OUT AND ABOUT: GLASGOW
Mary and Colin (Ben’s adventurous aunt and uncle, remember their first visit) were in Glasgow for a weekend getaway and they invited us to visit for the day. This was my first visit to Glasgow and it was too short (another post about our visit).
We had a flurry of art at GoMA, they had an exhibit by the artist Nikki de Saint-Phalle. The art had a very familiar quality to it, I had seen this before and then it hit me- Ms. Saint-Phalle’s art is featured in the fabulous fountain at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. My favourite is the spitting lips!
(Full lips are a theme)
(Mary and Ben reading up on the exhibit)
(Colin, a man after my own heart- straight to the video)
(Shadow and colour- nice!)
(We are so arty)
We hit the trendy art and music venue The Arches for lunch- we had some great giggles and tasty food- a ground pork and haggis burger for Ben and a spicy veggie burger for me.
Glasgow is supposed to be the place for concerts and art but it is a city also renowned for the unhealthy influence on its residents- it is called the Glasgow Effect and makes me relieved we live in Edinburgh.
Amusingly tagged: out and about, family, fun colors, art, museums,
D.C. AT DUSK… Yesterday, I mentioned the warm weather in D.C. at the start of my visit, well it made for a lovely wander and some great pictures of a mild and misty evening.
The National Gallery of Art has a little sculpture garden which was open. There was a little out-door skating rink and to see uniformed school kids in short sleeves skating through the puddles in January was a bit surreal.
Amusingly tagged: art, museums, washington d.c., out and about, sculpture gardens,
FAMOUS HIGH-FIVES
I am keeping you guessing this week with posts of both home and away. Today we have another home post, which could also be categorised as away as it comes from a visit, my first, to Glasgow.
Have you ever high-fived a celebrity? I am guessing my brother Charlie probably has, also my brother John, he waited in long lines for the autographs of Greg LeMond and Brad Pitt (the latter comes with a story which has gone into the sister-vault where it will remain), these were probably not the traditional up-top versions, more of a respectable handshake. My friend Chloe met Mick Jagger- did they high-five (not a euphemism), she has a photo to prove it, but I cannot find the link to her blog?
I have not, but I got pretty close at the Gallery of Modern Art- Glasgow or GoMA on a pre-travel visit. Captured below are two people who Ben and I would have down lowed, too slowed, had we had the opportunity. A Swiss artist with an Italian name, Alberto Giacometti and author of everyone’s favourite and true French classique Le Petit Prince and the name of the airport in his native Lyon,Antoine Saint-Exupéry.
More to come from GoMA later this week! Hint- more of our museum visit which is linked to our former life in France. Is it a sign?
Amusingly tagged: museums, art, famouspeople, fun stuff, glasgow, goma,
CHRISTMAS REVISITED
Here we are, January 2, 2013- what did you get up to today?
This week I wanted to share some some of our fun photos from Christmas- they are mostly of food. Except today’s photos are of festive ornaments Ben made for our tree at his weekly ceramics class.
I am partial to the skull and crossbones in Santa hats- these will decorate our future trees.
More on Ben’s mad ceramics skills in the coming weeks- he is so talented.
Amusingly tagged: hummy bear, benisadorable, art, ceramics, christmas,
OUT AND ABOUT: LDN
Based on my clues- did you guess where I was yesterday?
I was in London, just for the day.
Being American does not always have its benefits- I was required to drop my documents at the Brazilian Consulate in person. It was a total of nine hours on the train for forty-five minutes with the friendly Brazilians. If all goes according to the plan, I will have my visa in early January.
With a few hours to kill, I went to Look Mum No Hands for lunch and then popped in to the Tate Modern for an afternoon of art. A good day out.
I was tucked into bed by midnight!
Ben’s parents arrive this afternoon- let the celebrating begin.
Amusingly tagged: out and about, london, fun stuff, travel, art, modern art,
SO SAD… Leaving Modern II is always a drag. Time to head home and do the ironing.
