All the things Missouri

I realize that I totally under reported my lovely time in the gorgeous state of Missouri! And that seems to be totally unfair to my amazing Mad-Missouri friend, Cheri.  She has been wanting to see my pictures and when I got back I was swept into thinking about school, and kayaking, and biking again, and catching up with several of my people who I hadn't seen/talked to for a while.  The last thing I wanted to do was sit at the computer when I was so used to going at break neck speed, or alternatively- snuggling with those grandchildren of mine.

The Silver Tree on Art Hill in St. Louis

SO- as a surprise for her, here is an in-depth review!! I am writing this while waiting to get hungry, so I can eat and then go into school- since I got my weight lifting and a bike ride in already.  And I am not hungry when I get done working out--- especially bike riding.  You know,  I really suck at bike riding.  Lol.  Hills kill me.  KILL ME.  The words that escape my mouth.....  but its easier than a couple months ago.  ha.

First of all, I have to say that as much as I love my Wisconsin (GO PACK GO) and Lake Superior and all, I do very much enjoy being in different parts of the country and I really have to get into more southern states.  The weather up here has turned to it's glorious late summer pattern of highs in the 70's, lows in the 50's- the humidity has diminished (and yes it DOES get humid up here) and the sunsets are stunning.  In fact I am sure the my biker buddies from the south could undoubtedly bike 80 or 90 miles up here with no problem, since it is more like winter temperatures for them.  hehe.  ANY WHO, as much as I am reveling in this, Missouri is SUCH a gorgeous place to visit.  I will say that their rivers are a little sketchy looking, so I will stick to kayaking up here in flowing waters, but wow the scenery. And while it was freaking hot down there, I just didn't care because it was so much fun.  By the time I finished in Janesville, I will say that I was so sick of sweating through a set of clothes and then freezing in the air conditioning 4 or 5 times a day....  I am a northern girl for sure....

Pickle Springs

I don't mind the drive to Cheri's place, but Illinois gets to be a bit much sometimes.  I am always wishing for another windmill thing to show up.  I don't mind corn fields, heaven knows that is quite familiar to me, since I grew up in the middle of one.  But it is pretty cool to get across the Mississippi into the St. Louis area.  The land is different (i.e.: not flat) and I sort of like driving on the big freeways too.  Of course this is all timed to NOT be during rush hours, so I can enjoy the drive.

I arrived at Cheri's the day after the culmination of a very VERY busy month or so, and I know she was glad that I was there to provide distraction and my usual comic relief.  We went and picked up her grandson Charlie almost immediately after I arrived and we got to sit and catch up while he played in the swimming pool at a local establishment.... and we had a little light supper and refreshments and had a wonderful time chit chatting our afternoon away.

Pickle Springs stream

The next day (as were all the days) was an action-packed one, where we of course began our journey of eating out every single meal-  because we are just that awesome!!  HAHA!!  We began with coffee always at her house, because we are amazing and addicted humans and proceeded to have a lovely breakfast at a coffee shop in nearby Farmington.  After tossing around idea for what to do next, we settled on hiking at Pickle Springs.  Pickle springs is a lovely natural area with an almost 2 mile trail that you follow up and down and around...  it was pretty dry when we were there, but apparently is quite lovely after a rain.  It was lovely this day too. But it is indeed a HIKE, not a walk!  :)

Love this mini waterfall, that was probably 8 - 12 inches tall  lol

We ate a late lunch at a really cool restaurant in Farmington called 12 West.  The air-conditioning and nourishment were very much appreciated, and it was very good.  It was easy to find vegetarian options everywhere we went! We had to pick up Mr. Charlie from daycare again that afternoon, which gave us a chance to hang out at her place and just relax.  Our plan was to go to a covered bridge when Amanda got home, but she got stuck in traffic.  We later  got part of the way there when I remembered that the park that it is in closed at sunset..... so we cut our losses and had supper at Lix- an ice cream shop.  Because everyone should have ice cream for supper sometimes. AND we stopped for a few moments at the very cute train depot in Farmington as well.  Night pictures anyone?

Train Depot in Farmington

Friday was a city day for us.  I had very few requests for my trip, but I did want to get to the city at least once and see the art museum.  It was spectacular as I indicated in my previous post.  And I had a friend who was interested in me and my droning on about all things art history.  She's the best.  I just love that place.  They also had a folk art special exhibit which was really fun to see as well.   When we finished there, I had a special request to have vegetarian sushi for lunch, and my dear friend was happy to oblige.  We ate at a place called Mizu, and again I was not disappointed.  I had avocado roll and one that was tempura style that I can't remember the name of.  They subbed the fish in it with sweet potato, and it had some cream cheese as well as veggies and I also split an order of deep fried tofu.  I was in HEAVEN!!!  Following, we walked through the very beautiful Missouri Botanical Gardens and rumor has it we had CHEESECAKE for supper- because that is just how we roll.

Oh look- columns!  :)

SUSHI BABY!!!

