Awesome Waterfalls in North Georgia

This has been a busy month. I am busy with my peace pole orders and renovations on my studio. I have created a few fun videos on YouTube and chatted with friends on FaceBook. We seem to have so many ways to connect with people on the internet these days it is hard to keep up with it all.

There has been some major rain around here with flooding down in Atlanta. It didn't flood around here, but give us awesome waterfalls. Patches and I enjoyed our hike to the middle of Duke's Creek Falls. The sound was intense and the falls were magificent to view. Loved the forrest smell after the rains. Patches likes to walk out into the falls which was much deeper than usual and made me a bit on edge. The drop is quiet great where he is standing on this rock ledge and looking out at the mtns....I wonder what he thinks of it all.

Creating Art

Here my newest project. It's title is Peace Dreaming. It is a Peace Pole without words. It is all images of the earth and earth inhabits depicting the four elements, water, air, earth and fire. I used images and symbols to share all the many reasons or stories why we should live in peace.

Part Two of West Coast Trip

Spent the day in San Francisco. It is a very special city to me. This is my birth city and city of my early childhood. I, also, lived there in my 30's involved in the art scene. So, it is a homecoming of distant memories. The City has changed over the years. Still one of the best skyline views is from the top edge of Dolores Park and the Castro always has lots of energy and fun little stores to check out. What would a visit to San Francisco be without a tour of Fisherman's Wharf. Now you can do it on a Segway...how fun it that. This time I stopped to check out the homes I lived in...they looked about the same as I remembered them. Wonder what memories are being created in them now.

West Coast Trip

Sometimes the art is in the beauty of the sunset or the misty fog at he edge of our coastline or the smile of a friend. Sometime just the art of playing with friends is what touches the soul. Here is my recent travels up the the California Coast from Southern Cal to San Francisco.

It's a Pigs Day

I really enjoyed walking the streets and being surprised by each creative pig. A delightful way to spend a Saturday just walking around and photographing in this wonderful small town on the Gulf Shores of Florida. I'm sure you will enjoy seeing the painted pigs in Venice, Florida. New ones are painted every year as a local fund raiser.

GMUU Peace Pole Dedication

Check out our video of the Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church Peace Pole Dedication on May 31, 2009, which was featured earlier in this blog. Thanks to everyone who participated. Great Job! A special thanks to Chelsea who video taped. She gave me lots of footage to work with. In fact it was a bit of a challenge to bring it down to only 3 or so minutes. We had a fun time. Think about creating a peace pole for your school or church. I would love to hear about it. Enjoy. AJ

Art In Atlanta Airport

Summer and a time for travel. I'm off to the West Coast for a delightful holiday. Driving up to Atlanta's North Terminal I was greeted by these wonderful whimisal recyled suitcase metal sculptures--I don't remember ever seeing then before. Where they there and I just never noticed before or are they new, I wondered as I missed the parking garage entery and had to drive around again to get into the parking garage...this did give me another chance to look at this fun sculptures.

Walking to the terminal I stopped to enjoy the tile mural that covers the cement parking garage. A dramatic action filled mural depicting travel.

Summer Soltice

Well, we have had our longest day with a heat wave that made us enjoy the sunlight behind glass while hugging the air conditioner. The view out my window is almost tropical as I watch the kudzu grow a foot a day with the vines reaching out to catch a leaf of a tree or twig or building that they will soon engulf. They create a living kind of sculpture hiding buildings and trees as they continue their quest for growth. They transform the landscape so quickly as summer comes. It truly is an amazement. Every winter they die back and disappear only to turn with abundance the next summer.

Not only is kudzu a transform of landscapes but it is a food. Yes, that is right you can eat it just make sure that when you pick or dig kudzu that it hasn't been treated with chemicals. Here are the eatable parts: Leaves- Having a mild "green" flavor and full of fiber, the tender leaves can be used like spinach, in salad, quiche or even chopped up and cooked like Poke Salet and Collards. The young kudzu shoots are great in a stir-fry, tasting similar to snow peas. The bigger leaves can be fried crispy or steeped in boiling water to make a delicious tea. Blossoms- The grape-smelling blossoms make delicious jelly, candy, and syrup or used to make a sweet homemade wine. OK. you can't eat the vines , but you can make baskets and wreathes out of them. You can bale them and fed to livestock or make a bale house out of them. Roots- kudzu's big bodacious starchy potato-like roots are full of protein, iron, fiber, calcium, phosphorous, vitamin A, and vitamin D. Most often the roots are made into a cooking starch used to coat foos to be fried and to thicken sauces and other liquids. I've been having fun collecting and creating recipes and it looks like it's time to start havesting my yard full of kudzu.

