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.
giraffe footprint Scorpion flowerDung beetles roll dung into balls, then dig a depression in the earth and push the dung ball into it. The dung beetles lay their eggs in it.
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.
Dale stops on a wooden bridge over a marsh at Cuba Marsh Forest Preserve.Reflections in a lagoon – Cuba Marsh
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.
Dale approaches the first sculpture, called “Hallow,” at Morton ArboretumWe did not stop to rest on this bench, although the scene was inviting.The last sculpture, “Basilica,” of the installation that we visited. The artist of these beautiful sculptures is behind the left hand. It was cool to be able to meet and chat with him a little! I don’t know who the little girl was – she just happened to get in my picture!
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.
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…
Sky reflected in a car’s headlightsGlass art decoration at The MooringsSelfie after modification by SnapSeedSteps up to an Immersive Van Gogh presentationViolaSiberian bugloss
Dandelion after modification with SnapSeed
Aquarium at Brookfield ZooChagall Windows at Chicago Art InstituteSeveral shades of blue in this shot of a church in BudapestBlue door, blue bag in BudapestGraffiti in Germany
Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge this week has the topic close-up or macro.
Hazel doesn’t really like me getting this close for a photo. She seems to be sleeping, but one eye is slightly open!
Center of Queen Anne’s lace
Taken from our balcony on our river boat cruise on the Rhine: apparently this swan is used to getting up close to humans (probably wants an edible tidbit!)
At a Buddhist temple in Des Plaines, IL
Our niece got into the shot I was aiming for.
Sometimes you run into (almost literally!) an unexpected subject. This caterpillar was hanging from a single thread – probably weaving its cocoon.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell what I’m taking a picture of! Take a guess!
I took this selfie when I was about to go outside for a prolonged period in February – rather frightening! With my glasses on, wearing a mask caused my glasses to fog up and I could barely see!
A piece of a multitude of faces, taken at Morton Arboretum’s display of sculpture by Daniel Popper. (See my blog post in PPAC #4 for more!)
I am happy to get in on this brand new challenge with co-hosts Cee Neuner and Marsha Ingrao! For this very first week, Marsha is the host. She says:
The #PPAC is deliberately open – photographer’s choice. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Seasonal Displays
Graffiti
Statues and Sculptures
Collections
Store Windows
Car Shows
Artistic Construction (benches, buildings, bridges)
Wall Art (not just murals)
Challenge Guidelines
Art has to be freely visible from a public street, freeway, or walkway.
Photographers have free access of use for their photos – no copyrights by the artists.
The challenge starts every Friday by 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
Write a post on your blog, publish it, and include a link back to the appropriate host’s post – not on Cee’s or Marsha’s #PPAC page. Also write us a comment and paste the link into the comment. Sometimes pingbacks are missed.
Visit at least two or three other participants in the community and leave them a comment.
Here are some public art pieces in downtown Denver, Colorado. From these photos, you can see why I fell in love with Denver and hope to visit again soon!
This was the first sculpture we saw, in the downtown business district.
Most of the public art we saw was on a pedestrian street, closed to traffic.
These decorated pianos were available for anyone to stop and play (we actually saw someone playing one of them), but I don’t know how well-tuned they were!
Other public art-based entertainments: chess/checker boards!
My husband wasn’t interested in playing chess or checkers – he was just tired and wanted to sit down for a minute!
More cows:
Cows weren’t the only public art bovines on display – there were bison also!
Another sculpture:
Cleverly designed restaurant signs can also be classified as public art!
The Summer of Frida is my theme for this week’s Monday Window hosted by Ludwig Keck. People in the Chicago area – especially in the suburbs of Glen Ellyn and Wheaton – are going gaga over Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist who painted a variety of subjects reflecting her experience and Mexican culture, as well as many self-portraits meant to portray her own thoughts and feelings.
“Frida in New York” (1946), photo by Nicholas Muray
At the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, the theatre on campus built a brand new gallery in 2018-19 specifically to house an exhibit of 26 Frida Kahlo works borrowed from the Dolores Olmedo Museum in Mexico City. After negotiating with the museum for the exhibit, they planned for it to take place in the summer of 2020.
