Sunday, November 29, 2009

Studio Move and birds

I am moving the studio from one space to another (but the batteries are dead in the camera). I'll post pics in the next blog. In the meantime, I'm posting some of my photos that I find interesting.
After the dedication of the Home of the Innocents sculptures, we walked around Cave Hill Cemetery. I was amazed to see a Woodcock there. I didn't think they would be in the city.

I feed birds on the window sill of the studio, and so I have a lot of birds that come up to eat. This is, of course, a Blue Jay.

The other day, I opened the window of the studio to let out a huge number of ladybugs (should have taken a photo of that, ah well). I left the window open for several hours as it was a nice day, and this wren came in the window. It was really checking out the room, looking all over the place. It perched in front of the mirror, started singing, then attacked it's reflection -twice. It eventually left the room and I shut the window.



I took a walk down to the creek in the evening. I managed to catch this shot of a heron flying past at sunset.




While I was walking by the creek I took this photo of the moon and trees. It may look a little odd, actually it's a reflection. I have flipped the image horizontally to make it appear an actual shot of the trees...

I accompanied Don to Victor Oolitic when he went up to pick out some stone. While he looked around for something, I took photos of the stone blocks. Here I am looking through a stack of blocks at the sky.

I found this guy on one of the blocks, no idea what kid of beetle it is, but I thought he was pretty cool...

I found this miniature landscape on one of the blocks in the quarry. This formation in limestone is called Stylolite.


As we head towards winter there's not a lot of interesting things to photograph close-up. But this plant gone to seed looked interesting, with the sun behind it...

Friday, November 20, 2009

Home of the Innocents sculpture dedication

There was a preview party for the sculptures the day after they were installed. Hosted by Sharon Receveur, we had a lot of great food and we got to meet a lot of great people.

The dedication cememony began with Sharon Receveur giving words of welcome, followed by Home of the Innocents CEO Gordon Brown and then Linda Speed spoke. Sharon Receveur and Linda Speed were the catalyst for the project, and they gathered a committee for which this project was obviously a labor of love. Many, many hours were spent finding all the names of the children. They were a great group of people to work with.

Ciaran Brown played Sister Emily Cooper in a production called "Remember me"

Each of the child actors stepped forward with one of the names of the children. Some had a short description of the childs short life which ended with the question "Will you remember me?" It was a quite moving performance.

Becky Riddle unveils a historical marker about Sister Emily Cooper and her work at Home of the Innocents.

Doves were released as "Ascension" was unveiled.

"Ascension" unveiled. The prayer and blessing of the sculptures was led by Rabbi Stanley Miles of Temple Shalom and Bishop Reed. The Ballard High School Madrigal Singers gave a performance before the unveiling of "Ascension". Linda Speed is on the right in the red jacket.

Metamorphosis in her site. The butterflies on the blanket symbolize the children. THe sculpture represents how Sister Emily Cooper, through her care, symbolized by the blanket,helped the children achieve spirituality

Detail of "Metamorphosis." Here you can see how the butterflies transform from flat patterns to fully dimensional butterflies, symbolizing the children's spiritual transformation.

"Metamorphosis" from the left side.

"Ascension" from the front. This piece represents Sister Emilys work with children, guiding them to spiritual growth.

Detail of "Ascension"

The back of Ascension.

Cave Hill Cemetery donated this marble bench near Metamorphosis as well as a bench next to Ascension. They beautifully set off both sculptures.