Peace Pole, Dahlonega

Hey, You All!
Well, we had a big turn out and even the press showed up for the Peace Pole Dedication at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Dahlonega. I created the Peace Pole from a 4x4 redwood post that I purchased in California and brought across the country on top of my car along with the Peace Pole from my last blog. This Peace Pole I created in a more traditional way with the phrase "May Peace Prevail on Earth" painted in 10 different languages. There are Peace Pole planted in over 280,000 locations around the World to help remind people to keep peace in your mind and heart.

My Peace Pole

For Memorial Day I planted my home Peace Pole. I first created this Peace Pole in 1999 and dedicated it on New Year's Eve of 2000 with friends and a big party. It was planted in a large flower pot on the patio of my condo. Since then I have moved from the west coast to the south. I brought the pole with me on top of my car and also, brought another redwood post with the intention to make a new pole for my new home. I stood my peace pole in the garden on the side of my new house but never really planted it. It stayed on my "to do list" for the next 6 years along with making a second Peace Pole. After this new year of 2009 I looked at my redwood post and decided it was time to make my second Peace Pole and give it to Georgia Mountain Unitarian Universalist Church. So, I set to work on it. This sunday we are having a deication event for it. You can read about that in my next blog.

After finishing the new pole I realized that I wanted to give a new life to my old pole. It had weathered due to the fact I never put a seal coat on it. The redwood grays over time without a sealant. I wanted to keep one side to honor the history of the pole but recreated most of the other three sides. I did keep a few pieces of artwork here and there sanding around them. The pole took many hours of sanding, painting and I gave it three coast of sealant. So, between rain showers this past Memorial Day my dad and I planted the pole in our front yard for all to see. A reminder to think about Peace. I leave you with these thoughts from some great minds.

"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace." -William E. Gladstone

"Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts." -John Harricharan

Vero Beach, Florida - Turtle Trax

Greeting from Vero Beach where I have found yet another community public art project that raise lots of money for mental health services. Way Cool art and an amazing fund raising project. It started in 2005 and continued through 2008 with each year creating painted turtle sculptures that a few of them are now on permanent display around town. According to the website www.turtletrax.org , in the first season of the event they auctioned 52 fiberglass sculptures and raised about $550,000! That is truly an impressive feat. Congratulations Artists and Organizers for an inspiring community fund raising project. I really enjoyed the wonderfully painted 3 foot high turtles. What I find fasinating is how different and creative each artist has painted them. There is a really WOW factor with each one.

Could this be a project for your community? I think it is something really worth considering. I am starting to look at the posible parners in my community to create a project like this one and the others that I have found in my travels. See earlier blogs.

WOW2 St. Lucie County, Florida

Well, I've been having an exciting time in t. Lucie County, Florida where I have discovered some really fine contemporary sculpture by local Florida artists. There has been a year long Art in Public Places Exhibition called WOW2 (With Out Walls) featuring 30 different, large-scale sculptures throughout St. Lucie County. At Ft. Piece Marina I found 2 of them, one by Susan Gott called Fire Sentinel and the other In the Swim by Jorge Blanco. This exhibit adds so much to the community I hope that other communities will create simulate exhibits.

Ft. Pierce

Who pays attention to ordinary or discarded items? Artists do. They notice the sights, sounds and experiences of everyday life and use them as source materials. They find value in what others overlook. This week I have found a most interesting sculpture of recycled materials at the Marina in Ft. Pierce, Florida. This sculpture is of all found objects and it spells our Ft. Pierce. I have not found any info on it so I can't tell you who made it or when it was made. I think it is one of the best examples of the recycled, repurposed art!

Pinellas Trail

Greetings from the sunshine state. I have come across a few interest sculptures here while visiting my friends. Taking a morning walk I came across this really fun artwork on Pinellas Trail. They are large metal sculptures that pay tribute to the trail's link to the railroading history and its importance as a vital link to the communities it continues to serve.

Ghost Ballet, Nashville

This past weekend I was in Nashville, TN and I found this awesome public art installation by the river. In 2007, Alice Aycock installed Nashville’s first Percent for Public Art commission on the bank of the Cumberland River, opposite the downtown. Titled Ghost Ballet for the East Bank Machineworks, the 100’ x 100’ x 60’ sculpture perches on a crane base once used to launch barges. The artwork references the site’s industrial past and visually echoes current surroundings, including nearby bridges and the NFL Titans stadium. Its dynamic form conveys a sense of the area’s evolution from industrial working river to recreation and entertainment, a theme that resonated with Aycock after her first site visit.

