Author Archives: C Barry

Airport Art

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So many people with so much time to spare, at least while awaiting their planes, gives airports an unrivaled audience. I think Calgary started it with exquisite native artifacts.  Some of my favorite NA airport art today follows:

This huge bronze Haida canoe, speaking to all travelers (especially those tall people squeezed into ever smaller seats on ever longer flights), catches my imagination every time I pass  through Vancouver.

More sailors are in Amsterdam’s excellent small sampling of their Reijksmuseum (sp?) where I found these youngsters.

A little South, in Seattle, the suspended flocks of birds is an oft repeated idea (Remember large flock of geese in the Eaton Center, Toronto 35 years ago? Was that the first?) which I’ve yet to see done to perfection.

Seattle  has other excellent pieces, some a little hidden

Last week, in Philadelphia, these ornate shoes by Sharon Taffet  raised the spirits of jaded travelers delayed by fog and bad weather from off-shore tropical storm “Sean”.

And in Minneapolis there is a great dynamic image of an insurance company’s umbrella which shatters into myriad small umbrellas as you walk by, and then reassembles. A good future project to photograph and link to YouTube – Any volunteers going to MN soon?

Away from the airport, in a New Jersey glass fabrication shop, I stumbled on this just approved mock-up section for the 185 ft. tall facade of the base of the nearly completed (2013 est.) World Trade Center tower, NYC, replacing those so sadly lost on 9-11.  Interesting to see this grey evening image and try to imagine how dramatic it will surely appear when installed with lights, etc.  Architects must have great imagination.

Indiana Images Last Weekend

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The Indianapolis Art Museum has a travelling treasure show of 700 year old exquisite Ife copper cast heads found only 70 years ago in the grounds of a Nigerian royal palace. They left no written record at all – not to be missed if they come to your local museum:

Ife Copper Casting

Dashing out to get to the Norville wedding we passed an eyecatching sculpture and I neglected to note the artist’s name.No problem – back in Ohio my free “Google Goggles” ap for my phone scanned my photo and in no time at all told me it’s “Mobius Ship” by Tim Hawkinson from CA. A good play on “Moby Dick” and “Mobius Strip”.  Technology gets better all the time.

And then back by night on US highway 24 just in time for deer hunting season. They suddenly appear out of the dark. I’m still recovering from the shock. This one was worth $3000 damage to our insurance company. Quick braking and a small swerve right probably brought the impact speed down to around 55 mph and perhaps prevented it coming in the window.  Everyone in Ohio and Michigan has their similar story. Worst is when it comes in the window and is still kicking!Even though the road was wide open with no trees it was very hard to see until a large head appears trotting across front of you. The only answer I can imagine is to restrict our driving to daylight hours, or at night at least use high beam lights as much as possible.

Halloween, 2011. Bring Out Your Dead.

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It started at the Hatteras shore where many Horseshoe crab lay dead last week from some unknown cause. Not just empty shells as is normal from their molting.

We stopped on the way home for BBQ chicken in a little North Carolina restaurant with 3 bullet holes in the windows in what should have been peaceful cotton country where the crop grows in sandy soil right up to the side of the road.

Driving through the night we saw one Orion meteor streak through the darkness ahead in a blaze of dying glory.

Now in Ohio it is cold and the worker bees (females) are starting to pitch out the apparently useless male drones to die. (They would otherwise eat the hive’s winter honey)

The tiny Varroa mite can carry a wing deforming virus which does this to one of my drone’s wings:

Good housekeeping bees will bite the mite and hopefully keep them in check as I don’t want to put any pesticides in the with the honey.

 I didn’t see any bite marks on this upside down one. These mites are only 1 or 2 mm wide.

These bee photos were taken with a $4 macro camera “App” for my Android phone – which already has a camera. I don’t understand it but the resulting close-ups are amazing.  Check your camera-phone. It may have a built-in macro option.

Dead drone.

Happy Halloween