Jersey Boys

I'm off to see the musical "Jersey Boys" today with my mom, my sister and her friend. We're all quite looking forward to it, it's supposed to be a great show. I love the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, don't you? My favourite song of theirs has always been, "Who Loves You". Or is it "December 1963"? Perhaps the title track from "Grease"? Maybe "My Eyes Adored You". Oh dear, tough choice. Ask me again after I've seen the show - I might have made up my mind by then!

A Visit to the White House

Our sleeping TTC collector is really getting around - last week, he was on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, this week he is visiting the White House.

A Collage Creation

It's Thursday night, so I must be somewhere taking a class. :)

Tonight, I'll be at C1 Art Space (Queen and Ossington), enjoying week 3 of 4 sessions on collaging and mixed media. So I thought I'd share this collage I made the other night, which is the result of our first week of instruction. I call it "Looking Within".

During the first class, our instructor Sandra had demonstrated putting pictures behind cut out images. I found myself with the yellow piece in the centre, which looks (at least to me) a bit like a spider web, wanting to put the eyes peeking out from behind it. I found another set of eyes and then a third and the words "look" and "vision". The theme of self-examination just sort of grew from there. Mostly because of the text I used, which are various quotes on the topic. I have a book of quotations and looked for entries on "seeing" or "vision" but "self-examination" was the closest thing I could find. For example, the one shown in the closeup photo says "Observe thyself as thy greatest enemy would do, so shalt thou be thy greatest friend." (Jeremy Taylor)

A Present from Holland

As part of the Remains of the Day class I signed up to take with Mary Ann Moss to learn how to make shabby journals (see details in my blog posting from back on January 20th http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2010/01/london-calling.html), we have a Flickr group to share photos of our creations and a Yahoo group for emails.

Some people in the Yahoo group have kindly offered to swap goodies with other group members and I contacted a woman named Annelies in Holland when she sent out an email to say she would be interested in exchanging ephemera.

I wasn't entirely sure what to send when I put my package together for her. My understanding was that we would send each other paper goods, vintage or new, with which we could make the pages for our journals. So I put together a collection of items - pages from old magazines and children's books, brochures from local attractions, a Toronto subway route map, used security envelopes with some of our Olympic stamps on them, in honour of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia (which start in just NINE DAYS!! So exciting!), that sort of thing.

Last night, I was delighted to receive Annelies' package for me. Talk about a celebration of riches. It kind of made me laugh to see what she had included, as some people might think some of things were better intended for the garbage or recycling bin - newspaper pages (in both Italian and Dutch), labels from canned food, security envelopes that she would have received in the mail. To me, they are a fascinating look at how people in another country live their everyday lives, the same but different from ours. What makes these commonplace items even more exciting, most of the writing on them is in a completely different language (Dutch or in the case of that newspaper page, Italian), which just makes them all that more exotic.

She sent me an atlas page of Holland, some beautiful paper napkins (see photo above of the one with the fancy cutlery on it), foam flowers and loose postage stamps (now why didn't I think of that?), various sheets of decorative paper, both small and large. One of the very best things she sent me? Chocolate -yum!!

Even better than the chocolate are the photos of windmills that she included - so Dutch, so perfect! I had sent her a picture of Canada geese that I had taken years ago but it just doesn't compare to the lovely photos she sent.

Many thanks to Annelies for her generosity in sending me this treasure trove of goodies. I can't wait to use them in my journal pages.

Never Mind Those Groundhogs

Did we really need a bunch of furry rodents to tell us we're going to have 6 more weeks of winter? I think not. All we have to do is step outside and it is painfully obvious, although today seems almost balmy by comparison since there is no wind.

On the positive side, my dear friend Heather is celebrating her birthday today and I wanted to send her my best wishes for a special day. Sometimes she's a bit shy, so I thought this photo of her hiding behind a menu in Puerto Vallarta last January would be best to use. Then again, I could just use this photo of the two of us together one day last summer.

Happy Birthday, Heather - love you!!!

