Jamie Wyeth and Ivan Garth Johnson

Way cool.  These very tall paintings (for the scale of the paintings use the black benches at the bottom as a reference) are by Jamie Wyeth and were in the entry area of the San Antonio Museum of Art.  They had a terrific show by Jamie Wyeth there and it was well worth the horrendous drive down IH35 to see it.

He's a third-generation Wyeth showing his painting skills  The museum had excellent signage with the paintings which always gives you a different way of looking at things.  Some of the work in the show was from when he was just a young teenager and he really had the skill showing even then. 

An iconic area in Austin is an underpass heading into town just north of the river that bisects Austin. This was painted many years ago (do the math) and there was a huge uproar about a year ago when the city decided to paint over it, even though its presence had been authorized by a previous city council.

At this time I just put a small sweater child there, hoping someone would come to their senses.

Okay, the city workers do try to paint over a lot of graffiti and of course there is debate about what is graffiti and what is street art.  This small memorial just seemed to resonate with a lot of people, mainly because it was relatively attractive.  And maybe because, thanks to Austin's terrible traffic problems, most people got to see this as they sat and sat and sat in traffic at that particular point.  It's only 2 lanes each side and they can't widen it because a train track is over it.

Finally we got the Ivan memorial back.

The top picture shows the two pots I put there, on either side of the piece that says "25" (do the math).  The bottom picture shows how people have added to it.  Lots of the time when I put ceramic Give-Away art out it disappears in a week or so.  These pots have stayed there for about 6 months now.  We may try to "Keep Austin Weird" but we do have respect for Ivan Garth. No, I have no idea who painted it years ago or who repainted it recently but the message is right.

Definitely So

Found this interesting biology lesson tacked on an instructor's door at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio.  

Odile thinks he is awesome also.

Oops

Oh yeah, I'm an experienced ceramic artist.  See this little guy?  No, he's not supposed to have his arms sitting in his lap.  The wire and red balls were Susan's idea on how to try to put lipstick on the pig and maybe distract you from his anatomical strangeness.  The picture below shows what he was supposed to look like, glazed but not yet fired, with arms that would be on a stiff wire through his body, arms that could swing in place. The wood skewer in the picture below is just holding the arms in place temporarily so I could take a picture before firing the piece.

So, your experienced ceramic artist carefully glazed him and took him to school and put him in the kiln.  When he did that, experienced ceramic artist that he is, he carefully laid the arms on the guy's lap so they wouldn't get separated when the kiln was unloaded. Of course, once the piece was fired the arms fused to the guy's lap. Duh.

I've been doing ceramics for about 8 years now so Susan was quite sympathetic about this situation, beginning with "You've got to be kidding me" and then transitioning to "You fool!" followed by some statements appropriate only for Mature Audiences.  I started to toss him in the trash can but she made me put him on the shelf above my worktable as a reminder to Pay Attention To Details. Actually, now we've both grown sort of fond of him.

Sometimes I draw, sort of in a Zentangle-like style.

Red Pots and Music at The Skylark Lounge

Two medium size red pots, ready for the Student Art Sale this fall.

It's a really, really big deal for us to stay up late.  "Late" as in after 10:00 p.m.  Face it, we are old duds.  Actually, Susan is usually asleep by 10 (thank you, Ambien) and I listen to my audible books while sitting out on my balcony till about 10:30.  So when our new friends -- I'd tell you their names but they are probably in the witness protection program so let's just call them John and Therese -- asked us to join them.... at a LOUNGE....

Fortunately, they promised we would be home by 9:00 p.m. (and we were) and best of all, they would drive.  We love the Driving-Miss-Daisy routine.

We had fun and felt like real grown-ups.  Margaret was great, the Skylark Lounge was so dark you had to grope your way to a table so the atmosphere was appropriate, we enjoyed being with our friends, and we had excellent pizza.  The fun part was when people in the audience came up and sang with Margaret -- not karaoke but real singing. One guy had a snazzy little briefcase that he carried his harmonica in and he accompanied her with that.