Category: Art

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Saturday/ art walk in Georgetown 🎨

The amigos went out for beers and fried chicken at Maro Polo saloon in Georgetown tonight.

After that, we checked out the goings-on at the Equinox Studios and the Georgetown Atelier art school nearby.
It was the once-a-month open day for the public.

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Friday/ got the frame 🖼

This puzzle is a holdover from the pandemic.
The entire dining room table is full of puzzle pieces, and at this point it’s hard to believe they are all going to be squeezed in tightly into the frame!

The 1,000-piece puzzle 91130 is by Buffalo Games & Puzzles. The artwork was done by Kim Norlien, titled ‘Mountain Paradise’.
Update Sat. 9.00 am: Here’s an update! The house, the mountain and the boat are much easier to build than the water and the foliage! I suspect some of the last pieces to fall in place will be the shadows on the bottom left corner.
Update Mon. 5.00 pm: All done! The tree at the top right was hard to complete, for some reason, as were the waters of the lake. The last piece that went in was one of the brown ones depicting the rocks at the bottom of the lake. 
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Friday/ Shabbat Shalom 💜

Art and text posted by Jamie Schler@lifesafeast on X:

Shabbat Shalom.
Peace, joy, kindness to you all.

‘If all life moves inevitably towards its end, then we must, during our own, colour it with our colours of love and hope’. – Marc Chagall.

Marc Chagall, La Vie, 1964, Fondation Maeght, Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Paul de Vence, Departement Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Cote.
Side note: The Israeli parliament building, known as the Knesset, is decorated with huge tapestries by Marc Chagall depicting biblical scenes.
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Friday/ pinball machines 🚨

It was a lovely day here in Seattle (71 °F/ 22 °C).
Four of the amigos played a little pickleball this morning.
Afterwards we had something to eat and drink, on the patio of the dive bar called Twilight Exit, in Central District.

The pinball machines in Twilight are very cool.

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Monday/ at the museum 🏛

We made a brief stop in downtown Fairbanks today, and then headed to the The University of Alaska Museum of the North (the museum is on the campus of the university).

The bridge over the Cena River in downtown Fairbanks is lined with the Stars and Stripes and the Alaska State flag.
We stopped by this arts and craft market with its vast collection of weird and wonderful souvenirs and antique items.
The U.S. Post Office and Courthouse building on Cushman St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave. was constructed in 1932-33 and features aluminum trim with Art Deco detailing.
The next set of pictures are all from the Museum of the North. This illustration features animals that roamed around what is now Alaska, from the Pleistocene Ice Age that began 2 million years ago.
That’s a kayak above, of course— and an umiak below: an open boat made of animal hide stretched over a wooden frame, designed to carry many people.
Male Doll, 1998. Artist Rosalie Paniyak. Sealskin, rabbit, wood, textile, beads and waxed thread.
Seabird Mask ‘Uyaleg Kegginaqur’ 1982. Creator: Qiu Henry Shavings.
Postcard of the 1970s of young people doing a ‘blanket toss’.
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Tuesday/ washed out 😢

Blue diamonds, strike ’em anywhere
First we caffeinate then incinerate
We’ll get you
And sparks will fly in the summer air
Did you pull out of your stall
Maybe I’ll see you after all

[Chorus: Stephan Jenkins]
Hold me down, I want to find out
We say no ’cause I live my life like a burning man
Like a burning man, a burning man
Like a burning man
And I won’t get enough until my legs are broken
– Lyrics from ‘Burning Man’ by Third Eye Blind, 1997

It’s nice to see the stranded— stranded in mud, in the desert!— festivalgoers to this year’s Burning Man are able to finally make an exodus from the muddy grounds there.

‘Burning Man attendees say learning to live with the unexpected is part of the program’ – headline from an NPR report.
Torrential rains disrupted this year’s event. It appears to me from this picture as if the wood pyre (a ‘burning man’ effigy) was not set alight this year. 
[Picture from official Burning Man website]
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Wednesday/ at the museum ⚔️

The National Nordic Museum is a museum in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, dedicated to the Nordic history, art, culture, and the heritage of the area’s Nordic immigrants.

Here are a few pictures that I had taken inside of the museum, and of items on display.

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Saturday/ Seattle Center ✨

Here is a smattering of pictures that I took at Seattle Center: from the Space Needle, from inside the Chihuly Garden and Glass and from inside the Museum of Pop Culture.

