Merry Monday - Kirsty Mitchell's Wonderland

Detail of The Ghost Swift from Wonderland , a book by Kirsty Mitchell

Last summer an exhibit of photographs by London artist, Kirsty Mitchell opened at The Paine, our local art center. It was titled Wonderland and definitely lived up to it's name. Along with her beautiful artwork were videos documenting the massive amount of work involved in their production, from the handmade costumes and props to the small army of helpers stringing cables and creating smoke. At the heart of it all is her love for her mother and their shared passion for reading. Wonderland grew out of her grief after losing her mother to cancer and is a beautiful tribute to her memory.

This show was one of the rare instances where taking photos and sharing them on social media was encouraged as opposed to being strictly forbidden. So one day I grabbed my camera and set off in the middle of the week expecting to have the place pretty much to myself. Oshkosh is a small town and there's generally more interest in football than anything else, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that even on a Wednesday afternoon the gallery was packed. In fact the exhibit has broken all sorts of attendance records and was even extended for a few extra weeks.

The Last Door of Autum

Capturing the beauty of these photographs was impossible, as you can see by the ghostly reflection in the upper left. Fortunately, we are lucky enough to live in the cyber age and it's possible to visit Kirsty Mitchell's fantastic web site and view her extraordinary work as she intends it to be seen. Her photography and videos are there along with the diary of her journey, so a visit to Wonderland is closer than you might imagine!

a photo from Wonderland , a book by Kirsty Mitchell

There was no question about whether or not to pick up her fabulous Wonderland book and in late summer we learned that there would be a visit from the artist herself! Unfortunately, we couldn't make it to any of the events at the Paine but did manage to get to her Q&A held at the university one evening. She is a lovely person with tons of enthusiasm and a great sense of humor. I could have sat there all night and listened to her talk about her work. It was standing room only in one of the big lecture halls with a huge group of fans from Pennsylvania and others from as far away as California.  

A Twist in the Tale from Wonderland , a book by Kirsty Mitchell

Spenser loves big picture books, especially the ones with other four-legged beings.

She'll Wait For You in the Shadows of Summer

It's hard to come up with an adequate way to describe these works of art. They seem to inhabit a long lost fantasy world because of their deep ties to nature, yet with their undercurrent of life and death they feel very real and in the present. Kirsty Mitchell has taken photography to a place where it rarely goes, I can't explain where that is but I can't wait to see what she's going next!

This week I'm finally getting to join Marfi at Incipient Wings for Merry Monday.

I'm happy to get to share the photography of Kirsty Mitchell with all of you.

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend, thanks for stopping by!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Skeleton Crew awoke before the crack of dawn to get the turkey in the oven for Thanksgiving dinner. We all have different preferences when it comes to our beverage of choice in the morning and some choose more wisely than others but all that matters in the end is that dinner is served.

One thing I am grateful about at Thanksgiving is not having to make a lot of decisions about the menu, although including everyone's favorite side dishes can be tricky. Every once in awhile it's fun to add a weird veggie, if only to scare the picky eaters. I'm afraid putting this purple cauliflower on the table might be going a little too far. Maybe it will work better in the centrepiece?

Then there is the decorating. Let's face it, Thanksgiving decorations barely exist and there are only so many turkeys you can put around a house before it starts looking like a miniature poultry farm.

So creating a Thanksgiving atmosphere relies mainly on pumpkins. They look ok in a group and usually look better together than a flock of turkeys -  but once again, a little goes a long way.

 So sprucing up my house for Turkey Day basically comes down to removing the most spooky and overtly Halloween stuff and relegating poor Ivy to whatever closet she will fit into. Burt resumes his post in the corner of the living room with his hat turned around to show the Packers logo. For the most part he's well behaved, although I occasionally find an empty beer can in his hand. Hmmm...

  

I've always liked those cute fabric banners that have been around for awhile but I haven't come across the right one until this fall. I ended up choosing a wrinkled concoction in orange, black and purple. There was just something about it and the price was right so it came home with me. As usual, I had no clue where to put it but after a few tries it ended up in the dining room. Then all too soon Halloween was over and it was time to pack it away until next year.

 I'm embarrassed to admit that once it was gone I really missed that cheap mess. Even though it was always getting caught in the doors, it looked festive and who doesn't like jingle bells? It briefly crossed my mind that it might work for Thanksgiving - in some alternate reality where no one ever laid eyes on it - but eventually I came to my senses and realised I could just make one, duh! It could be in appropriate holiday colors (whatever they might be) and it would be fun. 

The whole thing turned out to be ridiculously simple, even for my limited sewing skills. Skipping the fabric store saved a lot of time thanks to a stash of material left over from making costumes for high school musicals and the odd reupholstery project. My vintage 1960's sewing machine was unearthed and miraculously worked so in a couple of evenings it was done.

Since it's only decorative I used a mix of fabrics but it's mostly inexpensive polyester trying to look like brocade. The rust tapestry-like material came from an old purse, the stripe is actually real silk taffeta (where on earth did I get that?) and the bells were survivors of a pillow Andy's dog ate. 

