot com if you want a cool little piece of art mail from the road.

I'll pass through CA, NV, UT, CO, WY and SD. If you prefer a state, specify it please.

I wasn't able to rig a pinhole camera since I found out that most methods require some form of darkroom and developing. Even so, the creative juices are bound to be flowing out of me in some form and streaming down the blistering hot pavement behind me. (I'll surely wear a raspberry beret in my little red corvette.)

Your address could be on one of those traveling delights. My new liberty stamps are ready to go, er, I mean Hugo Minor stamps.

Pinhole pictures

I stumbled across this and other images like it on the BBC News website. They are pinhole pictures and seem to be made from homemade devices like tin cans and paper boxes. I don't get it 100%. Look at the paper floating, though - the film gets exposed over time and creates some eerie effects.

If anyone knows anything about this, please tell me. I'm quite curious.

P.S. I just learned about Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day - there are some amazing images here.

P.P.S. And I just found instructions on how to make one from an oatmeal box! THIS IS THRILLING. I think I will rig one of these and use it on my roadtrip. If you didn't already sign up to receive mail art from me next month (see last week's Roadtrip post), send me an email 'cuz I'm getting mad ideas for ya'll.

Decay

I like decay. I like this.
Laurie, will you show us your rotting kale flower?

Persimmon bloom

I LOVE persimmons. They grow here in the Bay Area and I just devour them every winter. I've been watching the persimmon tree around the corner lately as it's put out new baby leaves.

Today I noticed that it's blooming. Here's a bloom I picked. (Sorry for the blurriness - I don't have an adequate camera, but that's being resolved as we speak.) The green parts are very stiff and full of cellulose. The yellow parts are very waterlogged and have square edges where they meet the green parts. I realized that the green parts, if the flower develops into fruit, become the stiff, woody green parts on top of a persimmon fruit. I've never seen them bloom before, so I'm really into it.

Of course this relates to our flower-tagging ideas. But I've got a dilemma. I love this flower and I'd love to have 500 of them to do some temporary sculpture. But it's not my tree and if I plucked them all the poor tree would be fruitless this year. Besides, it's not my tree.

I'd like to cast this little guy and make a mold and reproduce it. In wax? Wax. Yes. Yes! I'll make reproductions.

Yes.

Help from anyone who's made molds? It's been forever and a day since I have, and I'd love some guidance.

A

The dandelions remind me of gang tagging

The instant random brain association I had when I saw Laurie's dandelion sculpture was that it looked like a character or letter in gang writing. I found this example. Something about the movement or the gesture of the flowers just triggered this for me.

What if we made gang tags with dandelions? What if people's first reactions to a gang message wasn't negative, but positive, sweet, curious because it was made with flowers? How strange it would be to "tag" with dandelions - or moss, twigs, rocks, etc., Andy Goldsworthy style?

I love the idea. I'm going to go with it.

(By the way, *this* is exactly what I was hoping for in a creativity blog - to ping-ping-ping with ideas because a few heads are better than one.)

A