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Tuesday/ a full moon 🌕

Toe Vader slaap, toe Moeder droom,
is ek uit by die hek langs die appelboom.
En ek ry op die spierwit perd se rug
bo-oor die heinings en bo-oor die brug.
En niemand weet dat ek daar was
met elwekinders op die gras.

As Father slept, as Mother dreamed,
I slipped out the gate by the apple tree.
I rode on the back of the snow-white horse
over the hedge and over the gorge.
And on no one ever, will it dawn
that I’d been there with elven children, on the lawn.

– From ‘Die Spree met Foete’, reworkings of Annie M.G. Schmidt’s Dutch verses into Afrikaans, 2002.
Verses by Piet Grobler and artwork by Philip de Vos.
The rough translation into English is my own.

August is here, with a full moon tonight.

There are two full moons this August, both of which are supermoons—
The Sturgeon Moon that reaches its peak today, August 1st;
The Blue Moon that occurs on Wednesday, August 30th.

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Monday/ music in the park 🎷

There was a small musical ensemble, with a few couples were dancing to their tunes, in Volunteer Park tonight.

The scene at the little public plaza by the Black Sun artwork.
Black Sun is a 1969 sculpture by Isamu Noguchi, located between the Asian Art Museum and the Volunteer Park reservoir.
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Caturday 😼

I found this feline at the West Exit of Shinjuku Station in Tokyo during my recent visit there (stills from a giant video screen).

The entrance to the Studio Alta building right next door is one of world’s famous rendezvous points.
Some 3.6 million people pass through Shinjuku Station every single day.

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Sunday/ monsters and things 😈

We made a run back to the Uniqlo store in Akihabara to return & exchange clothing items for larger sizes there.
Behind the RECOfan record store nearby, there is a mini-mall of display cases filled with figurines for serious collectors.
Some items run into several thousands of yen (several hundreds of dollars).

The first picture is a reminder to passengers not to go onto the tracks to retrieve items that may have been dropped there. Well, these days there are safety barriers and doors in place (see the edge of the picture) that would prevent passengers— young and old— from dropping items onto the tracks in the first place.

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Friday/ the Marunouchi line 🚇

The Marunouchi Line runs in a U-shape between Ogikubo Station in Suginami and Ikebukuro Station in Toshima.
I took it from beautiful Tokyo station (first two pictures) to Shinjuku station today.  (Got to love the graphic posters that warn of the dangers of trying to board a departing train).  

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Thursday/ Yodobashi camera 📸

I checked in at the Yodobashi Camera store in Akihabara today.
(No, I have not bought a new camera yet).
The store is a giant department store for all things technology, office, home appliances, home decor, toys & games, entertainment, and even more.

There it is, the technology and toy emporium (my view of it, at least) that goes by Yodobashi-Akiba, in Tokyo’s buzzing shopping hub for geeks— Akihabara.
Fans of all shapes and sizes on the main entrance display board— today was still hot, but bearable at 31 °C (88 °F).
Nice .. a kit for brewing one’s own beer and ciders and other fermented concoctions. Kirin is a Japanese beverage company.
These colored LED lighting tubes look almost neon tubes. (The iPhone camera sensor could not quite capture the colors from the tubes).
Back at the hotel and a check of the parking lot reveals the first Tesla that I have spotted in the city. There are not many Teslas in Tokyo, or even in all of Japan (only some 5,000 were sold last year). EV sales are still only 2% of the domestic market here, and the top seller is a little Nissan microcar called the Sakura. I looked in vain for a little Tesla toy model in Yodobashi, but there was none.
Another view from my hotel room window: the construction cranes used for erecting the Takanawa Gateway City apartment and office blocks.
Just an interesting gate on my walkabout near the hotel in Shinagawa.
No smoking and no flicking of cigarette butts. I wonder if the sign actually stops any scofflaws from doing that. If you go out early in the morning, you are sure to see people (volunteers in many cases, I’m sure) picking up anything down to cigarette butts from the streets.
A parking lot with exactly two parking bays. I love it.
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Friday/ stamps from Great Britain 🇬🇧

My ‘South Africa 1961-1995’ stamp collection is nearly complete.
Another ‘acquisition’ from a seller from Great Britain made it into my mailbox today, with these stamps on the outside envelope.

