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Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Dale Chihuly and Mother Nature

Posted in Art, Favorite Places, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , on August 18, 2012| 6 Comments »

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.” – George Bernard Shaw

Green trumpets growing among the green foliage. — Photo by Pat Bean

Weekly Photo Challenge: Merge

 

These brillantly hued flowers will last forever — or until broken. — Photo by Pat Bean

In the summer of 2006, Dale Chihuly and the St. Louis Botanical Gardens got together. The world-recognized glass artist created an exhibit to merge his art with nature’s art in the garden’s geodesic dome greenhouse. I had merged with St. Louis at the same time.

As I walked through the dome’s earthy rain forest, I couldn’t stop taking pictures. Usually I find too much time with a camera in front of my eyes dulls my senses. So I snap a picture or two, then put my camera away and bring out my notebook.

Glass meteorite for the garden. — Photo by Pat Bean

While it’s said “one picture is worth a thousand words,” as a writer I appreciate that it takes words to express that idea.

But this day, staring at Chihuly’s colorful glass creations that represented everything from reeds and Mexican hats, to herons and meteorite balls plopped down among a bounty of foliage, to brilliantly hued flowers and snaky vines,, left me wordless.

When I later looked at the photos, I found I had mingled Chihuly’s art with the creations of nature so well that I sometimes had to stop and ask myself which was which.

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Favorite Places: Great Sand Dunes National Park

Posted in Art, Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , , , on July 12, 2012| 3 Comments »

“The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place:  from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”  ~Pablo Picasso

Visitor Center Art

A mural near the top of a wall in the visitor center at Great Sand Dunes National Park caught my attention, and I lingered for a while simply enjoying it. I thought you might, too. So Below are three of its panels. I found many surprises in each. Do you?

Panel 1: The eagle flies free. — Photo by Pat Bean

Panel 3: The elk stands tall. — Photo by Pat Bean

 Bean’s Pat: Life on the Farm http://tinyurl.com/77qhgwo A tomato sandwich. I have this cookbook, and love it. But forget the diet.  Blog Pick of the Day as selected by this wondering wanderer. FYI: I’m flying to a granddaughter’s wedding in San Antono and not taking my computer,  so my blogs will just be a few photos of my favorite places. I hope you enjoy

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First Sighting of Cedar Waxwing at Lake Walcott

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on June 29, 2012| 9 Comments »

“Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.” – David Brent.

A Poem for a Bird-Watching Artist

John James Audubon’s painting of a cedar waxwing.

She called herself an SOB – Spouse of Birder. It was a humid, hot mosquito day and she had tagged along with her passionate birder husband – and wasn’t enjoying herself at all.

I felt sorry for her. We avid birders really are a queer lot, as poet Stephen Vincent Benet noted in the 1800s. In our passionate pursuit of the next bird we’ll see, we forget that not everyone enjoys spending the day in a buggy swamp, or likes to get up at 3 a.m. to hike to a place so they can see a red-cockaded woodpecker at dawn, or stand patiently for hours in hopes a rare bird will appear.

The SOB finally went off and found a comfortable spot to read, while we birders continued down the trail this day at Brazos Bend State Park in Texas.

A second painting of cedar waxwings by John James Audubon

It wasn’t either hot or buggy yesterday morning, however, when I spotted my first cedar waxwing here at Lake Walcott. This bird with its rakish mask and lemon-yellow, rosy-brown and cool-gray feathers is always a treat to spot.

The waxwing, the first of many I’m sure I will see before I leave the park, was sitting on a limb in plain sight of the trail, which my canine traveling companion, Pepper, and I were taking for our first walk of the day.

I had my camera in my pocket, but my the time I got Pepper under control on the leash, and was ready to snap a photo, the bird had flown. Drats. I was left without a photo for my blog.

Back at my RV, I put my thinking cap on and came up with the idea of using John James Audubon’s painting of a cedar waxwing to illustrate my words. I typed in Audubon and waxwing and hit search. Up popped Benet’s poem titled, John James Audubon, which is what got me thinking about the SOB incident.

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Why Did I Think I Was So Awful?

Posted in Art, Birds, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , on June 27, 2012| 22 Comments »

 “Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking and believing. As individuals think and believe, so they are.” –Claude M Bristol

A Little Bird Said Otherwise

After cropping, sharpening and enhancing the photo of a yellow-headed blackbird I took at Lake Walcott State, this turned out not to be too bad a shot. Most of my bird photos don’t come out half as good. — Photo by Pat Bean

When I was young, slender, wrinkle and sag free, I thought I was ugly. Today, I look at pictures from my past and realize, while perhaps not beautiful, I was pretty damn good-looking. And I have a few minutes of regret that I didn’t appreciate it way back when.

