New Sculpture at Franconia

I'm breaking my self-imposed pledge to not discuss work on this blog, but for a good reason I believe.
Last weekend, Franconia took delivery on an amazing sculpture by artist Mark di Suvero. The piece, called "Johnny Appleseed" was at Chicago's Millenium Park for a few years and now resides at Franconia. With the good karma that Franconia seems to have, a reporter/producer for the local paper just happened to come by the Park with his son while the sculpture was being installed and shot this video.


The sculpture is really beautiful sitting in the Park. Even though the trees are done with their color displays, it's still worth visiting the Park!

Pumpkin carving=paper cutting

I have to admit that Halloween is not my holiday. But I love seeing what other people do and how the holiday inspires them. (The only exception to this is the blow-up decorations on people's lawn. They creep me out, and not in a good way.) This video caught my eye, certainly because of this David's talent, but also because it seems like pumpkin carving uses the same eye and concepts of paper cutting.



I wonder if Beatrice Coron celebrates Halloween? That's a pumpkin that I'd love to see.

Road to Heavens Above at Penland, 2008
Beatrice Coron

List

A pair of columnists in my local paper got tired of talking about the election so, on a positive note, published a list of their favorite things. I'm having a little trouble getting the energy together (blame it on the new job) for full posts, but I thought I could tackle the same kind of list.
So in a celebratory spirit over Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama*, here's my list:

Emerson String Quartet
Weekend to-do lists
Fall
Minnesota Literacy Center
Mad Men
Dunn Bros coffee
Midtown Greenway bridge
The board shear at Minnesota Center for Book Arts
Vera at Wet Paint
my MacBook
Helpful salespeople
Minnesota cornfields
Walter Mondale
Bruce Springsteen
Spoonbridge and Cherry in the Walker Sculpture Garden
Ngon Vietnamese Bistro
Open Book and its book-like stairway
Obama signs on my block
Maira Kalman
New York Times
Ultra fine point Sharpies in all the colors
Jorja Fleezanis playing anything
Tiny cupcakes at Lucia’s bakery
Target
Salsa Lisa

*oops, I promised not to talk about the election. My bad!

The Twin Cities Arts Seen

"The Twin Cities arts seen" is the 5-word description for a great new media blog called 3 Minute Egg. Host/producer Matt Peiken visits some of the events and openings around the Twin Cities for us and lets us know what's going on...all in 3 minutes.
I first found the blog when he did a post on Franconia Sculpture Park, and in the last few weeks, he's visited the Twin Cities Book Festival and the opening exhibition for the Jerome Fellowship Artists at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Watch here if you want to see a book installation that you can walk through.
I'm enjoying his post purely from an audience perspective but I'm also excited about what he's doing from a media perspective. It's getting harder and harder to find arts coverage and Matt serves it up in just the right way. The videos are nicely done, have a sense of fun and are just 3 minutes. And who doesn't have time for that?

Is it love if it's a machine?

Like most love stories, I wasn't even looking for it. But when I saw it, I knew immediately it was the answer to so many of my problems: dog hair, sand, and dry leaves.
Bella is the shaggy dog that I share my life with. I adore her and don't even mind the dog hair. And I've learned to live with the bits of dry leaves she brings in with her at this time of year. I'd wait until the weekend and then assemble broom and dustpan and sweep up each room and the stairs. It was always awkward and never a perfect job and the broom would have to be cleaned afterwards of the dog hair entangled in its brush. I couldn't use a vacuum because of dog hair getting tangled in the rollers.
But just a few weeks ago, I saw the Dyson "Root 6" and thought, "if it works like it looks, my problems are solved." And it does. This baby sucks up anything. You hold it in your hand like a giant ray gun, pull the trigger and it sucks up sand, leaves, dog hair, anything small. You can run it along the corners of your floor and get all the stuff that sits in the cracks. And because it's cordless, you can go anywhere with it. My car is clean. Both sets of stairs are free of dog hair. I can even suck up spilled coffee grounds in the burners of the stove.
Of course, like any love story, there is a problem. Its charge only lasts 6 minutes and then it stops. But the truth is, I often don't need much more time than that. And now, instead of waiting until the weekend to haul out broom and dustpan, I just grab my super-gun-sucker and quickly suck up the dead leaves of the day. I think the relationship is going to last.

Enjoying genius

I thought I had reached a sort of plateau in my relationship with Apple. My laptop is humming along happily; I love my iTouch and its new applications, but I had been feeling like we might have stopped growing together (Apple and I). Then one night idling around on iTunes, I discovered the new "genius" feature. After allowing iTunes to see what's in your library (by clicking "update genius" in the Store menu), you select a song in your library and it finds 24 other songs from your own library that make a great playlist for you...often in a completely unexpected way.
I've built a couple of playlists that I enjoy, but the genius button has found items in my library that I've forgotten about...or forgotten what they might sound like combined with other songs. Genius is a strong word, but this is pretty close. It creates the list, you can edit it if you see something horrible, and then save it to your iTunes library for your iPod or burning to a CD.
Apple is rather genius-like as well, as they're happy to "suggest" new music for your genius playlist, which you can buy from iTune...much like the Amazon "you might enjoy this" suggestions when you order a new book. But it's easy to ignore if you want, and especially if your own music library has become rich and diverse.
Apple, I'm sorry I doubted you.