Category Archives: My Corner of the World

My Corner of the World – Bentonville, Arkansas

Early in April, Heather and I ventured over to Bentonville, Arkansas for a little weekend getaway. Bentonville is of course the headquarters of Walmart. A gigantic company by anybody’s standard. It is also home to the amazing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by a Walmart heir. Bentonville is also in an area of incredible natural beauty, woods, hills, lakes, ravines, streams. It is gorgeous.

High rises are going up in once sleepy little Bentonville

You couple that with Walmart’s reported insistence that companies that do business with them have a local presence.

Hunger by Walter Ufer — A painting from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa at Crystal Springs as the Gilcrease is being rebuilt.

So out of this mish mash stew, an amazing city has sprouted up. Great restaurants, coffee bars, brew pubs. As people all over the country have converged on the city and transformed it.

Johnny by Susie J. Lee — A high definition video of an oilfield worker, on display.

The art museum has ballooned all over town and is building an addition that will add 60% more space to the main museum.

Bachman Wilson House by Frank Lloyd Wright — A Frank Lloyd Wright designed house bought by the museum and reassembled on the museum grounds. – No interior photos allowed.

Talk about a fun place to visit. Just a couple hours from Tulsa.

Pecos Escarpment - by Walter Hogue — An oilfield paintingl

And the main part is all walkable. We rented a condo just a couple blocks off downtown. We were able to walk to the museum over some beautiful trails. We walked to restaurants, coffee places, and bars and went for long walks in the woods.

Talk about edgy, pink here there and everywhere.

We saw some incredible edgy art that I don’t quite understand. I think art should take you to your limits. That is where growth happens.

A night time installation of flowing letters that assemble into words and sentences.

The dividing line between art, museums, town, and nature are very blurred in Bentonville.

Seen on the trail from the town square to the museum

We had a great time. We celebrated my birthday. Another trip around the sun.

It is a rejuvenating place. It almost has a Santa Fe vibe about it.

We’ll be back.

Another nightime outdoor installation

I’m linking up with My Corner of the World.

The Art of Diego Rivera at Crystal Bridges Museum

My wife and I made a little trip earlier this month to nearby Bentonville, Arkansas for a little getaway and also to check out Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. They have a special exhibition of the art of Mexican artist, Diego Rivera.

Rivera was a controversial figure. He was dedicated to his fellow Mexicans and their struggles and was attracted to communism. He was a great artist by any measure. I knew him by his murals but he also painted a great deal.

My favorite work. The staggered man under the weight of the flowers, the colors. Everything about this seems perfect.

I love how he uses colors. The figures are very solemn and wooden. I think he did a great job portraying the culture of rural Mexico.

Portrait of Francie Ford Seymour and Frances De Villers Brokaw

This painting struck me. It is a portrait of Francis Ford Seymour and Frances De Villers Brokaw. Seymour was a wife of Henry Fonda and the mother of Jane and Peter Fonda. Brokaw is a daughter from another marriage. Rivera spent much time living and working in California.

They had some interesting HD video of some of Rivera’s murals. They were startling because these works of art are at street level and every once in a while somebody will walk by.

There are 120 works of Riveras on display and at the end Heather and I were worn out. We tried to look at the rest of Crystal Bridges but we gave up and came back the next day.

I am linking up with My Corner of the World. Go check it out!!

A New Launching Pad

I got a new launchpad for my drone. You don’t need one if you are launching from a hard surface but if you are on grass dirt it helps to have one to avoid damage to the drone’s propellers. Mine is about 24 inches square which is plenty big. The few times I have launched out in the wild it is hard to get away from grass, twigs, pebbles, and dirt.

So I checked it out in the backyard. Usually I launch from the patio but the metal in the furniture messed with the drone’s gps so I was always having to calibrate it.

***at 40 meters, my usual flying distance.***

I almost always fly from my backyard in “periscope mode.” I go straight up and then look around. I don’t fly around looking at stuff. Legally I can do it but in a subdivision I don’t think it is too neighborly to fly over somebody else’s property.

The view to the southwest. That’s the neighborhood elementary school to the left.

And straight to the west.

I think my launching pad works well.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday (April 13 edition)

Also linking to My Corner of the World

Camera Obscura on Greenwood Avenue

A friend of mine who is a retired college professor in the Oklahoma City area posted a link on facebook about a Camera Obscura installation in the Greenwood Area of Tulsa right in the middle of “Black Wall Street” being built by current professor. I decided to go check it out so last Saturday I went down and followed the signs to the third floor offices of the president of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce. The office had the windows masked over except for a small hole in which was placed a lens of five or six inches in diameter. The amazing thing was that there was image on the other side of the room projected on rolls of paper and the sides of the room.