Today, I’m overweight, with a flabby soft belly and crow lines – I prefer to call them laugh lines – all over my face. And I’ve come to love my body because it has given me years of good service and is still going.

Lately, I’ve been thinking I’m a horrible artist. Nothing turns out like I imagine it in my head. What got me thinking about this was my inability to take decent bird photos. Of course that’s my choice. I’m a writer, not a photographer.

No. 1, don’t want to invest in the equipment necessary to capture birds in their rare moments from a distance. And No. 2, I don’t want to spend a lot of time looking at the world from behind a lens, which is what photographers have to do, and hopefully love to do as much as I love to write.

While not heavily detailed, I decided I also liked my artistic interpretaion of the yellow-headed blackbird. Perhaps I will use more of my bird art to go with my blog in the future. — Illustration by Pat Bean.

So why not, I’ve been asking myself for a couple of years, illustrate my bird blogs with some of my art work. Because you’re not good enough, my brain tells me. Art is one of my hobbies, and I’ve never wanted it to be more.

But this morning, when I was actually looking for a sketch I knew I had done of a killdeer imitating a broken wing to lead danger away from their nests (which I couldn’t find), because that’s what the killdeer here at Lake Walcott have been doing ever since I arrived here, I re-evaluated my bird art.

While I’m certainly never going to give professional artists cause for concern, my quick sketches and watercolors weren’t all that bad. It was like taking a second look at photos of myself from the advantage of being an old broad. And I liked what I saw.

Bean’s Pat: http://www.geezersisters.com/ About West Texas, where evidently there are no possums. Great web site. Blog pick of the day from this wandering wonderer.

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The Grand Canyon: Mother Nature’s Canvas

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , on June 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

 “Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard.” – Standing Bear

One Last Vista for the Road

The Grand Canyon vista from Desert View — Photo by Pat Bean

The distance between the Grand Canyon’s south entrance, where I entered the park, and its east entrance, where I exited, is only about 30 miles. It took me about five hours to make the journey.

It’s so easy to drink in the Grand Canyon’s vista that sometimes we forget to look at the smaller parts that make up the whole. I try not to forget. — Photo by Pat Bean

Five hours of magic when I left all the worries of the world behind and simply let myself enjoy the wonders of nature’s artistic hand. What a grand canvas she has created.

I don’t know how people exist in today’s chaotic world without visiting Mother Nature’s museums often.

It seems, however, that I’m merely echoing the thoughts of another writer who felt the same way during an era that to me seems far less hectic than today’s world.

Wrote Hamlin Garland in 1899: “I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me – I am happy.”

Bean’s Pat: Kristen Lamb’s Blog http://tinyurl.com/cvto554 How to become a stronger writer. Good advice for serious writers. 

*This pat-on-the-back recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. June 11, patbean.wordpress.com

 

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Route 66: From Hot Reds to Cool Blues

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2012| 8 Comments »

 “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Thich Nhat Hanh

Blue Mesa Trail in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

Blue Mesa

Big old petrified tree trunks like this is why it’s named Petrified Forest. — Photo by Pat Bean

I appreciate nature best when I can get up close and personal with it. I had that opportunity when I left Route 66 at the top of Windy Hill and hiked the Blue Mesa Trail.

The paved loop path, just a little over a mile long, drops about 100 feet down to the valley floor. It winds among the stratified rocks that tell 200-million-year-old stories, just as the petrified logs along the trail bear witness to an ancient forest.

Blue Mesa’s layered rocks contain 200-million years of the planet’s stories. — Photo by Pat Bean

A few people passed me on the hike, but mostly I had the trail to myself. It was an opportunity to drink in the peaceful stillness and ponder the creation of this landscape in which wind, water and the passing years were the artists.

My canine traveling companion, Pepper, greeted me as if I had been gone those 200 million years when I arrived back at our RV. I gave her treats and thought to myself that life couldn’t get any better.

Bean’s Pat: http://tinyurl.com/br2wub5 Take a walk with Mountain Mae.

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 29, patbean.wordpress.com

 

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Cadillac Ranch

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2012| 13 Comments »

 “We always had Packards, until the war, when they stopped making them; then we had a Cadillac.” June Carter Cash

From the front -- Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures With Pepper

You can’t visit Amarillo and not take a little detour off of Interstate 40 to Cadillac Ranch. It just wouldn’t be, well Texan.

It’s not exactly a ranch, just a large field minus the cows. There’s not even a ranch house, just 10 half-buried old Cadillacs with psychedelic paint jobs, courtesy of whomever visits with a spray paint can. The color décor is constantly changing.

The Cadillacs are what Texas millionaire Stanley Marsh, who planted them back in 1973, calls an art installation.

