Getting (Rocky Mountain) High...

After our wonderfully well recieved (even though it poured on Saturday) show in Minneapolis at Edina, we took off toward our Island Home on Lopez in the Pacific Northwest...

Victoria, mistress of the keyboards, goddess of all things to do with trip planning, and all around great planner, arranged to end up at our friends in Gardiner, MT the week that the Yellowstone 'opens'. Of course Lu Harlow, V's friend from College, is the Food and Beverage Director for the entire park and so we did have a fabulous meal at the Mammouth Inn the first night we were there... but that is not what I was thinking of when I started this post!

We (Vand I) got up early and went for a wonderful walk through the town of Gardiner with Lu in the morning... it is a real rough-n-ready sort of frontier town that perches on the steep banks of the river squashed by mountains and the national park. This is the town that has store-front churches and probably 25 different drinking establishments in a place with fewer than 2000 residents. The architechture is a mix of the handi-man-get-it-up-before-winter specials and the 140 year old stone cottages that made alot of sense back in the day...

The rivers are full... so full and fast that you really can't go fishing in them- bummer- and, apparently, people fall in the water and aren't found ever again... yowser!

We spent the entire rest of the day (really until well after 7pm) hiking around in Yellowstone! Started by meeting a mare(?) Elk with her baby that was about 2 hours old! V got great pix of that but I did not...

We went up to the Geysers and walked around looking at the various holes in the terrain that were bubbling and spewing and steaming. Of course we had to remind ourselves that we were not looking at Fox News.

From there we did a bit of Waterfall inspection... and of course they are not conveniently placed near the road- one of them Xan and I hiked down 600 (vertical) feet to get to- but it was worth it. They don't tell you that 600 feet down is a bit over a mile and a half, each way, on the switchback paths that you take to get there... Stunning panorama when you make it there though. There was another way to come down to look at the falls from the front instead of the side but we did not do that...

We did find another hike- down to the base of the Hellroaring Mountains- that was so desolate and devoid of human evidence that, if the romantic pathway through the woods was not there, I would have lost my sense of what century I'm currently in.

On our way back to Lu and Chris' house we did run into a 'park' phenomenon... all of the vechicles in front of us were stopped, in both directions, and all of the folks were on the side of the road... turns out there were a couple of Bull Elks grazing right next to the road! People were completely fearless about walking up to these 6oo pound creatures and sticking a camera in their faces... somewhat insane behavior, to be sure, that our hosts warned us about before we left in the morning...

We made it back home to an everything-on-the-grill dinner and great company...

seems like I'm posting this without all of the great photos for now- transmission errors here at the Library- more Later! Blessings abound!

Oh, I know, Let's have a Festival!

I suppose if I’d had even an spare half an hour over the last three weeks, I’d have stopped and posted a blog entry or two- just to keep everyone informed and up-to-date… but believe me- I did not have that half hour anywhere…


The Arts and Music Festival for 2010 is just a pleasant memory for most folks here… I’m still zooming around and making sure that storage is good for all of the signs and other ‘festival properties’ and answering emails from officials and phone calls from media. That is dwindling off now and we are working like maniacs to make the transition to driving across country to Lopez.

The Festival.

Who knew?

Well, actually, I guess we did… at the beginning of it all was about 5 (completely unexpected) months of really insane Politics- shall we call it the politics of transition?; maybe the politics of allowing?- that devoured all of the luxury of time that we thought we had to plan and build and dream this to fruition. In the end we pulled the whole thing together in about 100 days.

We had to start with the name of the festival, (the Lower Town Arts and Music Festival), and really little else… the city office that had been in charge of the festival for the last 7 years was unable (or unwilling?) to give us any of the contacts for the services they used or the Artists that had participated. They did not have a budget to share of what they spent money on at the last festival, which would have given us clues about where the money went. Amazingly, after producing this festival for years, they didn’t have a single bit of ‘management product’ to pass forward. Not to worry.

Over the next few months we discovered that there were a lot of folks, in and around town, that were heavily invested in the festival either not existing any longer, or existing in a very specific way that conformed to their singular vision.