  The new banner hasn't come apart or fallen down yet, so it's time to get back to work. There's potatoes to peel, cranberries to cook and that table's not going to set itself!

Today and every day, I have so much to be thankful for

and I am most grateful for my family and friends, near and far.

Thank you for dropping by. 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

A Walk Through the Tuileries

I love fall and I love Paris, so arriving when the trees were in their autumnal glory was about as perfect as our vacation could get. Unfortunately, the weather was crazy and the sun disappeared faster than a chocolate croissant. That was ok, Paris always looks great, even on a cloudy day.

We had caught an early train to the city and since our hotel room wasn't ready, we opted for a stroll through the nearby Jardin des Tuileries. To be honest, I never gave it much thought. It's a nice way to get across Paris without having to walk alongside six lanes of heavy traffic. However, since putting this post together, I've learned it has quite a history of it's own - for a garden.

In 1559 Catherine de' Medici, a widowed queen, built herself a royal palace with a big fancy garden. She sold the palace she was living in and picked a spot next to the Louvre that had once been home to factories that made roofing tiles called tuileries. Apparently, she wasn't bothered by the working class connection or maybe it means something else in Italian? It sounds pretty anyway.

Hmmmm, Chanel or Dior?

It was a popular spot with the next four generations of kings until Louis XIV came along. He hired André Le Notre, a famous landscape architect to redesign the 63 acre space into what it looks like today. Unfortunately, Louis didn't hang around long enough to enjoy the transformation. He had built Versailles and moved there permanently in 1682 when he got tired of dealing with the Parisians. 

Marble statutes are everywhere, they line the main paths, surround the ponds and seem to pop up where ever there's space. The bust at the top of this pedestal is Charles Perrault, a Parisian author who is credited as being the founder of the modern fairy tale genre. In 1667 King Louis XIV granted his request to open the Tuileries to the everyone, making it the first royal garden to be open to the public. After the Revolution it became a permanent public park. 

In 1697 Perrault published a book subtitled, Tales of Mother Goose, for the amusement of his children. It included his re-telling of the folk tales of Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood, among other stories. One hundred years later his writings influenced the Brother's Grimm to produce their versions in German. Would we have Disneyland without this guy? It took another hundred plus years after that to honor him with this statue. Better late than never. 

Then there are the Moat Goats, always busy keeping the grass tidy. The Chévres des Fossés (yes, even the French word for goat sounds nice) is an endangered breed, there were only about a hundred of them left a decade ago. A non-profit group brings them to the garden to keep the grass in the moats (again, a nicer word than ditch) that surround the grand pond under control because the area is too steep for conventional lawn mowers. Undoubtedly, they're less noise, too.

Until the 1960's most of the sculpture in the garden was from previous centuries. Since then modern and contemporary works have been continually added. Actually, we watched one being installed and it looks like they keep a sort of changing exhibition going on all of the time. 

As we got closer to the Louvre the clouds began to gather . . .

. . . and so did the crowds.

After Napoleon I became emperor in 1804 he moved into the Tuileries Palace and had the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel built to serve as it's gateway and to congratulate himself on his military victories. In 1871 members of the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government that lasted only two months, burned the palace down after France lost the war with Prussia. Honestly, the Europeans fought among themselves so much it's hard to believe there was anyone left to carry on. Over the years the garden was occupied by Austrian, Russian and Prussian soldiers, hit with German artillery shells and saw fighting during the liberation of the city from the Nazis in 1944. After being around for over 450 years I guess it can handle a few million tourists each year. 

Another thing I had never noticed before was that through the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel you can see the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde and all the way to the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs-Élysées. How could I miss something 75 feet tall? At this point it was looking like we wouldn't make it that far without getting drenched, what a time to forget to bring the umbrella.

Getting to the end of the gardens and crossing the street to the Place de la Concorde is something I usually try to avoid, especially when it's about to rain. However, HM wanted to take some photos so we risked becoming road-kill and joined the tourist hoard. The monument is quite an interesting combination of ancient Egyptian art and 19th century French geekyness. This 3,300 year old obelisk once stood at the entrance to the Temple at Luxor. It was a gift from the Egyptian government and in 1836 was placed in the center of Paris, where the guillotine stood half an century earlier. The gold leaf markings on the it's pedestal are diagrams explaining the special machinery used to transport it. Sometime in the 6th century BCE the cap was lost but replaced with a gold leafed version in 1998.   

 It's a little less than a mile from the Louvre to the Place de Concorde and we got there just before the sky opened up. We ducked into the L'Église de la Madeleine (the building on the left, another bit of Napoleon's work) where as luck would have it, there was a free concert that lasted until the rain stopped! Gardens are always beautiful and thanks to his two new knees, HM and I were able to walk through the Tuileries on what turned out to be a very educational day. So, are you ready for the quiz?

Thanks for stopping by!