Amusingly tagged: benisadorable, edinburgh, art, museums,
ISTANBUL MODERN… Back in 2008, Ben and I visited Istanbul and had a wonderful time exploring the city and spent an afternoon at the Istanbul Modern.
I went back this trip and enjoyed an afternoon of art. So many talented Turkish artists.
Enjoy some of the art.
Amusingly tagged: istanbul, travel, art, fun stuff, museums,
FESTIVAL… We spent a day touring three small galleries:
INGLEBY GALLERY- Ian Finlay Hamilton
FRUIT MARKET GALLERY- Dieter Roth Diaries
STILLS - James Casebere, Home and Other Fictions
Enjoy the pictures.
The festival has come to an end for another year. We are happy to bid farewell to the 500,000 tourists who have been clogging our streets for the past weeks. Have a great year and see you in 2013.
Amusingly tagged: edinburrgh art festival, festival, festival week, art, culture,
CALLUM INNES… Known for his colour-blocked abstract paintings, amongst other work, Edinburgh based artist Callum Innes works for the very first time with light, this work floods the dark tunnel on Calton Road with colour to show the magnificent architecture of the Regent Bridge above.
The bridge was designed in 1814 by Archibald Elliot to create an entrance to Edinburgh where the London Road entered the New Town. It was completed in 1819 and solved the long-standing problem of entering the capital through narrow and inconvenient medieval streets.
Working with architect and lighting artist Gavin Fraser, Innes created a scheme that transforms the flat sides of the lower arch at street level into an illumination of colour. The work follows a brief to create a structured and yet deliberately random order of coloured light, the color has changed several times-emphasising the giant curve of the arch above.
The Regent Bridge is commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Ingleby Gallery (which I have pictures from coming soon).
Amusingly tagged: Festival Week, art, Edinburgh,
A NEW SIM-SPEC(TIVE)
The Edinburgh Art Festival is happening as I type. This is such a fab time of the year to live in Edinburgh. During the month of August there are loads of free workshops to join.
I was a bit late looking at the calendar of events, but I was lucky enough to find a photography workshop which ran last Saturday at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.
It was run by the Contemporary Ary Exchange and Kate Martin, who has such an interesting background and visible passion for the arts and making them accessible to everyone. This was evident in the theme of the workshop- Photography Workshop for Sighted People. I am sighted so it was perfect, right?
Kate’s ‘photographers in residence’ and our workshop leaders were Rosita McKenzie and Andrew Follows who are visually impaired. Rosita is completely blind and Andrew is blind in one eye and suffers from tunnel vision in the other. Rosita and Andrew are working photographers and have an joint exhibition Through the Looking Glass, Dimly in Edinburgh at the moment.
Right from the start Kate, Rosita and Andrew made me feel very comfortable and explained that we would have the opportunity to experience what it was like for them as photographers.
We used sim-specs which replicate different visual impairments. The photos of the objects were taken while I was wearing the tunnel vision spectacles (reproduces a speck of vision in a void of darkness) and hazy vision (hazy vision with light scatter and glare and variable visual acuity). The amount of concentration to focus what little vision I had remaining on the objects was remarkable. I had a vague idea of Andrew must feel- of course, I could remove the sim-specs and review my work.
To add to the challenge, for the second session, I worked with Rosita outdoors. I was blindfolded and relied on Brian, whom I had only met that morning, to be my eyes and guide me around the yard of the ECW. Before we began, Rosita explained to us how we should lead a person with a visual impairment, you have to have trust in your leader, something which I had to develop quite quickly with Brian and vice versa.
Through Brian’s descriptions of the location, I knew the areas I wanted to photograph and he carefully led me to where I needed to go. You have to rely even more heavily on touch to ensure you can get the good photo. Rosita also told us to use the sun and where it was hitting our faces to position ourselves when taking the picture- an excellent tip.
You can just snap away and there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ picture.
What a fantastic experience. Now when I take photos without my sim-specs or blindfold, I try to incorporate some of the top tips from Andrew and Rosita.