We went ahead and held brainstorming sessions with anyone invited to participate- we wrote down all of the ideas of what people would like to see at a festival in the neighborhood and did not allow any pre-filtering nay-sayers to shoot ideas down. We took all of these ideas and developed a huge (15 page) on-line survey that allowed anyone in the neighborhood to vote on all of the ideas and rate them. We discovered, in that process, that there were a few folks who had decided to be actively opposed to anything happening. (Didn’t see that coming).

At this point the City group that was thrusting the festival toward us was given a small budget enhancement and now wanted the festival back… oops.

They even went so far as to say the Lower Town Neighborhood Association couldn’t use the name Lower Town Arts and Music Festival because they (the city office in charge of promoting Lower Town and Downtown) had it under copyright… that was too silly and the Mayor shut the down in a heartbeat.

Then the good stuff… the business community- the Bank, The TV Station and Paper, the Railroad, the Car Dealers, the bridge builders- all chipped in and supported the regime change for the festival. People stepped up into the leadership roles for each of the different volunteer positions (organizational heads). Even the City, as represented by all of the department heads with their various clipboards, created a harmony hitherough unheard of in a public event. It was FANTASTIC and the show has even happened yet!

So, Stef and I are running, running, running and then… it’s the day of and all comes together- certainly with excitement and thrilling moments of WTF! But no killer problems and… everyone seems happy… shhh… walk softly… don’t disturb it… everyone is happy!

Wow.

I mean WOW!

And here it is a couple of weeks later and still… everyone is happy!

not Granny's quilt...

Some of the major insanity of the past week has been a national phenomenon that occurs here... It's the Quilt Show.

To the tyros, that seems like a gentle and bengin sort of event, populated with possibly a half-dozen grey-haired ladies of a certain age, slowly looking at fabric swatches...

Wrongo!

This is more like 35,000 folks of every description descending on MY neighborhood for 5 days- it's not a single rentable bed available within a 30 mile radius of the show- it's every imaginable color, texture and pattern of fabric offered for sale, either by the bolt or "fat quarter"...

It is amazing. One of our dear friends is a nationally acclaimed quilter and this show is why she choose to move to Paducah. The quilts that are on display are not your grandma's quilt- we are talking about paintings done in collaged layers of pigmented fabric and constructed of single continuous threads measuring in miles.

They are inspiring to look at as anything that I've seen in the Smithsonian- I kid you not!

These images are just an appetizer- a tease- of the more than 100 quilts that made it through the jury to get to the show...

When I think that I spend too much time in the studio and have no life, and then I look at the work that goes into one of these quilts... I'm not at all suprised that they can take years to complete and isolate their creators effectively from all human interactions...

It's whats for dinner...

I had a fun assignment today...

Our friend, and world class (really!) quilting Goddess, Caryl Fallert hosts a huge number of folks each year as part of the Quilt Show that happens- no that's not right- as part of the Quilt Show that engulfs Paducah at this time of year. As part of that hospitality she has a fancy dinner on Thursday night for about 30 folks...

This year she ended up asking me to pinch-hit the cooking of this meal for her...

So my day has been a layered phenomenon of planning, chopping, pounding and such... the big challenge, of course, is the limitations of the kitchen at Caryl's house... did most of the work here at home and then ran a semi-hysterical shuttle service for foods between the two houses.

Everything came together, as meals have a habit of doing, and the crowd seems sated.

The menu?

I made 3 different foccacia- a garlic herb and Olive oil, a two cheese and curry, and a chicken sausage mozzerella and sundried tomato- for appetizers. The main course was a Chicken Rollantine with feta and fresh spinach layered with all sorts of herbs. I laid the spiraled medallions onto a bed of mushroom sauce... the side dishes of jasmine and wild rice with julienned sun-dried tomatoes and minced olives and sauteed asparagus with the most beautiful medley of different colored peppers... a salad, of course, with a palette of different garni... dessert? of course! I had Victoria and Xan make 5 different types of cookies and I figured that people would have to be able to find something they liked and the leftovers would be appreciated for days afterwards.


