Cee’s Black & White challenge this week has the topic “just one of anything.”
art
SquareOdds: Artwork
I love art and visit art museums or open air art installations whenever I can. There are always oddities among them!
Becky’s February SquareOdds 2/27/22
SquareOdds: Odd Faces
I haven’t been on my blog much lately, so I’ve missed many days of Becky’s Square Odds this month, even though I love to participate! So, instead of just one oddity, here are several odd faces (including some faux faces)!
PPAC #29: Sidewalk Art
Artists who use sidewalks as their canvas know that their art is temporary. If you are lucky enough to see one of these 3D-looking masterpieces, it’s best to take a photo right then and there, because next week it could be gone! I have only myself encountered one of these sidewalk paintings – usually I see them online somewhere – so I was happy to find this one, which was done on the sidewalk in front of the Des Plaines Public Library last August. I have not seen it since, so I assume it was removed or washed away.
Only having this one sidewalk masterpiece to post on the Photographing Public Art Challenge, I looked in my archives for a few other works of “art” on the sidewalk.
I’m not quite sure what this was about (we were just walking by) but it covered an entire block in downtown Denver when we were there three years ago.
This may not be considered “art” but these intersection crossings in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, were eye-catching and clever.
Sometimes, sidewalk art is in the form of mosaics, like this one that we sat next to while listening to our guide outside the Church of the Beatitudes in Israel.
More famous are the mosaic tile sidewalks in Rio de Janeiro. This view is looking down from a bar on the top floor of a hotel in Copacabana.
CFFC: Kaleidoscope
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge is ending its series exploring color this week, with the theme 4 or more colors in one photo!
Holiday lights
Farmers’ Market
At the library
Gardens
At the zoo
Immersive Van Gogh
The Past, Squared: Oct. 20, 2016
I picked an October 20 from my blog archives. I am featuring them here for Becky’s Past Squares (or SquarePast?) today. The photos below are from two posts on Oct. 20, 2016.
For Thursday Doors that week, I posted doors of houses in Des Plaines. I have selected the ones that are most seasonal.
The other post I did that day was for Cee’s weekly Fun Foto Challenge. Her topic was vibrant colors. This is, coincidentally, the topic of Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week. These photos were taken on a trip to Texas, where we visited the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Squares That Didn’t Make the Cut
I’m finally jumping in to Becky’s October square challenge: Squares of the Past!
When I do an ongoing challenge, I create a folder especially for that challenge, and often the pictures I add never “make the cut.” So I’m going to begin with the Squares in those folders which I didn’t include originally.
These “bright squares” were all taken at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington in September of 2019.
LAPC: Keep Walking
Lens-Artists’ Photo Challenge #163 invites us to share photos of our walking trails and discoveries!
We used to hike much more than we do now. Even so, when we are traveling and there is an opportunity to take a walking tour, we take advantage of it! Also, we go on day trips in the Chicago area, to a variety of places to find something artistic or unusual.
On our first day in Tanzania, we spent the morning on a genuine hike! This ficus tree captured my interest.
On that same hike, our guide stopped to pick up something off the ground – a giraffe turd! Holding it in his open palm, he told us it was the turd of a male giraffe, because of its somewhat football shape. Female giraffe turds are flat on each end! Several of our group of hikers crowded around to get a close-up of this unusual find! The guide patiently waited, while with his other hand he looked at something on his cellphone!
Where there is giraffe poop, you can be sure there are giraffes nearby! This one walked nonchalantly away from us – since it was also a male giraffe, I wonder if his was the deposit we had been examining!
Later during that trip, on the day we arrived at Serengeti National Park, another hike had been arranged! I love to walk because that is when I see the small things that would be missed on a bike or traveling in a vehicle! I took photos of these three small things on that hike.
Most of my walks are short treks either around campus or somewhere else in town. On campus one day, which happened to be my birthday, Dale and I were taking our usual walk around campus, when we came upon two other residents who were walking their dogs and had stopped to chat (while social distancing!). It’s common for residents to greet each other or chat on these walks, but before long, someone says, “Well, I need to keep walking” and they go their separate ways.
During the pandemic, we’ve taken day trips to far-flung suburbs and nature reserves.
Some of my favorite walks are in sculpture parks! Our walk at Morton Arboretum, which happened to be on my birthday this year, was in search of a new installation of sculptures by a South African artist.
PPAC #10: 3-D at the Library
I’m always amazed by the artists who can draw on sidewalks in such a way to create an optical illusion of a 3-D image. These drawings are usually made with chalk so they don’t last long! I photographed this one a couple of days ago in front of the Des Plaines Public Library.
This post is my contribution to Cee & Marsha’s Photographing Public Art #10 challenge. Marsha Ingrao is hosting this challenge for the next few weeks.
Life in Colour: Blues
Jude’s Travel Words blog’s topic for Life in Colour this month is the color blue. Jude challenges us to find “unusual” blues! OK, I’ll do my best…
Wanderlust & Wonderment 