Amusingly tagged: festival week, art, culture,
FESTIVAL WEEK
Greetings!
Hope your weekend is going well. We are enjoying some wonderful sunshine and some unusual ‘heat’ and humidity- you should see my Southern Belle hair- very voluminous.
To give you a preview, this week at Turning Over a New Leith it is going to be festival week. A fun way to see what we have been exploring and seeing during this period of cultural overload. Ahh, August!
See you on Monday.
B
Amusingly tagged: letter from me, festival week, edinburgh, art, culture,
OLYMPIC ART… Peppered throughout the Olympic Park are fantastic works of art.
Some of the favourites:
STELES…
These colourful artworks along the Waterworks River reflect the spirit of the London 2012 Games, while accentuating the main river that flows through the Olympic Park.
After the Games they will used as boat moorings and have been made from the same durable materials used for navigational buoys.
They look like giant Crayola crayons.
RUN…
Or just R (full version) Internationally -renowned artist Monica Bonvicini was commissioned to design a flagship artwork for outside the Copper Box. Monica designed three nine-metre tall letters forming the word ‘RUN’, made of glass and stainless steel. In daylight, the letters act as a mirror, and at night they become more transparent and glow with internal LED lighting.
bit.fall…
Our favourite ‘bit.fall’ artwork by German artist Julius Popp is the second of the large-scale temporary water features on the Olympic Park. It consists of five mini waterfalls, each creating a continuous cascade of words, formed of hundreds of water droplets taken from the river below. The words are chosen at random from live news feeds by specialist software developed by the artist.
These are such great additions to the park! Nice work Olympic committee.
Amusingly tagged: olympics, olympic art, art,
ART ATTACK… Recently the Bachelor students from the Edinburgh College of Art had their end of the year degree show. Ben and I went along on the final evening and were very impressed by the creativity of all the artists- some more than others. I hope some of these people find success in their chosen field- I think some of them should seriously consider a back-up. We have some places still at the Business School for September 2012.
Amusingly tagged: ECA, Art, Talented Students, Edinburgh College of Art, Degree Show,
RAKU PART TWO (THERE IS NO PART ONE)
You’ve got to love a post with a rhyme in the title.
This is a guest post. Buffy is on the road, OFFLINE, incommunicado, :X. She asked me to distract you from the void that appears when she doesn’t post.
Ceramics, pottery, clay it all comes down to this malleable and finite stuff that comes out of the ground and once were done with it and you cook it, really cook it, it’s basically stone and can last for ages.
There’s something permanent about it that contrasts really well with it in it’s plastic state and it’s hella fun to get your hands dirty.
Back in the day, I did this at school, making ashtrays, always ashtrays, what do kids make now at school? Iphone caddies?
At school we had a teacher, Abdo Nagi, a Yemeni guy whose dad made wooden locks for a living (a dying craft right there) and got taken in by some British diplomats and ended up becoming a potter with a studio in the garden of his adopted British family and teaching us. He smiled a lot and brought a big lump of porcelain in for us. Nice guy. He taught me sgraffito which I loved.
You can see some of his work here.
Flash forward to the present day, I took a ceramics course, but joined a bit late and my Lisa Bonnet-esque teacher would not let me have a go at the wheel in just the 5 sessions I had. So I dug out my knowledge of slab building. Score, slip, join, smooth repeat. The last session was a bit like watching a movie on the last day of school, but not as scary as watching the animatronic version of Lord of the Rings.
We tried Raku, which is fun and fast, which is unlike most ceramics, where the process is: wait a day for it to dry, glaze it, let that dry, wait for it to be fired next Tuesday, wait a day for the kiln to cool down, not for the impatient.
Raku is done in a dustbin with a canister of gas. When your pot is red hot and glowing from within you throw it into another bin full of sawdust… magic happens when the sawdust catches on fire. It cools down in 10 min and you place your work in a bucket of water.
The smoke and flames do weird-crazy-cool stuff to the glazes. Herewith, the pictures.
Amusingly tagged: art, guest post, fun stuff, ceramics, pottery,
