Lens-Artists Challenge #36: Around the Neighborhood in Des Plaines, Illinois

Lens-Artists’ weekly photo challenge this week is Around the Neighborhood. I selected some photos from my photo archive of the last few years that are “typical” of Des Plaines, Illinois, the Chicago suburb where I live. More and more of these signs have popped up in people’s yards since the beginning of the Trump administration. […]

CB&WPC: Murals

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge this week is Murals. The word mural comes from the Latin word for wall. It is defined by Bing as: a painting or other work of art executed directly on a wall. Wikipedia goes into further detail: A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on […]

Journey to Egypt, Part 9: Valley of the Kings & Howard Carter’s House

December 27, 2018 (This post is part of my travel journal, and also for Your Daily Prompt 3/8/19: Nobility; and for Norm’s Thursday Doors 3/7/19 ). This morning we visited Valley of the Kings, where there are 62 tombs of Egyptian nobility – specifically, pharaohs, including Tutankhamen. They date from Thutmose I of the 18th […]

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Round

Frank at Dutch Goes the Photo’s Tuesday photo challenge this week is round. circles of ice that formed inside the holes of the mat outside our back door Sculpture at Dr. Evermore’s Forevertron (near Madison, WI) Macy’s Christmas balls Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier in Chicago

CFFC: Patterns Around the World

For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Patterns, I am going multicultural! November 2018: At a Chicago Sinfonietta concert celebrating the Indian festival of Diwali, during the intermission, audience members (especially children) made their own Diwali patterns using glue and glitter on preprinted patterns. Here are two of my favorites. December 2018: In Egypt, we visited Al-Azhar […]

Journey to Egypt, Part 8: Luxor Temple

December 26, 2018 Luxor Temple, in the heart of Luxor city center, is much smaller than Karnak, making it easier to see and digest. We visited after dark, around 6:00 pm. Mohamed said it is more striking at night and he was right. Luxor Temple was almost right across the street from our hotel, Sofitel […]

Journey to Egypt, Part 7: Karnak Temple Complex

December 26, 2018 We left Cairo this morning and flew to Luxor (which means “palace” in Arabic). The flight was short – about one hour. Luxor in ancient times was the Egyptian civilization’s capital, called Thebes. Modern-day Luxor grew out of the ruins of ancient Thebes, and today its population is about 800,000. I liked […]

Journey to Egypt, Part 5: Cairo Museum of Egyptian Antiquities

December 25, 2018 The Egyptian Antiquities Museum in Cairo is a huge neoclassical building which is home to the world’s largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts. The collection contains over 100,000 pieces, so it is said that if you spend just one minute on each piece, it would take over nine months to complete the […]

A Photo a Week: Contrasting Colors in Nature and by Design

Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week challenge this week is about contrasting colors, using a color wheel which shows which colors contrast with each other. In art, we often see paintings with colors that seem to pop out of the image. An artist may use what are called “complementary colors” (contrasting colors) to emphasize something […]

Thursday Doors: Sigma Alpha Epsilon National Headquarters (OHC 2018)

During Open House Chicago 2018, we visited several sites in Evanston, including the national headquarters of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Regardless of my personal opinion of this fraternity’s history of hazing (for which it has been disciplined at least nine times) as well as of fraternities in general, the headquarters building is an austere […]