After the food was laid out and people started serving themselves (with a certain gusto), I got to come home to dinner that Victoria made... that was like having dessert!

Happy Earth Day...

The library here in Paducah is sponsoring a strange and wonderful art show in the lobby... they've given out a pile of discarded books and asked random community members to alter them into art pieces-as a re-purposing project, if I understand correctly.

So, don't throw those old books out, but carve them, stack them, add to them and reduce them into art that you can then throw out later!

The stack of books that they dropped off for me were, of course, all Readers Digest Condensed Book collections... what choice did I have? I did this piece that is titled "abridged"...


I am not fond of adbriged books- just philosophically- 'cause when I think about it, that author struggled over every word, then the editor forced them to reconsider and choose even more carefully. The publishers all had their crack at it and someone finally decided that those words- the ones that were so carefully selected, ordered and edited- were worthy of getting into print.

Now someone comes along and gets rid of all of the 'extra' words so that the book (all books apparently) is now a one hour read.

I thought of this sculpture the minute I saw that I got the Readers Digest books... the guts of the books being torn out and thrown away seemed so obvious and fun...

You know what the toughest part of this was? Finding someone with an 'old style' paper shredder that plooped out the long strings and not the confetti.

The show is up at the Library and opens today... check it out... think about Earth Day... and don't forget to take time to smell the quilters!

Arts and Music- Paducah Style!

So this will be my first, but certainly not the last, entry about the Lower Town Arts and Music Festival...

I have agreed, though no power on earth can reveal to me why, to be one of the Co-Directors of this years Festival here in Paducah, KY... Don't get me wrong- this is going to be a truly great little festival- one that I'll be proud to say happened in the town that I live in- I just didn't really need another full-time occupation this year!

I have to say at this point, that a lot of the heavy lifting has been done: we have lined up a great list of community partners and corporate sponsors, the Artists have been juried and the logo is designed (see above- thanks David L.)... in fact, I just designed the Information Volunteer's T-Shirt, below, to be printed on bright yellow so that they can be our (wait for it) yellow pages...


Now, I am looking deep into the site plan of our neighborhood and working with Stef, (my other Co-Director) to make all of the parts into a harmonious whole...

All the little triangles are chatting amiably with one another and I have a sneaking suspicion that this will all work out!


You know what the biggest challenge has been so far? Making the emotional transition with folks who have been here much longer than I have, from the way the Festival has been run to the way we are doing it this year.
People tell me they have not been happy.
They tell me that they have not been treated well.
My job has been, (so many different times in the past month), to walk folks through the plan, the players, the strategies and the finesse for this year and the next few years.
People are a bit skeptical- and I have gained a real appreciation for that... but the best politics are the politics of community growth and healing- those are the only ones that I can personally make time for!

Must be Spring...

Clearly this is not the appropriate 'spring' hat for the Easter Island head of Lower Town that seems to have taken up residence in front of our home...

so the first thing in the hat-changing manual requires that you don't repeat the folly of how you put the Christmas hat on, (leaning an extension ladder against a wobbly foam sculpture in the middle of the night), and back your giant van up onto the sidewalk, creating a semi-stable platform to put your borrowed 8' ladder on...

Once you manage to haul yourself up on the van, (our 'new' van has none of the fine places to

grab onto that the old van had), you pluck the Santa hat off and ascend the new spring chapeau.

and now, and probably for the rest of the summer, we have a new ridiculous hat for our guy, in our town...

The community fervor to change the hat didn't really start until the middle of March, but then things really started smoking!

I tried to take an informal survey of what the next hat should be and found out that I should never have opened that door... I instantly had a full calendar of Hat Suggestions- bonnets with bunny ears for Easter, Broad-brimmed hats for the Racing Season, Baseball caps in size XXXXXXXXXL for the summer...

At first I seriously entertained these ideas, immeadiatly thinking of how to 'make it work' in the full scope of weather that we get here... (the high winds are the toughest to factor for), and then it occured to me that I probably didn't need another full time job making giant hats for a temporary sculpture.

I thought of that one just in time!

Clearly, it is officially Spring in Lower Town, now... we have a new can of propane for the grill, new diets, and a new hat!