Catch Up

Hello friends! I hope you had a Merry Christmas! We had a wonderful one and I've spent every day since doing a lot of this.....




Yipee! Santa was good to me! I'm working on giving the blog a makeover to accommodate the new pictures - it might take a while before I figure out if it's possible :) I know we're well into winter now, but I somehow forgot to blog about 2 fun family things from waaaay back in the fall...They are both "blog-worthy" so here I go.

First - I visited the Shelburne Museum with my cousin and Grandmother. I've been before with my grandparents (they love it there), but this was my first visit for the past few years. I'm not a big museum fan (shocking I know) but I do love this one. It's a HUGE museum, with 39 exhibition buildings. Many of the buildings are historic and very unconventional - they have a ship, a lighthouse, etc. that house collections of art as well as extensive gardens. It was founded in 1947 by a woman named Electra Havemeyer Webb. For all you art history majors (Sarah that means you) this is a MUST DO on your next visit :)

We went to see the Ansel Adams exhibit, which was great, but it was overshadowed for me by the accompanying collection of Edward Burtynsky. WOW.

Here is how he describes his work:

Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

It's VERY cool. He also displays the photos so that they take up almost an entire wall - I don't know the dimensions but I'd guess they are like 8 feet by 5 feet. I'm not going to do him justice, but here are a few of his pictures off his website.

I believe he started by photographing granite mines. This one is not too far from us in Barre, VT.





He also did a great piece on OIL - from extraction to the end of oil. This first pic is of an oil drilling field in California.



This one is from Bangladesh and captures what is called "shipbreaking." Once ships carrying oil are done (for whatever reason), they drive them to this place in Bangladesh. The tide carries them in and, when it goes out, they are stranded on the sand. Workers then go out and "break" the ships down for scrap metal, etc.



The other cool thing at Shelburne Museum was a permanent exhibit of Impressionist Paintings. The museum owns five works by Claude Monet, four by Edouard Manet, seven by Edgar Degas, and four pastels and two prints by Mary Cassatt. Several were first exhibited in Paris in the famed Impressionist Exhibitions of the 1870s and ’80s. WOW. It's not like going to Paris and seeing these things in the Louvre where they are protected behind glass and with guards watching. They were close enough to TOUCH, literally right in front of you. I was tempted to do it but managed to hold myself back :) When we went, we were the only people in the room. It was exciting.

There are so many more things I could tell you, but I'll spare those of you that just don't care and show you some photos of us enjoying our time instead.

View from the parking lot - not too shabby.



I told you there was a ship - it's called the Ticonderoga.







As my cousin said to me, "how many 28 year olds can say they had their grandma talk them into riding the carousel?"



Onto the second fun activity - Apple Picking at Shelburne Orchards.

Cousin and I had lots of fun here too. I'll just share photos because I'm tired of typing!











OK great - now you're all caught up :)