We all know what happened in 2020 – Covid-19 – so the exhibit was postponed, and opened with great success and fanfare on June 5, 2021. It will run until early September.
Dale next to the “2021” that is painted in Mexican style at the museum. If you look carefully, you can see that the style and colors of the painting on the numeral 1 are different from the other digits – that’s because the original number was “2020” and they had to get a different artist to paint the number 1.
The exhibit is expected to draw large crowds, so one must buy tickets online with a specific date and time for entry. Already reservations have come in from 48 states and 6 other countries! Not wanting to lose the opportunity to capitalize on this event, the suburban communities of Glen Ellyn and its neighbor, Wheaton, have decorated their downtown areas with festive “papel picado” (colorful banners of crepe paper with designs cut in them), large pots of colorful flowers (Frida Kahlo loved flowers, which figure prominently in her work) and by painting images of the artist on the windows of stores and restaurants.
This downtown Wheaton street is blocked off to traffic and tents have been erected to have outside seating for several restaurants. We didn’t eat outside because the weather was too hot! Note the colorful flower pots and “papel picado” crepe paper banners.
I have a good friend who lives in Wheaton and is a Spanish professor at the college, so after we toured the exhibit, we went to downtown Wheaton for lunch, where we saw several of these windows.
My friend Sandy and her husband taking a selfie in front of one of the windows.
This pizzeria is across the street from the restaurant where we had lunch.
Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacan, Mexico in 1907 to a German father and a Mexican mother. Her father was a photographer, so there are many photos of Frida and her family. At school, she was studying the prerequisites for medical school but in 1926, on her way home from school, the bus she was riding in was in a serious accident when it collided with another vehicle.
Frida’s drawing of the accident
Frida was thrown to the ground and suffered serious injuries from which she never fully recovered, in spite of having several surgeries. While in a body cast, she began to paint on it, thus initiating her career as an artist.
A replica of one of Frida’s body casts that she painted on.
She broke her pelvic bone, and fractured her back in three places, the result of which she was almost always in pain, and was not able to birth a child.
These corsets are similar to the ones Frida would have had to wear most of her life.
At the age of 20, she married the famous muralist Diego Rivera, and spent time in New York, San Francisco, and Detroit, where he had commissions to paint murals. Diego said of Frida that she was a better painter than he was! Anyone who sees the beauty of her subjects, and the intricate details and symbolism in her paintings would tend to agree!
La columna rota (The Broken Column) (1944), oil on masonite
Autorretrato con changuito (Self-Portrait with Small Monkey) (1945), oil on masonite
Hospital Henry Ford (1932), oil on metal. This painting depicts Frida’s miscarriage, when she was hospitalized in Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
Coincidentally, there’s a new biography out by Celia Stahr, called Frida in America. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in knowing more about Frida Kahlo and her work. Several of her works, mainly those painted while she lived in the United States, are featured in the book.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week has the subject flowers – real or fake, an artist’s vision, a mural, a garden or a field of flowers: from a Van Gogh immersion to a castle in Germany.
Spots and Dots is the creative topic for Leya’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.
flowers (2 orchids at Chicago Botanic Gardens, sunflower at Cantigny Park-Robert McCormick estate, Wheaton, Illinois)
animals (Tanzania)
genets, Ndutu Safari Lodge
hyena, Serengeti
cheetah mother & cub, Serengeti
leopard, Serengeti National Park
D’Arnaud’s barbet birds, Serengeti National Park
giraffes, Arusha National Park
art: sculpture (dalmations in Sao Paulo, Brazil; abstract sculpture in St. Charles, Illinois; giant pumpkin somewhere in Japan – this photo was a screenshot; Chinese lion at Cantigny Park, Wheaton, Illinois)
museum art (tapestry, light display)
Leda Catunda, Onca pintada No. 1, 1984, (at museum in Sao Paulo, Brazil)Exhibit at Museu do Futuro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
public art
mural on a wall in a Sao Paulo neighborhood
in an alley painted with murals, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
Clock, city center Cologne, Germany
Lightscape light show installations for the holiday season, (Chicago Botanic Gardens, Dec. 2019 and Dec. 2020)
