FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE 
May 10, 2012 

"Church/Savior, St. Petersburg, Russia...Gorgeous!" 

 

Writing you from St. Petersburg, Russia where we've seen some extraordinary sights, among them the Cathedral above. It's beautiful beyond words. More on the sights and sounds of Russia as the days pass...internet permitting. It's very slow and sometimes selects what it passes along :( ! But, I'll try, starting with this week's posting. 

For ART and SOLE's POSTCARD CHALLENGE 2012, we actually traveled to this part of the world...BULGARIA! This month, they'll be celebrating a national culture day as they pay homage to the two men who created the Bulgarian alphabet...pre-cyrillic! Read all about it on the message side of my postcard below.

Much of my challenge art was done on our long journey to get to Russia. I haven't been able to download them until now, though... internet service, as I said earlier, is somewhat limited.

In honor of Mother's Day... for family and friends who are mothers... and for readers I may not know yet who are mothers...THIS IS FOR YOU and for the CRAZY AMIGO blog challenge: Mother and Child...

SUNDAY POSTCARD ART challenged artists with a CHICKEN RUN theme...mine weren't running, just standing, sitting and perching!

TAKE A WORD's challenge blog was thinking about GENTLEMEN...always a fun subject for the ladies!! What is it that constitutes a "Gentleman?"

Finally, COLLAGE OBSESSION challenged us with the subject of DOORS...one of my personal favorite things to photograph!! I built the following scene to fulfill the challenge requirements...

I'm going to hurry and publish this while I still have internet power...here's hoping!! I wish you all a Happy Mother's Day (those of you to whom this applies...)  See you for my next posting...

Hugs,

abbyj

Virtual New Zealand and

Additional Blog Challenges 

May 3, 2012 

  "Extraordinary TRAVIATA...living her fullest life!" 

Inspired by the challenge blog 4X4 FRIDAY (that tasked artists to create anything they wished to create,) I thought I'd do a tribute piece to honor the incredibly wonderful opera I saw recently at the Met in New York City...La Traviata. I love the theme of living life to its fullest (hard to do when you know you're dying of tuberculosis) as did the opera's heroine, Violetta... La Traviata translates to mean "one who goes astray..."

I hope you're well and life is treating you gently. I've been playing catch up this week...lots of laundry and errands that needed to be done because I was away last week. But, as always, I must make time for "art stuff" ... 

For ART and SOLE's POSTCARD CHALLENGE 2012, we made our virtual journey to beautiful New Zealand. Since one of my correspondents (Bahati) is an indigenous person from a small Ethiopian village, whenever he travels, he's interested in the plight of those original country residents. In the case of New Zealand, that would be the colorful Maori people. 

SUNDAY POSTCARD ART's challenge was to use the theme "CELEBRATE" for our creations... I did! 

Finally, the TAKE A WORD blog wanted to see a piece with a BLACKBIRD...of course, Edgar Allan Poe immediately came to mind with his RAVEN... 

Once again, thank you for stopping by. I hope to see you next time. Have a happy, healthy week...

Hugs,
abbyj

 

FAIRYTALE NORWAY: 
REAL-LIFE LONDON 
April 29, 2012 

   "A week of RAIN in London!!!"    

But, no complaints here. My daughter and I escaped to London for a week of fun, during which we met up with our cousin from Glasgow, Scotland. We had lots of laughs, some good food and drink and saw many sights, both common and unusual! Some quick memories...before we met our cousin, we indulged ourselves in HIGH TEA at a posh department store, Fortnum and Mason- pretty much our first stop, just to get us in the British frame of mind!

 

We enjoyed seeing Big Ben, standing guard over Parliament,

 the Tower Bridge, keeper of the Crown Jewels,

a particularly pretty Tube stop at Tottenham Court Road...all tiled designs...

and finally, our Cousin Lynne, Michelle and I enjoyed some time in a few pubs...

We enjoyed some great "girl time" together as we shared 3 years worth of news. Isn't reconnecting with family wonderful? 

I didn't have much time for my usual art challenges this week...in fact, it may be a few weeks before I'm back in the challenge groove again...but I did complete this week's ART and SOLE POSTCARD 2012 challenge: we all made our virtual trip to Norway. I met some of the SAMI people...the only indigenous people in the country. Traditionally, they followed the reindeer herds so they were nomads. They used their reindeer for milk, meat, hides and also as draft animals for their carriages...their vehicle of choice. They lived in tents of reindeer skin, but in winter they lived in low stone houses covered with earth...good protection from northern Norway's fierce frost. Today, the Sami are more stationary and have branched out to fishing and farming. As a people, they have suffered as have our Native American Indian nations- they too have been robbed of their culture and language by their government. But they, too, have fought to survive and are still an integral part of the country that is Norway! 

SOARTFUL CHALLENGES called for a wedding anniversary theme. I chose a gypsy couple from my Kingdom of Girellygog (my imaginary gypsy kingdom)... they're the sweethearts celebrating their anniversary!

That's our visit for this week! Hope to see you next week...time seems so short. Sorry I didn't get to visit everyone's entries this week...hopefully, next week!!!

Hugs and love,

abbyj   

A VISIT to ROMANIA and 

ageless CABINET CARDS 

April 19, 2012 

   

 "New day dawns with endless possibilities"  

  

Hi family and friends... another week with new promises and experiences...life is good! Even found time for a bit of art...love those blog challenges. Like ART AND SOLE's POSTCARD CHALLENGE 2012.  For this week's challenge, we traveled to Romania, land of vampires...specifically, Dracula!! But there's lots more going on there. 

I was particularly captivated by its Gypsy (or Rom) population...they've always been a fascination for me! Too, Romania has an unusual cemetery of note... In SAPANTA, the Happy Cemetery was originally begun by a peasant grave carver in the 1930's, and is carried on today by the Pop family. The grave markers in this unique cemetery are carved and painted with scenes of the deceased accompanied by a poem describing their fate in their language. Almost half of them have two painted sides...one showing  the deceased as they were in life...and the other showing either the way they died or illustrating some quirk that made them memorable to their village. The most interesting of the carved grave markers celebrate the fickle nature of death... like the first three. The others shown celebrate the life of the deceased.

 

 

Aren't they wonderful? What a great way to be remembered... kind of a social commentary on what city residents consider right and wrong, 

or things to watch out for...like roller skating by the railroad tracks!!

A walk through the Happy Cemetery is a bit like a history lesson for Sapanta...interesting, eh? 

Finally, the COLLAGE OBSESSION challenge blog was interested in CABINET CARDS...I love these cards. Such a great way to do family or individual portraits in a time when photography was just coming into its own.

THREE MUSES was already thinking about summer with their call for vintage bathing beauties. My bathing beauty is male...why not? Note that this is also a cabinet card.

Thanks for visiting my blog yet again. I'll be in the great city of London, England with my daughter next week, but will try to blog from there...hope to see you back here at some point!

Happy week to you and yours,

xox,

abbyj

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