Frankenstein Friday

Since I have been home, I have been working on getting my garden and path finished. I had to remove a lot of sod to make the garden areas. I started adding sod randomly to the top of this old dog house. I figured it would keep it cool in there and help it blend in with the yard. Well, after a while the mound turned into an animal. I think the landscape in NM influenced me a bit.
I couldn't make a head work so I just planted this day lily in it's place. I know I am a nutter! The boys think little natives with spears should come running out of the pineapple-head mountain to attack us all.
But Frankenstein gets it. It is a nice cool place just for him!
King of the Big Dog-dog house!
I thought it was a Lion. But Mr. Eleven says it is a, Big Dog-dog House.

more of my trip....

I have a thing for taking photos from the car...this is a big hotel in town. The people are tourist scurrying to the galleries.
pretty pink...
this was from one of the gallery gardens, cool trees....
In the foreground is a Bruce Newell horse sculpture and behind well these things are everywhere! This photo was taken at the fancy sculpture gallery. But we saw these moving sculptures at peoples homes and at all kind of places around town. They are actually quite pleasing.
I still have our sight seeing day to cover and more random photos...coming soon...Onward!

more of my trip....gallery day

Galleries and artists in Santa Fe are literally everywhere. There are huge big name galleries and many more small scale ones. We spent one day at the Plaza. If you Google, Plaza Galleries List Santa Fe, you will see what I mean. I took notes of the artists and galleries I liked and somehow I can't locate it anywhere...bummer.
The galleries all seemed to show a variety of very different work at the same time. The galleries them selfs are in old homes, on one endless street. Each room has a different artist work in it, for the most part. So just because there is a crappy work in the front window it is worth it to go in.
I wasn't bold enough to take photos in the galleries so I just have these images from the outside of things.
Here is Sally taking a load off at this up scale sculpture gallery. There chairs are made of large stones and metal. Super comfortable. They also carried the work of Bruce Newell .
I like his sculptures a lot especially the small horse studies inside the gallery. It was a more corporate gallery. All the women who worked there looked like they should be in a new hit TV show called: Sex in the Lipstick Sculpture Park!
We had a blast at the Cruz Gallery. This sculpture is out front. I didn't read who made it but it reminds me of Nathan Olivera's work. We think, but were not sure if the guy working the gallery was also the artist. In any case,we both loved the work by: Richard Campiglio. He and Sally chatted it up in Spanish while I took in the work.
I lost most of the artist names that I wrote down. There is one I can't get out of my head. It was a women and we met her and I believe the gallery had her name ( I keep thinking it started with a T...). She told us her gallery would soon be moving up the block...that is all I remember. Her work was reminiscent of Milton Avery. Her work was great!
I did find Denise and Samuel Wallace scratched in to my note book. I believe they are from Seattle and are jewelers. A lot of their work has men in animals and animals in men...so, more inspiration for me!
I lost a gallery day due to Altitude sickness. I never would have believed it could effect me so, but it did. I was dizzy and tingly and so light headed I couldn't move for a day and a half. Sally pumped me full of vitamin C and E and tons of water. Next time I will give myself a few extra buffer days, to adjust. I promise next time I will take better notes and see even more!

Yellow makes me happy...

Mr. Eleven scored extra points yesterday, when he made this lovely arrangement of 12 yellow roses for me. The roses come from our garden and that makes it even better. Just a mid-day pick me up!...Yellow!

Damn you Date girl!!

Damn you Date girl! My good friend Judy tagged me! Normally I would just blow this off but for some reason it being Judy I just can't. The Rules are simple:

1. pick up the nearest book

2. turn to page 123.

OK, all the books nearest me are art books so I had to pick up a few before I found one with words, and a page 123. The book that fit was: Mauve, How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World. Not such a sexy book, but, I had it out and I play by the rules.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

Got it...

4. Post the next three sentences

5. Tag five people and acknowledge who tagged you.

Here we go:
Perkin's colors traveled the world on postage stamps. When, in the mid-1860's, the American Civil War caused a severe cotton famine, dye firms were forces to look for new markets. In Lancashire, the firm of Roberts, Dale & Co. had a significant break through when its chemist Heinrich Caro struck up a relationship with the London banknote and stamp-printing firm Thomas De la Rue.

I tagged and I hated doing it: Snake oil emporium also know as: The Greek or, Date girls man. I love his writing he has some great stories on his blog. Please forgive me Spryo!
Hungry Hyaena, my friend Christopher. Because I want to see what book he picks up. Shots Up To Date, my dear over worked Robin, who doesn't need anything else on her plate and here I am giving her this! Boy I suck. But I love Robin! Beltway Confidential, Julie who I go to for the inside scoop on all things Political. She is friends with Judy and I think Between Spryo and Julie, Judy will catch enough crap she will never do this to us again! My last choice is Brown Momma or Brown town Low down, Hollis is smart funny and a kick ass chick! She makes me happy, so in return I pick her, to share in this game of tag...or is it hell!?

more of my trip....

We devoted one day to museums. We went to the Museum of International Folk Art and the Museum of Indian Art. The outside courtyard is a lovely place with cool sculptures and spectacular views of the surrounding mountains.



I bought myself 4 big art books there: Manilla Mexican Engraver by Mercurio Lopez Casillas, is a 207 page book crammed full of cool Mexican engravings from the late 1800's. Images of Skeletons, devils, acrobats, bull fighters and well just about everything Mexican.

I found another wonderful book called: The Ledger book of Thomas Blue Eagle published by Thomasson Grant 1994. It is a Christopher Award winer 1995, books for young people category. A magical book done in the style of Native American drawing, telling the story of a young native boy. I highly recommend it!