Crazy big lily pads at the Botanical gardens

Saturday was a little different day, as Cheri was involved in a crossfit event.  We squeezed breakfast in between events and when that was all done, we went a bit of a drive north to the Katy trail.  The Katy trail is an old railroad right of way that has a really nice packed gravel surface for biking.  It also has places to stop along the way, including a really yummy brewery that gave us some nice rehydration!  YES we drank a dark beer and it was fabulous.  We biked 18 miles when we ran out of daylight and energy-  A late night stop at "Crackle Barrel" was our food for the night (I think we only ate twice that day??) and it was a pretty yummy blueberry french toast.

Biking and beer- perfect companions and perfect company

Part of the Katy Trail 

Getting darker- on the  Katy Trail 

Sunday, my last day with her and her family, we stayed in our jammies until at least 10, which is something I never do, and it was the nicest morning.  We decided to go up to St. Louis so we could eventually have Italian food on the Hill, but first we walked through the zoo, and around the beautiful lake/pond on Art Hill called the Basin.  Wow it was so beautiful.  There was exactly 2 Italian restaurants open that Sunday night and we were appropriately dressed for only one of them, and it was just fine with us.  It was really nice to sit down and have something sort of similar to my Italy experience, including raspberry gelato, but there is something about being IN actual Italy you just can't beat.  THIS was good though- very good.

Fancy bird at the zoo!

This enclosure was really cool! Ibis, egrets, ducks, etc.

The tiger was hot!

Part of the basin (many of these pix are taken with the phone)- you can see the museum in the background

Dining with a really good wine

A very dark photo of the covered bridge

I had just the best time running all over the area with my sweet friend, we could have stayed in her house all day and had just as good of a time.  I am so lucky to be able to visit her though---

part of the Chihuli installation

Ribbit

Giraffe and friend 

The corpse flower almost ready to bloom- apparently a smelly thing.

Summer has been good to me again, but this one seemed to go faster.  I am not at all ready to give in to it, but there isn't much I can do to stop it....  I am however ready to see what the next journey, adventure or encounter might be- no matter what it will have some joy.

** Btw, as usual I always underestimate the amount of time it takes me to write, post pictures, rearrange, review and rewrite....  lunch has long since been eaten, boxes unpacked at school, groceries bought, and a few people have been talked to....  So here we are at almost 10 pm and I will be publishing- I should know by now, don't you think?

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Denver art museum

Imagine my surprise when I noticed that I had begun and did NOT FINISH one of my Denver adventure days....

LOVE the work of Deborah Butterfield

We went to the Denver Art Museum on Wednesday, our first full day in Colorado.  We had driven to Golden Gate Canyon Park for hiking earlier, then ate a YUMMY lunch at the Mediterranean restaurant in Golden.  So part of our master plan for the trip was to hit up the art museum and so after consulting map lady off we went.  

We were able to navigate through the city and found the parking garage for the art complex.  A very handy place to park and turned out to be a stroke of excellent luck.  

Photo taken from an upper floor of the museum (notice the gathering clouds)

The Denver Art Museum is housed in a very interesting building, I definitely enjoyed the architecture and the various sculptures that were on the grounds.  Inside, there was a great collection and I LOVED the Miro exhibition!! 

I took a bunch of random photos of things that caught my eye!

Monet- a sentimental favorite

The beginnings of Cubism...

This installation was so amazing to walk through!  An alternate reality?  A fantasy?  Lol, I loved being in that brilliant red and the grey foxes were in suspended animation.  The action and snapshot reality made it so enjoyable to experience.

This piece was my favorite of the day.  It was so compelling- I looked at it for at least 15 minutes.  I loved seeing a modern take on a classic Romantic painting.  And the black and white definitely caught my eye....  I just kept searching the picture for something- I am not sure what.  So much I could talk about here- the angel in the center that is the lightest, the repetition of shape, the  use of contrast  and value and form.....  I also like the relatively large size of the painting- so easy to immerse yourself in the tumble of items that lead your eye through the composition.

I am glad I had a nice text discussion about it, even if the Mad-English teacher was no where to be found at that moment.  I did direct him to the piece so he could see it for himself.  :)

The art was just so good- a very nice museum indeed.

In other news, our original plan was to roam around downtown Denver for the evening.  Just as we were getting ready to leave as the museum was closing, the storm clouds rolled in.  We went outside to notice the rain starting and we found a very nice museum security person, who directed us to Mad Beans..... when we walked out the heavens opened up, or the bottom fell out, or any other rain metaphor  you want to use,  and the same very nice man lead us up into the museum and told us how to get to the back door where we scampered across the road to the coffee shop.  We sat there and enjoyed a beverage while watching the rain, then hail and then even more rain come down...  and SUDDENLY both of our phones alerted us to a tornado warning!  Fortunately for us, the tornado was in the southern part of the city.  And like previously mentioned- our rental was safely tucked in the parking garage during the hail!

Just to add to the excitement, there was a flash flood warning on our phones about a half hour later.   Sadly this was bike to work day in Denver- I wonder how many people were caught in that little situation.  We eventually got out of the coffee shop and went on down to a little bakery/cafe where we had pastry for dinner (life was good), but the rain was not our friend that night.  So we hustled on back to the car and headed for Golden.  We attempted to get another walk/hike in, and that did not end well- well, it did not end in a dry manner.