And from the rear -- Photo by Pat Bean

I like it. It’s fun art. And the installation tells a story, part of which is the heydays of automobiles and Historical Route 66, which Interstate 40 replaced.

Back in the 1970s, I briefly owned an old Cadillac. It was a 1965 model if I recall correctly. I needed a car and back then, when the cost of gas started escalating, the Cadillac was the cheapest thing on the lot.

That old Cadillac was smooth running, but a big old gas guzzler and quite expensive to repair. It wasn’t long before the Cadillac was replaced with a used VW Bug, which cost more but was cheaper in the long run. .

According to Wikipedia, the eccentric millionaire Stanley probably paid only about $200 for each of his Cadillacs, which he picked up at junkyards before giving them a half-butted burial.

You just gotta love Texans.

Bean’s Pat: 400 Days ’til 40 http://tinurl/7fvkjjn You are never too old to live your dreams

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Who’s Youer Than You? No One

Posted in Art, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 15, 2012| 13 Comments »

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.” Frida Kahol

Roots, a strange painting by Frida Kahlo

Frida’s quote explains everything perfectly — at least to all of us who grew up thinking we were strange.

And if  the women I know best are examples, Frida’s feeling about being strange is pretty much a universal thing. It’s too bad that too  many of us let decades go by before we appreciate our own special strangeness.

 

Dr. Seuss' world at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. -- Photo by Pat Bean

We’re too caught up in what others expect, or what other people will think if we do something strange, like hugging a tree or riding roller coasters when we’re 70. Yes, I do both.

I also think men have problems accepting their strangeness. After all “only sissies cry” and “real men don’t eat quiche.”

Why in the dookie have we allowed others to have so much power over us?

Frida used her strangeness to produce mind-bending art. .

Dr. Seuss, whose characters you must admit are a bit strange, embraced it with his unconventional stories and verse. He also understood how difficult it was for the rest of us to accept being different. Why else would he have wrote:

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind … Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

I say we follow Dr. Seuss’ advice.

Bean’s Pat: http://morezennow.wordpress.com This is the blog on which I found Frida’s quote. It’s a blog that makes me think, and I love it when someone does that to me.

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Art and Life Come Together at the Birdcage

Posted in Art, Birds, Travel, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on December 13, 2011| 4 Comments »

“An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.” George Santayana

Birdcage Mural at the St. Louis Zoo -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Inspiration for a blog topic eluded me this morning. After an hour spent reading e-mails, favorite blogs and the depressing news in the New York Times, I still hadn’t come up with a keyboard burner.

Spoonbill nest against the frame of the Birdcage -- Photo by Pat Bean

So I did what I usually do when this happens. I peruse the photos I’ve taken since my canine traveling companion, Maggie, and I began living and traveling full-time in our RV, Gypsy Lee. Thankfully I have seven years and over 123,00 miles of fodder to search for an idea. The walk back down memory lane is always pleasurable so I’m not complaining.

This morning my fancy was stopped at the St. Louis Zoo, home of the Birdcage. This walk-in aviary was built for the 1904 World’s Fair by the Smithsonian Institution at a cost of $17,500.

It was supposed to be moved to the organization’s National Zoo in Washington D.C. after the fair ended, but St. Louis residents protested, and the Smithsonian generously allowed the city to buy the flight cage for $3,500.

Pieces of sky framed by the Birdcage's ribs, with artfully placed birds. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Cost of the birds was extra. Records show that these charges included $7.50 for a pair of Mandarin ducks and $20 for four Canada geese.

Today it’s been turned into a cypress swamp that houses aquatic birds commonly found along the Mississippi River.

Looking through the pictures that I took back in 2006, I was struck by the amazing likeness between art and the real thing. The art is part of the glass tile mural outside the cage and the real things are the birds that live in the aviary.

I found both beautiful, particularly when I thought about the artist who created the mural.

Now I’m curious to know who was the artist.  Do you know?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibilities

Posted in Art, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , on October 16, 2011| 6 Comments »

My shadow and Maggie become part of the basket ball court art. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “ Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

Travels With Maggie

The park across the street from my son’s home in Lake Jackson has a basketball court, but I’ve never seen it used for that purpose.

 

The big green snake with big teeth -- Photo by Pat Bean

Perhaps that is why some young artists – I suspects students from the school next door to the park – decided to brighten it up a bit. While I was away for the summer, they dabbed the rough cement court with color.

The bright images include a river running across the court, a few houses and trees, a hop scotch layout and a couple of gigantic snakes, the kinds of things young artists have been doodling on paper since they could hold a crayon.

I found it enchanting – and so in tune with the week’s photo challenges about possibilities.

 

Grackles join the cacophony of color -- Photo by Pat Bean

“A picture of many colors proclaims images of many thoughts.” – Donna Favors

 

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