Astronomy
Issued 2002, Sept. 24. Printed as a minisheet w. two phosphor bands, perf. 14 ½ x 14
MS2315 1613 (1st) multi-colored, Planetary nebula in Aquila, Seyfert 2 galaxy in Pegasus, Planetary Nebula in Norma, Seyfert 2 galaxy in Circinus
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps 2016]
350th Anniversary of the Royal Society
From a set of 10 stamps
Issued 2010, Feb. 25. Printed w. “all-over” phosphor, perf. 14 ½
3029 2224 (1st) multi-colored, Edward Jenner (pioneer of smallpox vaccination)
3032 2227 (1st) multi-colored, Joseph Lister (antiseptic surgery)
3034 2229 (1st) multi-colored, Dorothy Hodgkin (crystallography)
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps 2016]
London 2010 Festival of Stamps (1st issue) and Centenary of Accession of King George V
Issued 2010, May 6. Printed w. “All-over” phosphor, perf. 14½
3068 2262 (1st) multi-colored, 1924 British Empire Exhibition 1½ d Brown Stamp
3068 2263 (1st) multi-colored, 1924 British Empire Exhibition 1 d Scarlet Stamp
[Source: Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps 2016]

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Monday/ mail from New York City 📨

The stamps I had ordered from a seller in New York City, arrived in the mail. The sender put beautiful stamps from yesteryears on the envelope for me.
Might he have picked the 1934 violet stamp with Mt. Rainier on just for me, because I am in Washington State?
I’d like to think so 😉

Listed in year-of-issue sequence:
1934 National Parks Issue/ Mt. Rainier (one from a set of 10 stamps)
Unwatermarked, Perf. 11, Flat Plate printing
742 A241 3c deep violet, Aug.3 1934, Mt. Rainier and Mirror Lake (Washington State)
1954 Wheat Field and Pioneer Wagon Train
Unwatermarked, Perf. 11×10½, Rotary press printing, E.E. Plates* 
1061 A508 3c brown orange, May 31 1954
*Electric Eye, a machine that had photo-electric cells to properly center the images to reduce waste during the printing and perforation of stamps.
The machines were introduced in 1935 and used into the late 1950s, when USPS found new ways accurate for centering and perforation.
1954 George Eastman (American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream).
Unwatermarked, Perf. 10½x 11, Rotary press printing, E.E. Plates
1062 A509 3c violet brown, Jul.12 1954
1956 Benjamin Franklin (issued to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin).
Unwatermarked, Perf. 11×10½, Rotary press printing, E.E. Plates
1073 A520 3c bright carmine, Jan.17 1956, Franklin Taking Electricity From The Sky (stamp design by Benjamin West)
1956 Booker T. Washington (Centennial of the Birth of Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), black educator, founder and head of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
Unwmk., Perf. 11×10½, Rotary press printing, E.E. Plates
1074 A521 3c deep blue, Apr.5 1956, Log Cabin (stamp design by Charles R. Chickering)
1958 Forest Conservation (issued to publicize forest conservation and the protection of natural resources, and to honor Theodore Roosevelt, a leading forest conservationist, on the centenary of his birth).
Perf. 11, Giori Press printing, Plates of 200 subjects in four panes of 50 each
1122 A567 4c green, yellow & brown, Oct. 27 1958
1962-66 Regular Series/ Andrew Jackson
Unwmk., Perf. 11×10½, Rotary Press printing, Plates of 400 subjects in four panes of 100 each
1209 A646 1c green, Mar.22 1963, Andrew Jackson (7th U.S. President), design by William K. Schrage
1963 John James Audubon 
Issued to honor John James Audubon (1785-1851), ornithologist and artist
Unwmk., Perf. 11, Giori Press printing, Plates of 200 subjects in four panes of 50 each
1241 A673 5c dark blue & multi-colored, Dec.7 1963, art titled “Columbia Jays” by Audubon (birds pictured are actually Collie’s magpie jays)
1973 Boston Tea Party (bicentennial of Boston Tea Party, designed by William A. Smith)
Perf. 11, Lithographed, Engraved printing, Plates of 200 subjects in four panes of 50 each
1480 A894 8c black & multi-colored, Jul.4 1973, British Merchantman
1481 A895 8c black & multi-colored, Jul.4 1973, British Three-master
1482 A896 8c black & multi-colored, Jul.4 1973, Boats and Ship’s Hull
1483 A897 8c black & multi-colored, Jul.4 1973, Boats and Dock
[Information from Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps, 1989]