The main structure of the sculpture is comprised of arced, red-painted steel trusses that twist upward from the crane base to form a disconnected spherical shape. On the ground, a red-painted aluminum “turbine whirlwind” serves as a visual generator for the swirling trusses above. At night, a glowing neon fixture illuminates the sculpture’s center.
The sculpture changes as you move around it which is why Aycock named it Ghost Ballet.

Wonderfully Painted Bears of Cherokee, NC.

Downtown Cherokee is "alive" with colorfully painted fiberglass bears that are part of a public art program featuring the talents of

local Tribal artists. Each one of the bears represents an aspect of Cherokee culture.

Here is my next surprise find. Wonderfully painted bears seen on the streets of the small town of Cherokee, NC. Local artist Charles Saunooke is the person credited with spearheading the bear project.

"Each bear is so colorful, but what's most important is that each one tells a story, inspired by our Tribal artists." said George Lambert, director of marketing for Cherokee Travel & Tourism.The idea for the Bears Project started in 2005 as Cherokee wanted to showcase the variety of talented artists within the Qualla Boundary. A committee researched several ideas prior to selecting a bear theme as they wished to produce something that would be culturally significant. Bears are a large part of the Cherokee culture.

Several Eastern Band of Cherokee artists have created a series of large, life-like fiberglass bears and painted them in bright vibrant colors and designs.The artists responsible for creating the colorful bears are: Joel Queen, Faren Sanders Crews, Helen Smoker Martin, Mario Esquivel, Lora Powell, Melissa Maney, Nikki Nations, Tim Chiltoskie, Marina Robbins, William Harris, Jr. and Jenean Hornbuckle.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day! April 22

Recycled art is a fun project for the children or your own inner child. Look around and get inspired. Or check out this website: http://www.makingfriends.com/recycle.htm .

Reuse, Recycle and Conserve you can make a difference! What are you going to do to celebrate Earth Day? I’ll be out at the Elachee Nature Science Center, Gainesville, GA helping with their Earth Day Projects. This Earth Day find a way to give back to your community! Check out your local events.

Check out all the wonderful things happening around the country at Earth Day Network http://www.earthday.net. There are many volunteer actions with tens of thousands of participants in Washington, DC, New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta. Volunteer projects include beach and park clean-ups, tree-plantings, and green building initiatives. Wow! You can make a difference!!!!!

I hope you are out enjoying the coming of spring for it’s a time of renewal.

Create some new Green Habits. Here are a few of my spring time photos.

Pelican's of Seabrook, Tx

In Seabrook, Texas I found the Pelican Path Project which is 6 foot tall fiberglass pelican sculptures around town. They were cast locally and painted by local artist. There are some truly beautifully painted pelicans to enjoy in this resort town on Galveston Bay. Seabrook is in the center of the third largest boating community in the country. Seabrook, a bird sanctuary on one of the largest migratory paths in North America, is home to both the brown and white pelicans which residents and visitors find perched on pilings and floating along its vast water’s edge. The Pelican has been considered Seabrook’s mascot for years! You can learn more about the Pelican Path Project by clicking here to view their website.

Sailing Into Seabrook – Artist Pat Chapin

Carousel Horses

I found this delightful public art project just by chance. Around Town Carousels Abound is an amazingly fun outdoor public art project in Meridian, Mississippi. There are over 50 brightly decorated carousel horses created by the talented hands of local and regional artists each with their own theme and story . The horses have been sponsored by businesses and individuals and placed in prominent locations around the city. All proceeds from the project benefit Hope Village for Children.

Horsepower Artist: Joey Horne

Location: Weidmann's Restaurant 210 22nd Avenue

The brainchild of Debbie Martin and Jamie Cater. This permanent public art exhibit serves as a fun and fanciful display of artistic talent as well as financially benefits Hope Village for Children. “Around Town Carousels Abound is more than a collection of beautifully painted horses,” says Sela Ward (actress and founder of Hope Village) “It is a testament to what communities can do when they come together to help their least fortunate children.” Ms. Ward's active involvement in both the Carousel project and Hope Village is an affirmation of her love for the arts and dedication to children.

Since Meridian is home to our nation’s last original Dentzel Carousel, it makes perfect sense that our horses honor this treasured landmark. Each horse stands proud as a constant reminder of the imaginative spirit of childhood. Just as an adult lifts a child onto a carousel horse, so too does this project lift the children of Mississippi onto a road of hope.

The fiberglass carousel horses measure approximately 5' x 4' 11". Meridian is the first is the first city in Mississippi to join the national animals on parade phenomenon.

I'm enjoying this new treasure hunt of finding these animals on parade so off to see where I can fine more fun public art to share with you.


Location: Lauderdale County Courthouse 500 Constitution Avenue. Star-Spangled Pony Artist: Debra WilliamsonRuleau