Catching up

A few images of recent mosaics.

These two new mosaics are going to be in a multi-artist show at LaChica Art & Music in Las Vegas in February. The show theme is nature-inspired abstracts.

Red River, 12" x 12", glass, marble, slate, coal

Inkling – the Seed of an Idea, 8" x 17", Dalle de Verre mosaic, limestone & glass
two views - normal lighting and backlit

 Along with a old favorite

Tales from the River, 3.5": x 3.5 x 8.5, glass on driftwood

I have two additional shows coming up. One in April at the Page Performance Center, and a show with one other artist at LaChica in June. So I'm working in the studio every evening.

The Highest Good Is Like Water, 12" x 12", glass & marble.

I'm hoping to have at least 12 pieces for the April show and 15 for the June show.

Wayne's Sushi & Karaoke Bar

My Las Vegas vacation is just about over. We've been here about a week. We've done some fun things and spent some great family time.

Tonight's wonderful surprise was Wayne's Sushi and Karaoke Bar. I cannot tell you how great it was. Total Food Orgasm. Period.

What we ate:
Appetizers:
Jellyfish, Bean sprout salad, Edamame, spicy Cucumber salad.

Wayne's Special Sushi Rolls:
Lost Wages - California roll wrapped with smoked salmon, topped withSum Young Gai sauce, baked and topped with tobiko and bonito flakes and eel sauce.
Mikey Mikey - Soft shelled crab, shrimp tempura and spicy tuna roll topped with spicy crab.
What Brah, Beef? - Shrimp tempura and asparagus, topped with beef tenderloin and ginger pepper sauce.
Snap Crackle Pop - Shrimp tempura and asparagus topped with baked tilapia and ginger pepper sauce.
Itsy Bitsy Spider - Soft shelled crab, crab mix, gobo, cucumber, sprouts, and massago. Served with ponzu and Sum Young Gai sauce.
Dragon Ass - California roll topped with eel and massago and eel sauce.
Brian & Marsha, Marsha, Marsha - Shrimp tempura, spicy crab, cream cheese and cucumber topped withspice crab, tuna, avocado and eel sauce.
And my very most favorite:
Mango A Go Go Hand Roll - Spicy crab with mango, served in soy paper.

The food was absolutely amazing. Fresh. Made right in front of us.

It's a tiny, small place - very intimate - owned/operated by Wayne and Heidi. We were sitting at the sushi bar and the food was prepared less than two feet from us. They have a few tables too, but if you go, be sure to sit at the bar. Wayne and Heidi have fantastic stories - tales to amaze and entertain, brash and silly, teasing and enticing. It's better than any dinner theater I've ever been to. The constantly running banter between Wayne, Heidi and all of us was such great fun. They make you feel like a welcome guest in their home, a long-time friend, not a customer.

If you're ever in Vegas, you've got to go to Wayne's.

Wayne and Heidi, we'll see you in December! We want to hear you sing next time.

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Las Vegas & Hoover Dam

Over the holidays Abelisto & I drove to Las Vegas to spend time with family. We also took Nova back to Vegas to live. She finished her bachelor's this past semester and her husband Mike had already returned to Vegas so she was anxious to get out there.

We made the drive an almost-straight-through marathon event. After the first 8 hours or so on the road there was usually one person sleeping at any time, preparing to take over driving when the current driver was done in. With three of us to drive we stayed on the road almost constantly, only stopping three times to sleep for around 45 minutes each time.

This meant that we reached Vegas about 10 hours ahead of schedule - but it just about did us in.

In Vegas we mostly hung out with family. I was working most days while I was there, so we did not plan any all day outings. We did take one afternoon and go to Hoover Dam. Abelisto & Taylor had not been there and Aluna hadn't been there in quite a while - neither had I.

I love the Gothic-inspired structures of the dam and all the art deco embellishments. Aluna was fascinated with the future bridge that is being built over the river downstream from the dam. She said she would love to be working on it. Thinking about working so far up in the air gave me sweaty palms and a fluttery feeling...

Tay standing on the Zodiac compass with Abelisto (behind her)

An example of art deco terrazzo work

Another example of art deco terrazzo work

And a third example of art deco terrazzo work

Abelisto, Tay (who is displeased about the sun in her eyes) and me
Lake Mead is in the background - you can see the white drought line

Tay & Aluna, with the future bridge over the river in the background

9-1-2007

I started this blog on August 2nd of last year. I had just learned my father was dying of lung cancer. The bridge in Minneapolis had just collapsed, or was collapsing - I cannot quite remember the order of things.

One year ago yesterday, one year and 12 hours ago, my father died. I was on the road, desperately trying to get there before he passed on. I did not make it.

One year ago today I was helping with funeral arrangements, trying to transfer airline tickets for our daughters and granddaughter to fly in from Las Vegas, and trying to arrange a ticket for our son, Eli, to fly down from Winona (he stayed home since we had more people than would fit in the station wagon and we never dreamed my father would die that night).

