Tag Archives: Art

Eureka: Architecture and Art

08 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in California

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I was surprised by the range of interesting buildings in Eureka. There are large Victorian showplaces, classic California bungalows, even a few old Art Deco buildings. What I didn’t know when we arrived is that Eureka is home to an Old Town that preserves much of the late 19th century central part of the city, and the entire district is on the National Register of Historic Places. Here are a few of the lovely houses I saw, and some interesting quirky things.

The pinnacle of Victorian splendor in Eureka is the Carson Mansion, built by a lumber baron back when redwood was being shipped out of the forests at an incredible rate. This house has never been allowed to deteriorate, and is now a private club. You can apply on-line. https://www.ingomar.org/

Across the street from the Carson Mansion is the Pink Lady. This is a lovely big Victorian, but it did have a period of abandonment, and is now refurbished. This is a private home and was recently on the market, if you’re interested in living in a showplace in beautiful Eureka. It has a view of the water, too.

We passed this row of three restored houses. In addition to all having individual character and nice restoration, these are not huge mansions, they are a livable size, and yet have lovely ornamentation.

Victorian houses catch my eye, but they are not the only interesting places in Eureka. There are lots of bungalows, a single story with a front porch, sometimes with Craftsman touches. This one was particularly fine. There are lots of others. Not all of these are huge, many are a comfortable size.

I was surprised to see some older family-sized water towers. In addition to storing water, the raised tank increases water pressure.

Artists abound in the Humboldt region. These metal jellyfish hang under someone’s carport in Trinidad, CA.

Trinidad is a tiny community perched on headlands that project into the Pacific. The views are beautiful, and there are days when whales spout and dive just off shore.

In front of a cafe in Bayside, this large metal lady dances in the breeze.

Bayside is another tiny community tucked in between Eureka and Arcata. We avoided the highway for the short trip between the two towns when we went to the weekly, year-round farmer’s market in Arcata. We passed Bayside on the Old Arcata Road and always admired its cafe.

On Quaker St. in Eureka, there is a man who makes sculpture out of broken machinery, tools, and old car parts. He came out to chat with us and told us that his grandchildren have made the newer pieces.

There are lots of places that have chainsaw art, too, legacy of the redwood boom times, when you could have just about anything made of redwood.

This is only a fraction of the interesting houses and artworks we passed during our month in the north. There is a bubbling creativity that comes out in many places you wouldn’t suspect. Fences, gates, birdhouses, yard sculpture; there are lots of hidden pleasures to find.

Art and Artisans in Australia

21 Sunday Jul 2019

Posted by in Australia

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As we traveled around Australia, I was impressed by many of the artists and artisans we met, whose work was creative and out of the ordinary. Here’s a small snapshot of them.

Aboriginal Art

Aboriginal Bush Traders is one of many places that sells work by aboriginal artists in Darwin and the Northern Territory. Unlike most others, this organization is not-for profit, and is focused on getting aboriginal work on the market. The store is in a renovated historic stone cottage on the edge of the Darwin downtown area. We liked the wide range of items from painting to woven goods. I bought my cockatoo shoes there. http://aboriginalbushtraders.com

Paintings are the best known form of aboriginal art in Australia, in part because there is ancient rock art painted in similar styles. We were drawn to different work, especially the linocuts of Vincent Babia. These are his interpretation of the historic migration of people from Sabia Island in the Torres Straits to Cape York, the northern tip of Australia. There is a lot going on in every corner of his prints. They are very large, this one is 121.5 x 97.5 cm (38 x 48 in).

Vincent Babia: Migration from Sabia Island to Cape York

Graphic Art

 

I like clever graphic art. In Sydney, Squidinki caught my eye, full of humorous souvenirs unlike anything I saw elsewhere. The artist is Max Mendez. http://squidinki.com

 

 

 

 

Tanya Ferreira works in pen and ink. She’s based in the Northern Rivers Region of New South Wales. https://www.etsy.com/shop/zenfulcreatures

 

 

 

 

 

We met Jackie Elms at a fair, and bought one of her hand-painted pillow covers. To see her work on Facebook you need to go to her photos, not her facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/pg/Jacky-Elms-Artist-395713370779264/photos/?ref=page_internal

Jewelry

Now that I make jewelry from beach glass, I scrutinize the jewelry we at markets and fairs. There was lots of inspiring creative work.

Jux jewellery makes rings and other items using the lost-wax casting process. The rings with opals set in them are particularly beautiful. http://www.juxjewellery.com

Indigo Dreaming Designs is a line of sea glass jewelry by Ruth Marshall. It includes rings, bracelets, charms, and pendants of beach glass set in silver. https://www.facebook.com/pg/indigodreamingdesigns/posts/

Opals are mined in Australia and tourists are attracted to them. You can visit mines in Lightning Ridge, Coober Pedy and other remote places. You can buy opals in all the tourist centers and airports. We looked in a lot of places, and found that opals are largely a tourist item found in specialized shops.

