I just finished a yearly project. Each day of the month I posted on a pre-determined theme. During the month of November, I'll post a collage of all my photos on the daily theme from the past year. The theme for the eighth day of the month was "Art."
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The Lutheran Church - Update on the bells: They have stopped at night! I think that they are officially off between 10pm and 7am. It is blessedly quiet on my morning walks with Hannah and they aren't waking me up in the middle of the night. Praise be!
Read a Book - Too much contemplation about a sculpture at our library.
Quilting - More art from the library.
Statuary About Town - Local history.
Performing - A lovely mural.
Results - Garbage heap of an election.
Garfunkel - Every genius needs a muse.
Picture Books - I love when people give me picture book recommendations. Love it.
Big Dogs - Art at the dog park.
Minty! - Pity party for one over here.
Doodle This - Everyone has their own doodling style.
Resin Tray - My friend made us a thing.
Read a Book - Too much contemplation about a sculpture at our library.
Quilting - More art from the library.
Statuary About Town - Local history.
Performing - A lovely mural.
Results - Garbage heap of an election.
Garfunkel - Every genius needs a muse.
Picture Books - I love when people give me picture book recommendations. Love it.
Big Dogs - Art at the dog park.
Minty! - Pity party for one over here.
Doodle This - Everyone has their own doodling style.
Resin Tray - My friend made us a thing.
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Hannah count: 1
Hannah count: 1
Public art installations count: 6
Artistic renderings of animals count: 3
Hat count: 1
Dog park count: 1
Book count: 4
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The main theme I'm seeing here is that I am surrounded by art in my town. It's been a focus of our community to become a leader in performing and visual arts and I have to say that it's been remarkably easy for me to find art for this prompt and that's such a delightful revelation.
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| Horse and Rider by Marino Marini (bronze) |
I wanted to learn more about this sculpture, so I looked it up online and it Wikipedia has it listed as being at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC, but I saw it at the Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids. Then I read that horse and rider is Marini's thing and there are various takes on this sculpture all over the place. Interesting. The one I saw was on a rooftop and I love how it looks like if the rider falls off, they're going to have a very bad day, so they must trust the horse implicitly. But then if you look at it from another angle, there's just a brick wall behind it and it seems more like a very safe environment for riding, like a riding school or something. It just made think really hard about the placement of sculptures and how important the environment you view something is on your enjoyment of it.
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Is it easy to find art in your town or city? Are you so excited (for me) that the bells aren't ringing at night anymore?!
I AM SO EXCITED BELLS ARE NO LONGER RINGING AT NIGHT. This is huge, Engie. H.U.G.E.
ReplyDeleteI love art. We have some murals in town and a few art galleries, so art is pretty front and central where I live, but I have to admit I don't always take the time to slow down and appreciate it :(
I didn't want to jinx it before, but we've been without bells at night for about a month now. Yay!! My quality of life is so much better!
DeleteNGS: I think this might be my favorite of all the collages so far (despite the low Hannah and hat counts and zero Zelda count). It's all so bright and arresting... and what a great point you make about how placement contextualizes sculpture! There's a famous art museum we can walk to from home, and that's honestly one of the best things about our house for me.
ReplyDeleteYou'd mentioned our small world and now with this GR Meijer Gardens picture, which both of us have visited, it reminds me of that Wislawa Szymborska poem about how we leave traces of ourselves everywhere we visit. https://poets.org/poem/love-first-sight
That poem is so interesting! I think it's possible our paths might have crossed before, based on our geographic locations and academic interests, but how would we know?! The next time I'm planning on being in MI, I'll email you and see if we can set up a purposeful meeting!
DeleteI would LOVE that!!!!
DeleteWe'll make it happen!
Delete
ReplyDeleteI am SO excited for you about the bells! No matter how pretty the sound is out of context, when the context is your house and you can't escape them, what a nightmare. How wonderful that they finally stopped the ringing at night.
It has definitely changed my quality of life for the better. I love how peaceful my morning walks with Hannah are now!
DeleteSo glad about the bells! Really, that situation was abusive. Shame on them.
ReplyDeleteThis collage is so pretty. I love the photo of Hannah and her lookalike. We've started paying more attention to public art in our town, and it's about time.
I can't believe how much public art there is around our town. There's a new installation and I'm going to spend some time over the next couple of weeks putting together a blog post about it!
DeleteThe bells aren't ringing anymore! That's great news!
ReplyDeleteHuzzah!
DeleteI am SO excited for you that the bells have stopped! Sweet relief! And that horse/rider sculpture is fascinating. Reminds me of that Millay poem, "O world! I cannot hold thee close enough!" (Which is a poem I recently quoted on a previous blog post. Perhaps I just think of that poem a lot.)