Eli's ticket was not a problem. Transferring the girls' tickets was a nightmare. In the end we ended up spending nearly $3,000 for the airline tickets we purchased that day and the ones we had purchased two days before, since they would not let us transfer the original tickets without paying fees and the difference between the ticket prices. That would have been more than buying new tickets, so we bought new tickets. After that we learned that the initial ticket order had been duplicated and so we owned 8 tickets. Nova and Taylor would fly in from Vegas that night. Aluna would fly in the next morning so that she could work her shift (it was impossible to get a substitute at that late notice). Eli would fly down from Minnesota that night, just a couple hours ahead of Nova and Tay. Eli doesn't drive, didn't drive, so Princess and Matt took him to the airport - a 2-hour drive from Winona.

I am amazed now, looking back, that it all worked out.

Level Orange

We just spent 6 wonderful days with Daughter #1 and our 3-year old granddaughter. They flew in from Las Vegas (which Granddaughter calls Lost Vegas) last Friday morning and flew out yesterday.

Picking them up last week from the airport in Minneapolis, I noted that our Terrorism Threat level was Orange. How strange. Orange is the second highest level. If, in fact, we were in that much danger, how come no one was talking about it? Activity in side the airport looked normal to me - no goose-stepping guards, no strip searches, no public warning announcements over the loudspeakers, nothing unusual, nada.

Have we become fearless, or just complacent...? Either way, I do not think that a rational discourse could take place yet about 9/11, the subsequent wars, keeping uncharged people in prison for years, torture, or even what we should do now that we have totally screwed things up for so many, many people (including ourselves).

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Identity As A Construct - Part III: Las Vegas

Identity As A Construct - Part II-b: Fashion & Identity
Identity As A Construct - Part II: Fashion & Identity
Identity As A Construct - Part I

I sometimes like to just sit and watch people as they move about in time and space.

It’s more interesting to go to a larger city, sit in some unobtrusive place and watch people parading past me. Las Vegas is wonderful for people watching. It seems that a great majority of people in Vegas feel free to express facets of their identity in their clothing choices. Some of them become walking caricatures of packaged identities.

In Vegas you expect to see scantily clad women, show girls, street girls, and girls who want to look like show girls or street girls. You expect to see tourists from the boondocks ogling the sights and visitors from other countries snapping photographs. You might, depending on the television you watch, expect to see “high rollers” or movie stars. Vegas always gives you both more and less than you expect.

The first person that caught my eye, and the one I remember best from that first trip to Vegas nearly ten years ago, was a man who was perhaps in his mid-thirties. He had the slight pot belly of a heavy beer drinker, but he hadn’t gone too far yet towards the beer gut that makes men look like extremely malnourished pregnant women (skinny arms and legs, big belly). He’d been out in the sun enough that he was starting to have that tanned leather look to his skin. On his head was a well-worn black cowboy hat. It had a wide snakeskin hat band that held a small fluff of brightly colored feathers on one side of the hat. He wore a sleeveless men’s undershirt – the same sort of shirts that I now see printed and decorated and sold for women’s shirts – stretched tightly across his slightly bulging belly. His was a dingy white, not pink, mint green, or tan, and not decorated with lace or sequins or printed with this band or that band’s name. His pants were tight, peg-legged, black jeans, fairly new, but not so clean, tucked into fancy cowboy boots. The boots were also black, or mostly black. They had engraved silver toe caps (probably not real silver – silver would be too soft to serve as toe caps) to guard against scuffs and scrapes. The upper sections of the boots were immaculately polished – spit-shined I would say - and tall, hugging his thin legs snugly, coming nearly to the knees, decorated with turquoise and red leather, sporting a large oval turquoise cabochon set in silver near the top on the front of the boots.

It was very hard not to stare openly – something nearly as dangerous in Vegas as in any other big city. He was standing in a convenience store feeding coins to the ubiquitous slot machines, just killing time, or perhaps, hoping to hit the jackpot and change his fate.

One has to wonder, if he hit it big, would his wardrobe change along with his identity?

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Been a while

The last two weeks have been tough in many ways.

Over Thanksgiving we went to Indiana. My brothers and I went through my father's garage and parceled out the items that each of us wanted, sorted and organized the things we felt my mother needed to keep around, and bagged/boxed/stacked the things that should be given away or hauled away to be recycled or trashed.

Abelisto and I made the 600 mile drive home on the Monday after Thanksgiving. We were in the middle of Illinois when we got a phone call from daughter #2. She was crashing emotionally and the end result was that at 5 am on Wednesday (just 36 hours after we got back from Indiana) I flew out to Las Vegas. Once there I helped her pack some things up and we flew back to Minnesota yesterday. She is here at least for the month, and perhaps for the spring semester so that she can finish her BA. She needs 7 credits or an internship to finish it up.

The temperature difference between Nevada and Minnesota was amazing - we both spent the evening shivering. Today she begins making some concrete plans for what's next in her interesting life.

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