The other Native American book I found was: Art of The Ancestors Antique North American Indian Art put out by the Aspen Art Museum 2004. I found a lot of image in this book dealing with men inside animals and animals in men. The theme I have been working with with my Bird and Bee-men. They deal with it much better than I. It will be interesting to see how this new information plays out in Bee-man land.

The last book I found was: American Vernacular New Discoveries in Folk, Self-Taught and Outsider Sculpture, by Frank Maresca and Rodger Ricco.

The Folk Museum didn't have a catalog of the spectacular exhibition called: Multiple Visions: A Common Bond: A collection of Alexander Girard (who by the way came from Detroit MI). A collection of over 100,000 objects he and his wife collected over a life time. A fabulous collection of folk art from around the world. It was the highlight of my trip! The book I got covers a lot of the same ground and I truly love it. But I would still love a catalog of the Girard collection.

There was also an exhibition of Gees Bend Quilts. Sally turned me on to them a few years ago so it was pretty cool that we got to walk through the show together. They are wonderful! They also had some small prints based on the quilts that were really powerful!

The last exhibit we walked through at the end of a long day of looking at art was in the Museum of Indian Art. It was most possibly the poorest curration I have ever witnessed! We were holding back from breaking into fits of laughter. To be fare, part of this may have been due to fatigue. Let me give you an over view.
First you walk through a dark tunnel like one of those Mystery Spot, fun house. The floor is tilted and it is super dark the sounds of a thunder storm are playing on a tape loop. Then you emerge into a maze of juxtaposed images. All of these are meant to illustrate what Native Americans life was and what it is today. Our favorite was a pair of moccasins next to a pair of worn out running shoes! From deer skin to Nike! The other was a tee-pee in one corner and a partial view of a kitchen that looked like every rental apartment kitchens I have ever lived in. The same beige cupboards with wood trim and a crappy fridge. I may be wrong on this but I think a frog figurine from the 70's had a scrubber sponge in his mouth by the sink. There were records by Buffy Saint Marie, the same ones we had in our house when I was a kid! The exhibition told me absolutely nothing that isn't obvious and they basically said the same thing over and over. Being poor sucks! Living free is good!...point taken!
Luckily the rest of the museum was full of amazing art! The collection is strong and full of things I had never seen. You are struck over and over by how graphic and modern the pieces were. The colors, textures craftsmanship were superber. The thing that pissed me off most about the crap-ola exhibition is it wasted so much museum space! Come on Museum of Indian Art, get a grip! I know you can do better! The Native peoples are more and have more to offer than being victims of modern running shoes...Damn you Air Jordon!...damn you arch support!

more of my trip....

Sally lives with 2 chihuahuas and a big cat named Gato. Here is Zoe in the courtyard. Zoe was an orphan when Sally met her in town with her foster mother. She is the same age as Frankenstein. She is super girly and sweet. She was my partner. I walked her and Sally walked the other dog, Jack. At night we snuggled together. She was my vacation sweetheart!

This is Jack, he is from NY. He is prematurely going grey. It makes him look like a strange Desert creature. He reminds me of a tiny little antelope.
Every day we took them for a walk.
They are both about a third of the size of Frankenstein. But Frankenstein like me has big feet and a sturdy build. Now in comparison to Jack and Zoe he looks like a Rottweiler dog to me.

more of my trip....

Sally's house is pretty spectacular. The walls are done in diamond plaster. Pretty much like the globes I am working on. Basically that is plaster mixed in with the paint. It makes a hard shell like surface. She has some of her work hanging on the walls. There is lots of light.
This is the view from her kitchen. The windows go beyond the view of this photo, in either direction, so you get a panoramic view of the dessert.
this is the view from the back porch. The horse stables are just beyond the shrubberies. The hummingbird came to feed all day long.

In the front she has this amazing walled in court yard. She is planting aromatic herbs there. It is a place protected from the high winds that whip across the open landscape. A place where things can grow. It is a sanctuary.

My trip

Vacations start the second you leave your home. My trip out west was a pretty smooth journey. A plane ride to Dallas then another to Albuquerque New Mexico. When I got to the rental car place in Albuquerque the only car left for me, was this little white PT Cruiser.

My dad worked for Chrysler for 40 years so I felt comfortable with a Chrysler product. I hit the highway headed for Santa Fe. The radio stations were all pre-set to rock stations so I cranked up the AC/DC, opened the sunroof and started cruising.

The landscape seemed flat and like the moon. I saw lots of crosses marking accident sights along the highway. Not much else, except a big billboards announcing Blue Oyster Cult was coming to town and I should buy reservation priced cigarette's and go to a casino. Then the trouble started.

It was like a K-car flash back! In the mid 80's we had a K-car and it was a dog. You would press the gas pedal, sometimes you had power sometimes, not so much. Here I was, on a two lane highway in the dessert with trucks on my tail and my foot was almost to the floor. Yet, I was barely hitting 40 miles per hour! I had a map quest print out in my hand. Since I didn't have my reading glasses on I had to hold the paper instructions in front of the steering wheel to get the words to come into focus. The truck was still getting larger and larger in my rear view mirror and the rock and roll hits were still cranking. Then we hit a slight decline in the road and my speed picked up! It was like this all the way to Santa Fe!

Apparently it is a steady climb all the way there. The attitude got higher the car got slower except when it could use it's weight to cruise down hill. I think that is what PT stands for, Part Time Cruiser. It only works going down hill!

I made it to Sally's home. It is just outside Santa Fe. There are horse stables in the background and mountains too. Absolutely beautiful country. But not so good for a PT Cruiser! We called it the Flintstones car. We leaned and rocked to harness the power of our combined weight to help it along. We used Sally's car when we went up into the mountains.

Big head big fish!

I am back from my fantabulous New Mexico vacation. But more important than that, Mr. Eleven caught this big fish on Saturday! What a great catch! What a fish!