In my usual way, I had some very interesting discussions about all sorts of things in the coffee shop with people I didn't know.  So much fun to travel.  I did have interesting discussions with the person I do know, as well, don't get me wrong.  We had a really great time comparing notes about the art work.  And we, of course, began planning our next adventure.

I have gotten a lot of joy out of reliving my trip this evening.  I hope you may have as well.

Art show and other thangs

Yesterday turned out to be a very busy, but ok day.  I hit the ground running at school and barely got time to sit.  After starting some new projects with the High School kids, I also was zipping around getting ready for the art show I put up after school.

I will say I used to do a lot more to prep for art shows.  I used to make sure I had little name tags and most had some sort of faux frame and just fancied it up in general.  I just do NOT have time for that anymore.  People don't seem to notice, or else they just don't mention it.  I have too many classes each week to have the time for fussing.  My two rooms still look like a bomb went off in them in certain places, I am making a little headway, but it is a constant battle.  Oh well.

So anyway, an art show went up at the Credit Union and it was SO sweet- I had 3 people from the community in that hour tell me how much they liked seeing the art work.  It was fun to hear their obvious joy!  It will be up for a couple of weeks.  Every time I put up a show I see how my preferences as an art teacher is mixing some realism with a lot of abstracty stuff.  It makes me happy to see it, but I wonder how the community likes it.  Not that them liking it is any overriding goal of mine.....  Just a random musing, here.  I want them to express themselves more than I am worried about a specific method.

Speaking of adorable (well I am now) I had a Kindergarten class yesterday who was exuberant shall we say!  Lol, that means they were not quite in the listening mode.  We had a project to finish, so we did that and then usually free drawing makes them very happy.  That was one NOISY group of kiddos, so I pulled out some origami paper and enticed them a few at a time over by me for mini cup folding lesson refreshers.  I eventually lured them all over to me and we even took a pic of our finished cups.  It was nice to have the noise level drop for that last 15 minutes and they LOVE to fold origami things.  So cute.

I have been LOVING this gorgeous spring weather!  I have put on over 20 miles on the road since last Friday.  I can kind of feel the stiffness in my lower legs today, mostly because I am almost back to my regular speed of walking.  I have been purposely walking faster- gotta get my groove back.   My times on Runkeeper don't look a lot faster as I have been taking photos with this amazing new phone.  The camera is really nice and there is an excellent in app editing system now that lets me circumvent Snapseed or Aviary.  **LOVE**

Speaking of ANNOYING, I went to pick up phone case at our local retail business establishment and they had NONE for iPhone 6..... are you KIDDING me?? I am not exactly in the first wave of 6 buyers.  Usually I am way far behind on phones and trying to scavenge for an old case.  Ugh.  I have some specific needs for cases, and so I like to be able to feel them to make sure they aren't too slippery and I don't want them to interfere with sliding in and out of my pocket when I walk,  etc.  And of course it needs to be minimally bright and preferably cute.  Sigh.  So, Amazon.  I might have my own personal shopper, ahemcoughRosecough, look for something for me.  :)  It should be here tomorrow on good old April 15.

Anyway, that is what I have this morning.  I do plan to get in another weight session tonight and most likely a walk again.  If nothing else I will take another spin down to Smith Lake.  It is a nice shortish (2.5 mile) trek with lots of hills and of course the gift of Smith Lake at the end.  

Be a joy giver today everyone!!

Student Art work courtesy of the Mad Art Teacher- November 2013

I had mentioned in a previous post that I would put up some really nice student art work and so here it is!  There is a variety of classes represented and a variety of assignments.  From realism to abstract  to design, there is a lot to see here.

This is my HS student's art work, I put some of my Elementary kid's work on the other blog I have.  The other blog is merely a way for me to keep track of the very irregular schedule the elementary ends up having.  Wow, I think I have seen my Thursday kids, in particular the 5th grade once or twice in the past 5 weeks.  

Anywho, there are some single shots of work and some window pictures.  I did no editing, so if some of the pix are dark or unclear, that accounts for it.  :)

close-up drawing

Close-up assignment

Skeleton drawing for drawing and painting. Initial drawings for Advanced art

Design assignment, abstract painting

Closeup

Abstract 1

Design

closeup

Initial drawing

Initial assignment

skeleton 

shading assignment- Intro to art

abstract2- leaf

Abstract 2

Abstract 2

Hand drawing- Intro to art

I am very proud of the progress made during this first quarter.  Even though the advanced art kids are asking for the freedom to do their own projects, they are doing super well with a bit of structure.  AND none of them would have attempted any sort of abstract work.  We are not familiar with abstract up north here, so a little exploration was well worth the discomfort they felt exploring absolutely unfamiliar territory.
Don't worry their chance is coming!  But they will have to prove that they have some deep plans for their projects.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the art work!  I am really looking forward to the 2nd quarter- they are proving to be an outstanding group of artists.  And this is giving me so much joy.