Sacred Sunday

New Mexico certainly has its share of sacred places including the adobe style churches. Each town has its own version which are amazingly well perserved. Are they tourist attractions or active congregations, it's hard to say. But the church at Rancho de Taos is active with an appointed priest. This building is an iconic image since Georgia O'Keeffe made it popular even though it had been the subject of paintings long before she discovered it. The area around the church has certainly become touristy and has changed a great deal since my first visit in 1992.

Sign Saturday

How I spent my summer vacation: My destination was Santa Fe, NM to pick up more clay. I drove down several main streets and visited several plazas.

Mobile

Today is a Googlemobile.

Wordless Wednesday

Pretty Peas

Google: pass the peas please.

Quote of the Week

"Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend." John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

Sacred Sunday

Charleston, NC: if you follow St Michael's Alley you will come to St Michael's Church. The stained glass windows in the sanctuary are wonderful. Here we see St Michael in his battle pose. Michael is the archangel who became a saint (how does that happen?). The colors are so strong and vivid; I love it!
These beautiful doors greet you as you enter.

Sign Saturday

St. Michael's Alley is one of the main streets in historic Charleston, NC. I only had a few hours to roam the area, just enough time to know that it's on my list for a return trip.

Wordless Wednesday

You asked for it!

Because some of you have asked to see masks here are a few. The first two are after the bisque firing.

These three are after glaze firing but before embellishment. Actually the masks don't photograph well because of the shiny surface of the glaze. Embellishment is the last step. Sometimes I know as soon as I place the clay slab on the form how I will glaze and embellish it, and sometimes the mask evolves in stages of inspiration. Many ideas come to me just as I wake in the morning. These three masks are done now and packed away in boxes waiting for their debut.

Quote of the Week

"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling." G. K. Chesterton

Sacred Sunday

The church steeple has been a fixture on the horizon for centuries. It is man's attempt to draw our attention heavenward. I have not studied the history of church architecture so I don't know when steeples first appeared.

But the tradition of the form that is all throughout Europe certainly made it's way to the New World. This one is in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Creativity

CREATIVITY helps artists die young, miserable & penniless- so their art can have meaning to the old, satisfied & obscenely rich.
www.despair.com

Wordless Wednesday

Sacred Sunday

Stained glass: a study in color and light. Stained glass always reminds me of quilts, the colors, the shapes. This is a design that would work in either.

$140,000,000

Yes, $140,000,000 is the highest amount paid for a painting. So who is the 20th century artist rolling in the dough? Well the painting is by abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, but Jackson was dead for many years before his paintings became this profitable. I heard that as a struggling artist he traded his paintings for groceries so that he wouldn't starve.
Where did I get this astounding figure? From an interesting web site: http://hubpages.com/hub/top-10-worlds-most-expensive-paintings Try it! Surprisingly two of the top 10 paintings are by the same artist.

Art Experience = 0

I've been doing some business traveling to places that I long to go to for the cultural stimulation. But alas, no time for culture. I drove past the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial which is close to the OKC Museum of Art; but it was too late to see the Amy Blakemore photography exhibit. Then on my way to an appointment I drove past the Paseo Art District; Paseo is always a treat, and I would have loved to have seen the small works exhibit at the In Your Eye Gallery. I drove past the Fair Grounds, the home of the City Arts Center and wished I had time to stop for the exhibit of British photographer Tessa Traeger. And while driving through Bricktown which is so close to the Untitled Gallery, I thought about Lynn Stern's B & W abstract photo exhiibit. Opportunities missed. I didn't even take my camera out of the case. And now that I'm home, I haven't found time to get to the ceramics lab. My life is flying by and I'm missing the art!