Last Sunday, I went to the vernissage for the wonderful sculpture garden at the Skelly Gallery in St. Eugene. It was a happy day for me. Peter's "Homage" looked marvelous after all the hard work over the past couple of weeks to move it, clean it and give it a fresh coat of paint. It was installed in a prominent place in the garden and people loved it.
There were many beautiful and interesting pieces in the show. This tiled bird bath by Dody Dines looks like a gorgeous big flower.
Isn't this fun? It is called "Follow the Yellow Brick Road."
This is a piece by Susan Jephcott. Wild!
I love this beautiful bench that was carved by Lis Skelly. One of the bases is a turtle and the other is a frog.
It was actually very comfortable and many people tried sitting on it. This is one of my favourites of the pictures I took during the day.
This great sculpture by Susan Valyi is up very high atop a dead tree.
There was also sculpture inside the gallery. I got mac to stand behind his screen made of juice can lids.
I talked to many people at the vernissage and it was nice, later in the afternoon, to just sit on the Homage and take a break.
This shiny new sculpture recently appeared in a small park that I walk past every day. There doesn't seem to be any explanation for why it is there or who (or what organization) put it there. I could not find a sign anywhere to tell me the name of the sculptor or the title or year of the piece.
This man and his dog did not seem terribly impressed by the sculpture. They were more interested in the patch of grass and the opportunities it offered for use as a bathroom (ahem!) by the dog.
But I started to like the piece as I walked around looking at it from different angles. Look at those wonderful reflections! Love the way it transforms the buildings and trees in its shiny angled surfaces.
There is one week to go until the vernissage of the new garden sculpture show at the Skelly Gallery in St. Eugene Ontario. This past weekend, I dropped by to see how things were going and if I could help with setting up. Everyone was busy with all the final details. Nik (kneeling) and Lis (on the right) were finishing the installation of a new stone bridge that connects two parts of the garden. Just visible behind Lis' head, you can see Philippa near my contribution to the show - Peter's large white sculpture called the "Homage".
Most of the sculptures were already installed and I enjoyed a sneak peak at them. This piece is a lot of fun!
There were visual delights everywhere - like the mix of natural and man-made materials in this installation.
I really like the sculptures that use found materials. These pieces are on an outside wall of the gallery.
Later, when I was in my car about to leave, I suddenly saw this brightly coloured piece installed between two trees. I had to get out and take a picture. Lovely!
This is just a taste of what can be seen starting next week. There are 20 artists in the vernissage - 17 who will have pieces outside in the garden and 3 who will have pieces inside the gallery. The garden sculpture show runs from May 26th until October 31. Hope to see you there!
Okay - so my spring gardens have been really amazing this year and I have to show off just a teensy bit. Lots and lots of tulips were up last weekend when I took these pictures. This is one of the gardens, with a sculpture by Peter of our cat, Titi, in the back on the right.
This is the smaller garden, near the water lily pond. I have already put in some annuals to take over the job of being bright and colourful when the tulips are finished.
I love it when the tulips and daffodils come up at this time of year. There is something so magical about remembering when I put the bulbs in the ground last autumn and then waited through the long cold winter months, knowing they were under the snow and would appear in the spring - like hopes realized.
Last week I was walking down Sparks Street when I heard music and saw a lot of bright lights. Lo and behold, there were several fairground-type rides and booths where you could try to win stuffed toy prizes - all very surprisingly right in the middle of the downtown. There was an old-fashioned ferris wheel and this gorgeous merry-go-round with a few children riding the painted horses. I loved all the gaudy decoration on everything.
Among all the booths and hot dog stands, this tent was standing alone. I went closer to see what was in the center.
It was a tub full of rubber duckies floating around. I guess it was some sort of game where one tried to scoop out a rubber ducky and win a prize. Wouldn't you love to have that many rubber duckies in your bath?
As I was leaving, I noticed this stuffed toy pig looking down at me from inside one of the booths. I could imagine some child really wanting to take him home. Fun to see all this playfulness and colour in the middle of the usually dull, grey city.
It is May, when the Annual Ottawa Tulip Festival takes place. There are wonderful flower beds full of tulips in various places throughout the city. This lovely mass of tulips is in Major's Hill Park near the National Art Gallery.
These masses of tulips present vivid ribbons of colour - a feast for the eyes!
It has been very warm this year for the festival and a lot of people have been visiting the parks in order to tip-toe through the tulips!
The Byward Market is right smack in the middle of downtown Ottawa, full of buildings and people and cars and shops and restaurants. So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I was walking down Clarence Street - one of the busiest restaurant areas in the city with a whole row of outdoor patios - and saw a very unlikely pedestrian waddling along.
A female mallard, in the middle of the city, hanging out on the sidewalk! Wild creatures just do not show up around here so she seemed very, very out of place. Many people were amused and stopped to look at her but most just walked past her and left her alone. She seemed unconcerned by all the activity around her. I wonder what she was doing there, how she got there, if she was lost, and I really hope she was all right after I left.
This past week, people in Eastern Ontario where I have my country home were putting out "big garbage" for the annual Spring clean-up. As I drove down country roads, I saw some interesting piles of stuff by the side of the road - washing machines, stoves, old furniture, broken appliances, lamps and rugs and many other things. But when I saw this funny tableau, I had to stop and take a picture. The people at this place had taken the time to put an old doll and a decorative Fall scarecrow side-by-side on an old car seat. Don't they look like they are wondering what will happen next?
...whether it is seen in the country, as this sky at sunset over the Ottawa River, or....
...
whether it is seen in the city, as this sky above Ottawa at dusk.