199 Days to Go!

As you can see from the counter on the right, I will be in Paris in only 199 days. I'll be exploring the sights with Kate McKinnon and if you'd like to join us, just click on the link to the right to read all about our plans for France and Spain this summer and then contact Kate to let her know you'd like to come along.

One of the places I'm looking forward to going back to see more of is the Louvre Museum. The building itself is so beautiful, it could be an exhibit all on its own, even if it were totally empty.

Of course, it's not. It's full of fascinating things, like the Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. It's funny because people are so fascinated by the Mona Lisa, which is actually a rather small painting mounted on a special wall in the middle of the room surrounded by an airtight, completely secure enclosure that they don't let you get too close to and often somewhat obstructed by the tourists clustered in front of it, that they are a bit surprised when they turn around and a huge painting directly opposite to it that takes up virtually the entire wall, the Marriage of Cana by Veronese. There are about 50 other paintings in the same room, if you happen to notice them and of course, numerous others throughout the museum.

You can also walk through Napoleon's apartments, which are quite ornate and almost gaudy, as if Napoleon shared a decorator with just slightly better taste than Liberace. One can also find sculptures, beautiful stained glass and all sorts of other works of art and antiquities from around the world scattered throughout this former palace of the kings of France.

My favourite of all I have seen so far in the Louvre is this sculpture, known as Victory of Samothrace, which literally stopped me in my tracks as we were passing through the hallway in which it is located on our way to see something else. I'm not entirely sure why I like it so much but I do. That's the thing about art, you don't have to know what it is, who created it or what it means, you just know when it speaks to your soul.

Night at the Museum

I went to the Royal Ontario Museum this past Friday night. Since I became a member back in November, I try to go at least once a month. I decided to go on Friday night since (a) I was running out of days in January, (b) they are open late on Friday nights, and (c) it's usually quieter then. I almost talked myself out of going, as I was feeling a little weary by the time the end of the work day rolled around on Friday but I went anyway. The good news was, I seemed to get a second wind by the time I got there, having left my car at the subway station and taken the train downtown. I had just enough energy to last me through my 3 hour visit, which included a quick dinner in their lovely cafeteria. Any longer and I'd get "museum fatigue" regardless of how well rested I was!

I got there in time for the 6 p.m. tour. They have volunteer guides, or docents, give tours several times a day. It's not always the same person and they usually cover different items, although this time around, they did talk about one or two things that I'd heard about when I took the tour with someone else back in December, but that's okay, it was good to hear it from a different perspective and while they might have been talking about the same item, the information provided was different and just as interesting.

My visits in November and December had been for specific events - an all day seminar about embellishments, Canadian style in November: (http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2009/11/embellishment-canadian-style.html) and the Vanity Fair portrait exhibit in December: (http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2009/12/vanity-fair-exhibit.html). This time around, I wandered about the various floors of the museum and just looked at whatever caught my eye. I wasn't really in the mood for ancient culture or history so besides the gem exhibit, I ended up with the dinosaurs and the animals.

I spent a lot of time in the Biodiversity section. Did you know the ROM has over 4 million species in their collection? The way they have the animals displayed in this section is really interesting. I didn't know they had samples in drawers under the window displays until I saw this young boy pull one out. It was sad to see these pretty little birds dead and stuffed but at the same time, it was cool to be able to look at them up close, they were so beautiful. I had to chuckle when he pulled out the next drawer, as he gasped and jumped back when he realized it contained several samples of (fortunately dead) bats of various sizes.

I especially liked this room filled with different types of birds and the way they have them "flying" all together, which you would never see in real life. It's fascinating to be able to see them up close, to admire their beauty and compare sizes and feathers and colouring. And check out this albatross, it's huge!!!

To end my night at the museum, I took the above photos outside the building - both the ornate door and the beautiful stained glass are located at what used to be the front entrance. That's about all I could do outside though, my camera battery was pretty much dead by then and it was wayyyy too cold to linger.

All in all, it was another fascinating visit and I'm looking forward to my next visit.