We are back
Monday, October 13, 2008 at 12:19AMI am back and feeling rested after a small break in New Zealand. I don’t usually inflict too much in the way of personal posts on people as I try to stick on topic and for that reason always feel as if it’s cheating a little but I promise you I am back to normal blogging tomorrow and there are a few links at the bottom of the post if you find holiday news boring. I have a few snippits and scattered bits of news so please sit down make a cuppa and take a break with me.
Many of my regular readers will know that my daughter is in New Zealand and is a circus performer and two weeks ago broke her foot. Since one of her skills is in stilts this was a bit of problem (if you want to watch her doing flips on stilts take a look at the video here) Anyway, she managed to perform with her heavily foot strapped. That said I don’t think anyone would have known and after seeing this as part of their dance routine. Now I am worried about her back. I could not do this in stocking feet let alone on stilts. 
This latest show included a new aerial hoop routine. Aerial hoop is a hoop hanging from a rope. It is a little like trapeze work only a hoop spins as it swings. I was hoping, in vain it turned out, to get some good photos of Eve. This was taken on the sports setting but she moves just too fast for me!
That said these photos gave me some great ideas for designs.
Christchurch has some really lovely architecture and we took well over 1,000 photos. Most of them are elements of buildings as I often use architectural details as design sources.
One exhibit we were able to catch just by chance was an exhibition of Leonardo daVinci’s machine models interpreted by Florentine craftsmen. The exhibition has been put together by the Florence museum and has been traveling the world.
Needless to say I found his notebooks which of course are a studio/visual journal interesting.
Pop over to Mindsigh if you want to read Jerry’s impressions too
I also spotted this silhouette on a cross walk. One of those curious things I noticed but a great basis for a design
On another note there was some good news for the University where I work as the ANU has been ranked as being in the top 20 university’s in the world in the Times Higher Education world university rankings. This ranking system is based on “ academic peer review, an employer review, staff-student ratios, citations in learned journals by faculty, proportion of international students, and research performance relative to the size of the research staff.” We even managed to pip Stanford and Michigan! Check out the report in the Australian
Also I spotted in the mainstream media an article about the ‘painting a day’ artists. Maria Puente of USA today in Artists take paintings to masses has picked up that the internet allows artists to market their work completely by passing the gallery system. I am not sure if I have pointed to any of the “paint a day” sites but they are an interesting trend.
I often poke around the groups on flickr and this group of stencil artists had me contentedly browsing over my morning coffee. I think many readers will find their art interesting.
Reader Comments (4)
Oh my, Sharon, how awesome...and how very proud you must be of Eve!! Wow! And I love it when you and Jerry go on vacation -- y'all's pix are always *such* a treat!!
Wow! wow! How unbelievable even without needing strapping ! Now I can look at the architectural pictures et al and enjoy ! Thanks for a great post.
Every time you post photos of your visits to New Zeland, I become more and more convinced that tahis is the ONE pace that I must visit before I die.
Thank you!
Oooh. I hate type-os that you see only after you have pushed the button.
New Zealand.