ReplyDeleteI am a tiny bit obsessed with that sculpture and sort of want to travel around the US finding other variants of it. That's weird, though, right?
DeleteThere's a lot of art hidden around this region if you know where to look and expand your definition of what is art. I am glad the bells have stopped. What a relief!
ReplyDeleteI was so surprised when the bells stopped! We've been fighting it for years. Yay!
DeleteWow, I guess it's not surprising that this theme made a stunning collage! I love sculptures like that - suggestive, figurative, not painstakingly realistic (although those are impressive too, obviously). There are some sculptures down in the market that I really like, I should do a walk-around and take some photos.
ReplyDeleteYAY NO BELLS. Now I have "I Can Hear the Bells" from Hairspray stuck in my head.
I like all the sculptures, too - from the realistic to the representative to the abstract. It all makes me think and I love that about art.
DeleteThank goodness for no bells. That church is quite beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIt is a beautiful church. I have fewer beefs with it now, but I still have some remaining beefs, though. Will I get over them? Time will tell!
DeleteI know it's a weird thing to be excited about, but I remember when you posted the picture of the "trash bag" art from the museum, and for whatever reason it's a piece of art that really speaks to me - even though I've only seen it on your blog.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense that there would be more than one "take" of the horse sculpture. What artist ever said "yep I made the the perfect horse and rider statue, never doing that again".
That trash bag painting is SO evocative. I think about it all the time when I see actual hay bales wrapped in plastic. We are what we become.
DeleteOh, I love all of those pictures! I live next to a university and used to walk the grounds during the COVID shutdowns with Lil Momma and look at all the outdoor sculptures and paintings; there were decorated bears across the different campus areas and we called it a "bear hunt", haha!
ReplyDeleteDecorated bears!! Why? Is that the school mascot? I need all the details, obviously.
DeleteI'm VERY excited for you! That bell situation would have made me crazy. I guess it did make enough people crazy that they finally changed it.
ReplyDeleteGreat question about the art in our town. My first thought is, "There isn't any." But there's a possibility that I'm just stomping right past it, not noticing. I'm going to try being more observant for a while and see what I can find.
I bet there's art, even if it's just sidewalk chalk. I guess I have a lot of time to walk and look around at things with the dog walking, but I think there's stuff everywhere, even if it's not public sculptures and the like.
DeleteI'm SO EXCITED for you about the bells. I wonder what happened that it was suddenly possible to fix? Does this mean it was always possible, or did they get some new software or something?
ReplyDeleteI love the art around your area, it's lovely. We have quite a bit in our town and nearby as well. I love it.
I think Pastor Matthew was a lying liar who lies and it was always possible, but that's my take on the situation. I have no idea what actually propelled the change, but I'm grateful.
DeleteI am very excited that the bells aren't ringing at night anymore .What a nuisance! ;)
ReplyDeleteArt is so interesting to me. Sometimes I feel like I totally get it and other times, I wonder what the artist was thinking LOL (in Germany we have a saying "is this art or can it be trashed?" for art pieces that are hard to "understand". Haha.
I maybe even especially love the abstract "what were they thinking?" art because everyone takes something different away from it and that's amazing. The super realistic stuff is impressive technically, but I never think it's very creative.
DeleteUffff glad that's over! The heart, I love the heart on the asphalt sidewalk. Reminds me a bit of hearts we drew during covid on sidewalks when we all were under quarentene.
ReplyDeleteI love when kids draw on the sidewalk. It please me So Much!
DeleteI love this compilation. The kids and I have been doing a much better job of finding tiny bits of public art in our towns, too. This post also reminds me of Jenny's new eyes post.
ReplyDeleteYes! Madison is filled with fun art. I bet the kids notice everything.
DeleteThat is such a delightful revelation to realize how much art is around you. And that your community is supporting that. I agree sculptures should be views with their surroundings.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing to be in a community that is so supportive of all the arts.
DeleteI think I have mentioned this before, but the town I live in is the birthplace of artist Georgia O'Keefe. The free local historical museum here has a lot of information about her, including some art, etc. Streets nearby are named after her. I guess that's the biggest connection to art I can think of! We also have a huge cool mural in our downtown on the side of a prominent building.
ReplyDeleteI have got to get to that museum. It's on my wish list for a Saturday adventure before 2024! Sun Prairie, here I come! (Maybe. If I can fit it in.)
DeleteLet's meet at the museum! I'd love to see more O'Keefe stuff. Also I have never been to Sun Prairie. Yes, I've lived here 6.5 years now. Yes, that's pathetic. :)
DeleteYay for a quiet night. I don't understand why they would ever ring them at night anyway.
ReplyDeleteI love that you have so much art in your town. We do, but it's all the way downtown and not so close to me on a daily basis.