 

In Brisbane, the Australian Opal Shop carries a wide range of opals, I picked out two pieces of opal from Queensland. This is opal formed on a base of dark brown rock. The colors range from lavender to dark blue. green, yellow, orange and red. There are opals from Mexico and Ethiopia, but in Australia, you find mostly the Australian varieties. After we looked at all the displays at the Brisbane Opal Museum, Jonathan bought me an opal ring that shows flashes of blue and green. It is perfect. http://www.brisbaneopalmuseum.com.au/

last but not least: T-shirts

You would think that buying a souvenir t-shirt would be the simplest thing a tourist can do. Not so! If you want an interesting t-shirt, it takes a lot of shopping. In Fremantle, we drove by the huge silo with the Dingo Flour logo on it and several visits and phone calls tracked down the t-shirt bearing that logo. https://www.mokoh.com.au/index.php/mokohshop/category/61-t-shirts

We had an equally daunting time finding an interesting tshirt during our visit and finally found a good one on our way home. Wild Kiwi designs makes a range of tshirts that are more creative than usual. https://wild-kiwi.co.nz/

Those are of some of the artists and artisans I liked during our travels around Australia, and New Zealand. I tended to buy jewelry and textiles like pillow covers, dish towels, and t-shirts, because they are easy to pack.

Dodging Showers at Tweed Regional Gallery

01 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in Australia, Brisbane

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The recent rains are supposedly abating and we planned an indoor/outdoor day to hedge our bets. First stop was the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre in Murwillumbah, a 25 minute drive from our house. Not large, but very lively, this young institution aims to be a hub for cultural activity and seems to be succeeding. There were three rotating exhibits that included intriguing work by a still life artist, Dean Home, and paintings by an Aboriginal artist based in this region, Digby Moran.

The main event is the studio and works of Margaret Olley, an Australian artist known for her still life paintings.

There was also a group of works that show a regional landmark, Mt. Warning, painted by several different people over a span of about 100 years. (The banner painting is yet another view of Mt. Warning by Thomas Dean).

George Wishart
Guy Maestri

The permanent exhibit includes Margaret Olley’s studio, brought lock, stock, and paintbrushes from her home in Sydney. All the materials were photographed in place, catalogued, measured, described, assessed from a conservation standpoint, moved hundreds of kilometers from Sydney to Murwillumbah, stored until the building that is now the gallery was completed, and then reinstalled. I would have loved to be a volunteer helping with that project!

There’s also an artist in residence, and contributions by former artists-in-residence to current exhibits. A good cafe, gift shop, and engaged docents that we observed in action guiding a tour, the Tweed Regional Gallery was impressive as an organization. We had our picnic at one of the outdoor tables looking over the rolling landscape of greater Murwillumbah. I did say this was only the first stop. The weather stayed bright and sunny so we stopped at the Moobal National Park along the road home and went for a walk in the rainforest. There are only a few remnants of coastal rainforest in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. If you find a patch, the walking is lovely and cool, and there are a few birds. We had our moment in nature before heading home, without a drop falling on us.

One Weird Dude–Dali

18 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Spain

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Now that you know we’re talking about Salvador Dali, I can assure you that he was immensely creative despite being as weird as a two-headed cat. We rented a car and drove to Figueres to visit the museum that Dali designed himself. That’s part of the problem, letting a surrealist design his own space. It doesn’t even look surreal, just ???? A barn-red tower topped with huge eggs and dotted with replicas of loaves of bread. (Huh?)

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Dali was thrown out of a Surrealist painters group because he was considered too focused on money. He went to New York, and drew or painted anything that anyone would pay him to do. Eventually, he created this museum in Spain and lived not far away for the rest of his life, failing to burn himself up but burning one of his houses down in the process. A lot of his work seems hasty, but I believe that’s because he was so full of ideas. For example, who could even think of this: Mae West as an apartment.

10.13.15 Figueres Dali-005

The original is a painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. This is an actual room in the Dali Museum, but to see it complete like this, you have to climb some stairs and look at the room through a convex glass that hangs from the belly of a fiberglas camel, and peer between the huge acrylic tresses. Honestly, who could even think of this? Once you have the idea, you can start imagining all kinds of people as apartments, but who could imagine such a thing to start with? Dali.

Dali was bursting with ideas. There is a series of sketches where he seems to have been emptying his very busy and tightly packed brain onto sheets of drawing paper and they include a lot of misogynist imaginings. We know he absolutely adored his wife Gala. The paintings of her are spectacular, but buried in among all that was some pretty uncomfortable imagery, if you’re a woman, or have any nerve-endings.

10.13.15 Figueres Dali-003

There are lots of quirky exhibits, like this African mask, embellished and placed in the stomach of a huge bird.

10.13.15 Figueres Dali 10.13.15 Figueres Dali-001

I stopped taking photos, because the place is both overwhelming and slapdash. Some of the art is excellent, but some appears hasty, as though he had so much on his mind that he had to keep moving. There is a ceiling full of “bats” that turn out to be painted burlap bags. There is another ceiling full of galvanized buckets.

The highly detailed, carefully painted pictures like the melted watches that he is known for are largely elsewhere. The painting that I found on a postcard and sent to the whole family is one that reminds me of Jonathan: Self-Portrait with Bacon.