More Flowers

Flowers, Flowers

Balloons Blow

Balloons seem like fun but most of them end up as pollution or wildlife mistakes them for food and ingests them. Save your money and don't buy balloons. They blow.

Dogwoods

Primrose II

Primrose I

River View

Impressionist at Ft. Tryon Park II

Impressionism at Ft. Tryon Park

Silks

I went to a silks demonstration at the Renaissance Faire in Ft. Tryon Park a few weekends back. Click on the link to see a slideshow of some of the pics.

Benches

Flags with Plane

Busy

Fabric

Spider Web

The Cloisters

I visited The Cloisters Museum last weekend. I can't believe how well most of the artwork has survived the years. They've survived time and light and travel and religious reformists with torches and grubby handed tourists who touch when they're not supposed to.


There were tapestries - of course most people are familiar with the Unicorn Tapestries,

or more particularly "The Unicorn in Captivity"

They had this other tapestry (I forgot the name). 

It was really beautiful. It's a 3-dimensional tapestry as you can see in her dress.  The colors of the tapestry have held up so well. I asked a docent about it and he said it's because they used natural dyes that last so much longer than our modern chemical dyes do.

I also really like all the stonework. 

They have a HUGE alabaster altar that was brought here from France and is still completely intact (I didn't get a picture). They had this big stone carving that was hanging on the wall. There was a part of it that looks a little bit like a bunch broccoli florets.

I can't believe how intricately people can carve stone without it breaking. I don't know if I'd ever have that kind of patience.


There were a numbers of sculptures and castings that I liked.

Animals were used only as adornments. I suppose it was considered ungodly to hold animals in a higher place; unicorns, okay (they're everywhere in art from that time period) but real animals no way.

I'm always amazed by how much art has been created in the name of God, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, Yahweh. I definitely need to go back there.

Sketch Artist

The Real Gods

Stonework

This Apse is from the 12th Century.

The Garden