Life...The Vivere

WAR HORSES, etc! 
April 11, 2012 

Fall's my favorite...colors are spectacular! 

Inspired by INSPIRATION AVENUE challenge blog's call for art about FOLIAGE, my thoughts turned to Fall, my favorite time of year. It's lovely to travel by train the see all the gorgeous fall foliage...heaven sent artists paint our part of the world with a multi-colored palette!!
TAKE A WORD, another challenge blog, asked that participating artists do something SKINNY in a little 3X5 skinny format. My interpretation flashed to a vintage cabinet card I had from the early 1900's...a photo of a very skinny lady... She's  MY "skinny!" 

Darcy's ART and SOLE POSTCARD CHALLENGE 2012  had participants journeying to ICELAND this week...and what an interesting place it is! It's so much fun traveling to all these different countries via the internet... research uncovers so many little known  facts, customs and traditions. For example:

1- Many Icelanders believe in elves. In fact, certain roads have been re-routed to avoid disturbing areas where elves are thought to live. 

2- An international study done in 2006 ranked Iceland as the 4th happiest nation in the world.  

3- Iceland's main industry is fishing.

4- The Icelandic language has been unchanged for the past 1000 years. 

5- Iceland has twice as many sheep as people.

6- Icelanders consume more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation. 

7- Iceland was the first country to have a female president. 

Between September and mid-April, the Aurora Borealis is visible in Iceland...this is my book page! 

 

Finally, this past weekend, we were in Toronto visiting with our daughter and her family. We had our theater subscription tickets for WAR HORSE, a show that we were all looking forward to! It did not disappoint... the emotional impact was tremendous! I actually can't ever remember being so stricken in the theater...especially considering the fact that the main characters, the horses, were PUPPETS!! The play is based on a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo. He chose to tell his story through the horse's eyes to convey the universal suffering of that war in which ten million people died, and unknown millions of horses. It's the story of JOEY, the horse. Joey is living a happy life in Devon, England with his young master, Albert, when World War I begins. Joey is sold to the cavalry, takes part in horrific fighting and is captured by the Germans. Albert, still too young to fight, lies about his age, signs up anyway and heads to Europe to rescue his Joey! 

Joey and the other horses (a total of 9) in the show are each  operated by three actors/puppeteers and it's done so seamlessly that you quickly forget that they're not real. Their sounds (made by the actors) and the movements of their bodies are real, authentic and certainly believable!! Even their ears move as they hear sounds from a variety of directions.  Here are some pictures I played with to honor and express my feelings about these brave, loyal and beautiful animals...

 

Wishing you a safe, gentle but fun week... I hope you'll join me again next week. Thanks for stopping by...

Hugs,

abbyj