Pull Up A Seat – For Halloween

Some spooky characters Pulled Up A Seat and joined the party at our Fall Family Festival earlier this month. Everyone looks forward to this annual event as it’s one of the few times in the year that all the familly gets together and, as usual, our daughter and her husband made the party a special Halloween treat for young and old alike.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Weird And Wonderful

This week, Ann-Christine is looking at the Weird and Wonderful as a theme for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. I guess I’ve seen some weird and wonderful things in my time and the following artwork could possibly qualify for Cee’s Photographing Public Art Challenge too. The first place that springs to mind is the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. The exterior and interior are decorated with crop art murals made from corn husks and other natural materials.

Closer to home, in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Anish Kapoor’s sculpture, officially titled Cloud Gate but more affectionately known as The Bean, could definitely be classified as weird and wonderful.

But the prize for the most weird and wonderful, from my perspective, has to go to House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin. This place is truly awesome, with it’s fantastic and bizarre collections carefully displayed for maximum effect. Here is just a sample of what you might see there, from the Infinity Room to dolls on carousels.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Street Art In Duluth

This week, Patti is looking at Street Art as the topic for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. I hope I will be forgiven for including a few pictures that do not pertain to street art but I thought it might be interesting to show why the art that I’ve chosen is so apt for the city of Duluth and Canal Park in particular. They also serve a further purpose as I’m linking them to two other photo challenges; Photographing Public Art and Pull Up a Seat.

According to Wikipedia, the Port of Duluth is the world’s farthest inland port accessible to oceangoing ships. As we walked up the street that leads to the massive aerial lift bridge (more on that in a future post) three paintings that were attached to a wall on one of the buildings caught my eye. Unfortunately, I cannot find the artist’s name but until that moment I hadn’t fully appreciated the part that shipping plays in this city. I quickly realized, however, that one of the main tourist attractions in Duluth is to check out the shipping schedule and Take a Seat in Canal Park in order to watch these vessels arrive and depart.   

The second piece of artwork (top left) from just outside Canal Park is a sculpture entitled ‘Determined Mariner’ by artist Richard Salews.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – The Ordinary

This week, guest host, I. J. Khanewala, is looking at The Ordinary as the topic for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. Whilst walking round the track at our local gym last week, I couldn’t help thinking that this ordinary piece of exercise equipment bore a strong resemblance to the praying mantis in our garden, only on a much larger scale. Once the idea got into my head, it persisted until finally I had to stop and whip out the phone to take a picture.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Seen Better Days

This week, Tina is looking for things that have Seen Better Days for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The first two images were captured in Marion, Illinois. Some parts of the city definitely looked like they’d seen better days, as had the sink in the jail at the Williamson County Illinois Historical Society Museum.

An old wheel outside the cabin and a rusty piece of farm equipment at Spring Valley Nature Center must have seen better days.

I took this picture on a whim as I was walking through a parking lot. It seemed like it might come in useful for a photo challenge, and it did.

Finally, a picture, taken recently at the Duluth Train Museum, of an engine that had probably seen better days.