Thursday, August 30, 2007

Museum Rat

I had a class and a meeting for work last week and finished the class earlier than planned and had a few hours to dink around. Knowing I didn't DARE take a nap for fear of sleeping through my meeting, I decided to head over to the MacNider Museum. It had been a while since I'd been there so I visited my two favorite paintings and found out about an art contest they'll be having. This one is called "The Spinning Wheel" and is an oil painting by John Castigan. It is a very textured painting and I remember seeing it when I was little on field trips to the museum. I can remember being tempted to touch the paint and obviously hundreds of other people have too because now it is framed behind glass! But I just love this painting.



This one is called "The Watcher" by Marvin C0ne. He was an Iowa painter who studied with Grant Wood. I just love how the perspective is off and makes the painting look a little creepy. And the room pictured is painted in one of my favorite shades of blue.



The Kinney Pioneer Museum hosted it's annual Kids' Day event this week. I had the day off, but of course it was sandwiched between two nights that I did have to work so I stayed up and then went out to demonstrate with my wheel. I only stayed for about 2 hours though because I was falling asleep! I worked on a 1/2 pound of this lovely blue Tencel/Merino fiber blend that I've had for a while now. I'm going to make a DK weight yarn out of it for socks or for lace baby hats for any little boys that will be born soon. They had a lot more hands on activities for the kids like rope making, and knot tying--things like that. Another gal from the spinning group had brought her inkle loom and she had the kids help her warp it. A lot of the kids asked, "Can I try?" when they saw me and I wasn't comfortable with them treadling or drafting so I felt kind of bad. I DID bring along my carders and some wool so I let them do that and I had plenty of different kinds of fibers for them to touch and handle. I'll have to think of different things to bring for next year. The end of September will be their last open house day and they will be making apple cider! I am excited about that and I plan on being there!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well hello,
I've seen "The Watcher" and I don't really see it as creepy but just kind of sad. The colors and perspective only add to the feeling of loneliness and maybe seperation involved. This probably sounds convoluted and for that I apologize but it's just how it strikes me. Btw this is Jeff a co-worker of your friend Summer. She gave me the addy to your blog and so I thought I would leave a comment. The intent was to be not creepy but I think that I may have fallen short of that goal. sorry. well I'll just leave off by saying
"Bedre bør du bær 'kje i bakken enn mannavit mykje."

Namaste
JR

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