I used my phone to take a photo of the image.

It was an upside down and flipped sideways image of the scene across the street. I was inside a giant camera! It was amazing. I stood there astounded as the professor, Mark Zimmerman, a photography professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, explained what was happening. This is the earliest form of photography, first started in 500 to 1000 AD. Of course nothing is recorded unless one traces the drawings.

And here is the flipped image. I should have flipped it again left to right. Professor Zimmerman explained that our eyes see upside down and flipped images but our brain does the correctionso for us when it gets the images from the eyes.

Here is an article from Petapixle, with photos and videos showing how Professor Zimmerman made a camera obscura in his classroom.

Here is a link to the Tulsa World article about the installation.

And below is a YouTube video on how to make your own.

So seeing a Camera Obscura was my wow moment this past week.

I am linking with “My Corner of the World.”

The Christmas Chute at Sapulpa, Oklahoma

I know that many people are just so done with Christmas right now but hear me out. The town of Sapulpa, OK just southwest of Tulsa put on a special light show this year on their main drag which is also part of Route 66. They call it the “Christmas Chute” and it was several years in the making.

People in town conceived of this idea of blocking off the street and putting some platforms above the sides of the street and installing lights.

The result is magical. You have lights overhead and they are a bunch of different themes. You are walking along the streets bathed with light from above. So the effect is that the people watching are part of the show and it adds to the energy.

_DSC0561 — The underside of Santa’s sleigh

They are going to do it every year from now on and it will be part of our Christmas goings on from now on.

At one end stands the county courthouse with a Christmas tree in the yard.

This is the star at the top of the tree.

Speaking of Route 66, this was their section of the show.

The downtown merchants got in the act by dressing up their window displays.

Snowmen!!

Here is an article from Southern Living discussing the installation and how it came to be.

Linking with My Corner of the World, check it out!!

2022 Dia de Los Muertos Art Festival at Living Arts Tulsa

Living Arts hosts normally hosts at Dia de los Muertos Arts Festival during or close to the holiday of November 1 and 2. Of course, nothing since 2020 has been normal. This year I wasn’t able to attend the festival which includes art and performances and food because of the weather but I did make it to the gallery to see the Ofrendas or altars to the dead.

I love the ofrendas. They are made to honor the dead. They have a lot of symbolism in terms of the colors and decorations used. Here is a great article about the symbolism. Many of the altars adhere to the pattern others do not so much.

I look at them as stories of a person’s life as told by the loved ones. Religious faith, professions, hobbies, loved ones, favorite foods, sports teams, and other facets of a person’s life is displayed. Obviously almost all of these people were much loved when they were alive.

So I try to never miss these. They are wonderful works of art with meaning.

This ofrenda was finished off by sand on the floor below with a beach scene. That could be mine, or a small trail in the woods.

Some ofrendas were communal such as this one offered up students at a local school or who made painted rocks in memory of a loved one of theirs that they had lost.

Dallas Cowboys merchandise was displayed on three of the altars. If somebody makes me an altar, they could add that.

Outside, there are murals in honor of deceased people.

RIP Frida Kahlo, what an amazing artist.

Have you thought about an altar for somebody. I have. I think it would be interesting and emotional coming up with a design and gathering the various elements and then putting it together. I think it is good to remember people. I am not one who wants to get rid of reminders of people. Yes, sure that can be sad, but what about all the happy memories?

I am linking with My Corner of the World. Go check it out.

A Voyage Solar System Walkway “Lifts Off” in Broken Arrow

On September 13, the City of Broken Arrow, OK celebrated their Voyage Solar System Walkway installation. The Walkway is a model of our solar system at a one to 10 billion scale. The scale involves both the distance between the sun and planets but also the size of bodies.

So the sun is the size of a large grapefruit. Earth is a small dot just a few feet away. Pluto, is 2000 feet down the street.

The installation is designed to help people understand just how vast our solar system is by bringing it down to human scale. Voyage was designed by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. The first installation was on the main mall in Washington, D.C. Other installations are in Kansas City, Missouri, Houston and Corpus Christi, Texas, Palo Alto, Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, Ocala, Florida, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.

It was interesting hearing about the efforts of many people over the years to get the Walkway installed. Money was raised by local businesses, individuals, and a go fund me page. The city helped out with construction, It was a community effort.

I love that it stretches from the front of an elementary school to the local high school. A ready made model for learning just steps away.

Here’s a video the City of Broken Arrow put out that explains it a lot better than I can.

And of course I made the Voyage to check it out.

I’m linking with My Corner of the World

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