~ Saving Daylight ~
A great leap forward
But fewer hours of shut eye
As we welcome Spring
New York Bocce Volo
Last month we visited New York City and were lucky enough to have unseasonably warm weather and no snow. At lunchtime we were sitting in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and I watched there three older gentlemen also outside enjoying the weather with a game of bocce volo. These guys were good, clearly having played for years.
A Commerce Drive
We are at a junction. Which path should we take to drive commerce and make us all as rich as Croesus, left or right?
Better make the decision soon as those lights don’t stay red forever…
Haiku: Time Marches On
I cannot believe we are entering the third month of the year already. I know that everything seems to speed up as you get older, but this is getting ridiculous. It’s Friday already and I haven’t written a haiku for a while, so here goes:
~ Time Marches On ~
Quickly the day flies
For us, time travelers, all.
But one way only…
St. David’s Day and tradition
Today, March 1st, is St. David’s Day, which commemorates the date of the death of Dewi Sant in 589 AD. An aristocrat by birth, David founded several monasteries, most famously that at Glyn Rhosyn, where St David’s Cathedral now stands.
Traditionally, this day is celebrated by the wearing of a daffodil flower, which is the national flower of Wales. It seems to be a fairly obvious choice of bloom really given that these beautiful, bright trumpets of yellow are one of the earliest flowers to herald in the Spring. However, given that it is likely that the plant is not, in fact, native to Britain but was introduced from Europe from the 15th century onwards, it does seem an unusual choice, especially given St David’s death some 900 years earlier.
It turns out, in fact, that the Welsh for the narcissus we know as the daffodil is Canninen Pedr which translates to St Peter’s Leek. The leek, of course, is the other symbol of Wales.
Strange how things work out.
Incidentally, the daffodil is a symbol of good fortune, according to Chinese legend, so may today’s image bring you good fortune.
Kapaleeshwarar Temple, Mylapore – revisited from afar
As I sit here in my office at temperatures hovering above freezing in the unseasonably mild (yes, it’s true!) winter weather I cannot believe it was nine months ago that I was traveling to Chennai (Madras) in India. I first wrote about that trip here and in subsequent posts that week, but it was only today that I finally got around to processing a few more images from that trip, starting with the Kapaleeshwarar Temple in Mylapore, now a district of the sprawling city.
As I go through more images I will upload them to my art site and may include a few more here too in other posts.
Is this Street Art?
I spotted this sign at a road junction about a mile or so from my house quite some time ago. It made me chuckle and I vowed to get an image of it at some point. Today was that day, so I parked at the local church and walked along the edge of the road to get this shot. It has not been edited other than to sharpen it a little.
I cannot understand what on earth is going on at that junction. There are no sidewalks on any of the roads leading to the lights and it is a fairly busy and dangerous corner. Quite why the local authority would think it sensible to put up a pedestrian controlled light and then a no pedestrian sign is anyone’s guess.
Having “visited” the place I can only assume it is some type of Street Art, perhaps making some deep statement which I am yet to discover…
Vermeer Revisited
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was an astounding Dutch painter who specialized in fairly mundane scenes of 17th century domesticity around his home town of Delft.
I don’t know what possessed me really, but I have recently seen his famous painting from 1665, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” so many times that this image has lodged itself in my brain rather in a similar way to a musical earworm. As a result I spent several hours over the last couple of days revisiting this classic work and adding my own interpretations.
Sculpture – Butterfly Effect
Several months ago I created a clay sculpture in the shape of a brain when I was at home and then made holes in it with view to turning it into an unusual piece, experimenting with different glazes. Well, it was only after I put it through a bisque firing that I realized I had used the same clay as my infamous “exploding bowls” that had caused me so many challenges earlier in the year, so I put the idea on hold as to how to finish the project.
Fast forward several weeks and I was reminded that there was an exhibition coming up at the Allinson Gallery at Chester County Art Association, with the theme “Color Obsession” so I stirred myself into a flurry of activity and finally created a work over a couple of weeks. To finish this piece I used wire, ten butterflies cut from an old map and several different colored cans of spray paint in place of glaze. I deliberately sprayed the brain outside on a windy day so that it was not an even covering but rather a series of small specks of different colors, which overlaid. It was a bit of a trial mounting the wire frame and then the ceramic onto a wooden board and then adding a burlap cover, but I was pleased with the effect.
Today I was even more surprised when I found that Butterfly Effect was the first piece to be sold in the exhibition!
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