Hawaii - day three

My blisters were killing me, so I opted to do more sitting around close to our hotel.

We still had some walking to do though. We had seen a borders book store and wanted to go see what kind of plant and fish books they had. Ed got this shot near our hotel. On our way back from Borders, we scheduled a glass bottom boat ride for Sunday afternoon.

This is one that we took on our way from here to there. We spent the rest of the day on the patio sipping mai tai's and looking at our books.

Hawaii Day 2

Well, these pics are on the way to the aquarium at the far end of Waikiki. We walked along the beach and took shots of interesting things we saw. We stood on a pier and got these. Then we walked to the Aquarium.

The fish were in a nice cool building. they are so colorful. I like viewing them this way than going under water to see them!

I thought of Paul and his aquarium. It is much easier (I assume) to get the environment for the fish here due to the light and available sea water to exchange.

There were many more interesting fish that we saw.

Outside the aquarium, there were a few sculptures. This one is by Jun Kaneko. It was a thrill for me to put my hand on it, which I couldn't have done at an art museum!

People were surfing and pole surfing, which I had never seen before. They just stand on the boards and paddle around. It looks fun to me, except that if you fall in the water, there will be various fish swimming around you.

This is a canopy of a monkey tree. There are many huge trees.

Rubber tree.

Local bird nest. It was easy to find. I just found the dirty side of a park bench and looked up!

Another sausage tree. Ed and I are so fascinated with all the amazing plants, that we bought a small book to take around so we can identify them.

You know, those house plants that we find so difficult to grow in Idaho.

A look at Hawaii - The first day

Ed and I are at Waikiki for a Pest Management conference. We are staying at the Ilikai Hotel, which was slated for demolition until the new Hawaii 50 series was proposed for television. It has been remodeled and I guess some scenes are to be filmed there. The Ilikai is a 25 story building that has three wings. You can see them in this pic. There are blue panels on the balconies. We are on the 24th floor.

Here is the view from our room. We can see the artificial lagoon that is part of the Hilton Hotel. We stayed at the Hilton Rainbow tower 23 years ago. The Hilton workers called a strike the day we left Idaho, so the morning of our first day, we were awakened with noisemakers and chanting. Since they were between our building and the Hilton, we heard all the noise. This went on for 5 days. The strike was settled yesterday.

Our first day, we walked to the historical section of down town Honolulu. We saw a lot of interesting trees and plants on the way. Many of the houseplants that we try hard to grow in Idaho, thrive here, and get to be huge specimens. I liked the trunk of this tree.

Many of the plants here are not natives, but thrive because they came from a similar climate, like So. America and Africa.

This is fruit on a huge tree that has flowers that bloom at night and are pollinated by bats. They are Sausage Trees.

This is a Boabab tree. Has similar features as the Sausage.

We walked to the Museum of Modern art. Wow! What a great show they had. Most of the paintings were large and abstract. They had sculpture in stone and metal, and ceramic. It was a treat to spend a couple hours there. My brain reached a level of stimulus overload.

This is a mausoleum. We went to the historic museum of the early missionaries. They brought their Westernized ideas about life, and built traditional houses meant to keep the cold weather out. The structures were not designed for good air flow. It must have bee difficult living in the hot stuffy buildings with layers of long dresses and petticoats! The fire hearth for the kitchen must have made the small kitchen unbearable!
I had blisters on my toes by the end of the first day! Every step became unpleasant! And of course we had more places to walk to, so I spent money on Bandaids and Blister pads!

Thousand Springs Art Festival

We had wonderful weather at Thousand Springs this weekend! We could get anything from wind, cold blowing rain, to sunny and warm. We were lucky!

We brought sculptures, "build your own" sculptures, garden charms. We also brought saki sets so people could be reminded that I also make functional pottery.

Ed thought we should display the garden charms on the mug tree. He had a good idea, since the couple of charms we hung from the tent frame were harder to see. There was a good turnout to the event, despite the many events scheduled in the Boise area. The women's "race for the cure" was Saturday AM, as well as many pregame events for Boise State Broncos. We talked to many artists who said their sales were down 50% from 2 years ago, due to the economy. Even though we went there to sell and make money, going to an event that raises money (from booth fees) to preserve the historical land around the Snake River. is worth the trouble of going.

Fence Art - Garden Charms

Charm no. 1
Another way to use sculpture beads.

Charm number 2
Like little sculptures you can hang.

Charm number 3
Some people have said they like my sculptures, but don't have garden space. This gives them another option.

Charm number 4
Looks like a little lantern

Charm number 5
The copper wire will turn brown after a season to contrast with the fence material

Charm number 6
Copper wire implies movement

Fence Art

My sculptural garden art is also presented two-dimensionally. I call these pieces fence buttons. They hang on a fence or wall, for people who don't have garden space. I have an idea for another
style of art to hang on a fence.

I made large beads that are about 3-4 inches wide and about that tall.

More beads, a more basic shape.

Much smaller beads. The holes in them are for a wire to be passed through them.

These beads are glazed and waiting to be fired.

This is the beginning of a design. The beads are strung on copper wire and curled to keep the beads in place. I will publish the end product in 1 week.

Stellar Rust

I use an electric kiln for all my work. What that means is that the "fire" won't change the glaze, except to melt it. In contrast, a gas or wood fire kiln can cause serendipitous spots of color on the clay and glaze that the artist has no control of due to the smoky atmosphere in the kiln. In the ceramics lab, we counted on the fire to "save" a not very interesting pot, and sometimes it did. With an electric, what goes wrong is the kiln getting too hot or too cool (a relative term)! These mugs were over fired and the tan glaze became clear and dark brown. Ugh! I experimented with the temperature in the kiln by placing pieces on low shelves and high shelves to find the best temperature to make the glaze look good.

I found that the bottom shelf is the best position for this glaze. This is a sake set I hand built. I can make nice textures when I make pieces from a slab of clay.

This is a canister set that I made and used the same glaze. I am really excited about the finished product!

I made this torso a few years ago but hadn't fired it, because I didn't have a glaze that I thought would compliment the shape. I try not to make figures tan or white, but usually use a color. The glaze effect on this piece is perfect. When I poured the glaze on the piece, the glaze was thicker where it over lapped. The glaze is darker brown where it is thin, and whiter where it was thick. It is the perfect glaze for this sculpture.