Yesterday Mom, Nathan and i braved the sweltering heat to visit the The Des Moines Arts Festival. As you may know, it’s an event i like to attend every year and have blogged about before. Last year we were able to walk to the festival from our loft, which was pretty nice. This year we drove, and it was well worth the ride and the heat.
I was drawn to some of the same artists this year that i have enjoyed in years past, which means that if i had, say, and extra $1,300 lying around it would be well worth it to invest in a painting since my taste isn’t changing too rapidly. If only! Anyway, here are some of my faves:
I posted about this artist last time, but i was very happy to see him return to the festival this year because i think his paintings are so lovely and interesting.
I’m always drawn to the photography, as you can see…
It seems that strong, simple forms are what i enjoy the most. There were a couple of other painters that i enjoyed a lot but they have crap for websites so i couldn’t find good images to post. I also wanted to mention Keith Grace‘s work again but i couldn’t find images of his new object-on-gray pieces.
Check ‘em out, and if you missed the festival this year, i highly recommend that you not miss out again next year!
It’s been a long and lovely several days since my last post. On Thursday at our class i finished my first-ever oil painting, which i’m pretty proud of.
Again – i know it’s not perfect. The cloth in the background makes no sense because the still-life shifted from week to week and by the end i was just guessing at how the light had fallen on it when i did the under-drawing. I’m not very good at imagining that sort of thing, which is why i don’t draw from imagination.
On Friday Nathan and i drove to Chicago to celebrate Valentine’s Day away from home. We stayed at a lovely little B&B in Oak Park called Harvey House and took the L into the city. I did a bit of shopping but didn’t procure much. We had pizza at Gino’s East and Nathan decided that he prefers Felix & Oscar’s pizza here in Des Moines. I’m pretty sure i caught something by not using my hand sanitizer until after my first bite of the baked ravioli appetizer. Zicam is helping me fight it, though. I’m drinking a lot of tea, too, and will probably become addicted to it as a result.
Saturday we went back into the city to see Millennium Park and the Art Institute. It was awesome to see Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, one of Van Gogh’s “Bedroom” paintings, and some really beautiful Monets. But the painting that struck me the most was this one:
Nouvart Dzeron, A Daughter of Armenia by Ralph Elmer Clarkson, 1912
IT LOOKS JUST LIKE ME. WTH? Even my Mama agrees. But she says i’m prettier. 
We had a lovely dinner at a little place called Francesca’s Fiore in Forest Park and Nathan made me drink most of the wine since he had to drive back to the B&B. I ended up talking his ear off about Rome, my family and various photographic film formats. Best Valentine’s Day EVER.
On Sunday we visited IKEA and picked up some awesome stuff for the new loft before driving back to DSM. We’ll be moving in nine days!! I began packing yesterday. I know i’ve got a long way to go, but it’ll all be worth it in the end.
Here’s the wash (under-painting) for my first-ever oil painting! I didn’t have time to finish it and i realize the values are off, but i’m still proud of it.
This will become a more fleshed-out monochromatic painting next week. I’m really enjoying the painting class. It’s really different from dry media, which stay exactly where you put them (except for smearing) and are difficult to remove if you get it too dark. Oil paint stays wet and can be pushed around and blended. It’s way fun!
I’m re-building my collection of creative works, since almost everything i made before got lost. And this time i’m going to photograph EVERYTHING.
If i was a painter, i’d paint this. Maybe i’ll give it a shot anyway.
Mom and i went on a little vacation last week, which i shall proceed to tell the story of in photos.
The first stop has no photos though, so um, just kidding. We went to Cedar Rapids to spend a night with Tim, Angie and Jamie (my brother & his fam) and stopped to see Nina & Karl’s new place in Coralville along the way. It’s nice, i’m jealous. Tim and Jamie showed us all the flood damage in their neighborhood, which was amazing to see. Almost every house has a big orange X on it, meaning nobody can enter. There’s just stuff all along the curbs in the residential area, and there was even a house that had been carried halfway into the street by the flood waters. WAY worse than the damage in Des Moines.
From there we headed toward Uncle Dave’s house and stopped at a lake on the way out of CR.
I look goofy in this pic. We were afraid the water was contaminated, so we didn’t get in.
We’ve stayed with Dave three times in the last month now, which is probably more than in the past eight years or so. It was good to visit again. From Dave’s place in Long Grove, IA we headed North to the Maquoketa Caves. We only went as far as the mouth of the big one, however, because the lights had been turned off and we had no lamp. Also, it looked extremely muddy and scary.
The mouth of Dancehall CaveWe decided to proceed to Crystal Lake Cave, just south of Dubuque, which is well-lit and clean and illuminated by a young tour guide so disenchanted with his job that he jokes frequently about how lame it is to come all the way to Dubuque, Iowa just to see that particular cave. The “Crystal Lake” was pretty silly; it looked more like a puddle that a few people had chucked coins into like an out-of-service mall fountain. I didn’t bother to try to photograph it.
I don’t remember what the different formations were called. Soda straws, maybe?
Then we went to the Mississippi River historical museum in Dubuque. I liked the animals. I’m still much like a little kid when it comes to museums.
Not doing it, just friendly.
We stayed in a cute little town called Mineral Point, Wisconsin that night at a bed & breakfast that made me wish i had a boyfriend. It was up above a brewery/restaurant which had really nice beer and food. The next morning we went to the Land’s End warehouse clearance event a few miles north. It was huge and crowded and insane, and i didn’t buy anything.
We drove all the way down to Kalona, Iowa that evening and stopped at President Herbert Hoover’s birthplace along the way. Turns out he was only in Iowa until he was eleven, at which point he moved to Oregon. Kinda like my life, but backwards. We had dinner in Iowa City and then headed down to Kalona, and caught an amazing sunset while driving. I couldn’t even begin to capture it, because out there in the country i could see the horizon all the way around us, 360 degrees, and it was all just beautiful.
We walked around Kalona a little the next day but decided against taking a tour of the Amish community there. I probably should have taken it, since i have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to live like that. No internet? Come on. What would i do with my Saturday nights?
Going back through Iowa City the next day, we stopped to see the legendary Black Angel at one of the old cemeteries. Supposedly people tell stories of how a man commissioned the statue for his deceased wife and it turned black in a day because of her infidelity. The truth is that a woman commissioned it for her husband’s grave, refused to pay for it because she thought it was ugly, and was sued by the artist and made to pay $5,000 which back in those days was a lot of money. Her name is on the grave and the birth date is 1830something, but there’s no death date. Like maybe she refused to be buried under that thing.
It’s not nearly as beautiful as the one i photographed in Rome. Few things are, i suppose.
After that we went shopping and headed home. It was nice to go on a little adventure for a while, but i always feel pretty relieved to be home again after a vacation. We’re settling back in now and will probably be heading to the Iowa State Fair before returning to the grind on Monday. Also rooting for Shawn Johnson tomorrow in the women’s gymnastics competition–representing iowa! Go team USA!