rose rustling, eclipse, addressing the shop, and folk art

Friday evening my brother arrived for a week's visit. He lives in the PNW in Washington state across the river from Portland. He stays with our sister who lives across the street from me because I don't have a guest room any longer.

Saturday was the last EarthLab speaker for the year at Hesed House in the red house. A woman from the Rose Rustlers came and spoke about the organization. They started out by going around to old cemeteries and abandoned homesteads and taking cuttings of the old antique roses that thrived even with total neglect and have brought some of them back into commercial availability by propagating them and then she talked about how to do that. She was through with her talk but still answering questions when I left to go out and check out the eclipse over at the welcome center (the white house) where a group was standing out with the dark eclipse glasses. Pretty cool. We didn't get totality of the ring of fire but pretty nearly. As soon as I walked out of the red house I could tell it was going on. Didn't get dark by any means but there was just a different quality to the light and air. Meanwhile back at home Marc took this picture of the multiple images as the light filtered through the yew tree onto the deck.

After I got home I finally went over to the shop and opened up all the bay doors and the door to the studio with the goal of cleaning up the studio and putting way all the packing material and in general getting it ready for work and beginning to reorder and clean out the big bays. We've been retired from the etched and carved glass for 6 years now and it is time to get rid of all the materials and supplies used in the production of same. I cleaned off one of the metal shelving units in the big bay and dragged it into the last small room that has yet to be built out from when it was torn out to the metal walls after the flood 6 years ago and has boxes of stuff covering the floor and stacked up full of stuff from the back room and stored over there for 6 years like all those small bowl reproduction molds and other miscellaneous molds and waxes, games and puzzles and craft items, books and cast glass experiments, open house display stuff, just stuff too numerous to name. So I flattened the boxes and organized packing material that was taking up floor space in the studio and put it all on that. When I was done the studio looked like this (of course there's no before picture because...me).

Sunday we, my sister and brother and I, did a day trip into Houston to go to the Orange Show and the Mosaic Park. I hadn't been to the Orange Show since the kids were little and it looked basically the same except for 40 or so years of decay.

The Orange Show is a folk art construction that was built by Jeff McKissack on a vacant lot across the street from his house. It is constructed almost entirely of found and scavenged items he collected throughout his life. He initially had a nursery on the lot for 10 years and in 1968 began building the Orange Show in earnest and ending in 1979. In his words the purpose was to encourage people to eat oranges, drink oranges, and be highly amused.

Without further ado or information (you can go to their website for that), here are some pictures.

Next: Smither Park (the mosaic park).