A fun working holiday

Antique radio
Since I only had a ton of school related stuff that I needed to be working on over Thanksgiving, I ended up spending most of Friday taking photos of needle art, and much of the weekend fiddling with the results.

WeatherGirl is a key player in a group that has arranged to bring the EGA‘s 18th National Exhibit to our happy little hamlet in January. This is a pretty big deal and will bring some pretty spectacular needle art to Morris, and we’re definitely on the small side of the distribution of towns hosting the exhibit; kudos to the PRCA and the Stevens County Museum for enriching our community with this event.

Pastel crosses
A whole host of coordinated events are also being organized, one of which is a juried exhibition of work by local needle artists. I was then “volunteered” to take photos of some of these local works in the Stevens County Museum. Some of which will then be used on cards which will be sold at the Museum and the PRCA Gallery to help defray the costs of bringing the exhibit to Morris. So WeatherGirl, my Mom (my folks are here for Thanksgiving), and I spent many hours at the Museum Friday making it happen. WeatherGirl and Mom were a huge help, both in helping identify pieces that would photograph well in those conditions, and in helping put together scenes and vignettes that combined pieces and items from the museum’s collections. The top piece, for example, is resting on top of a cool antique radio, and the pastel crosses are on an antique bible in Norwegian.

It was a lot more work than I think any of us expected (except, perhaps, WeatherGirl – but she’s omniscient), but I think we got some good shots. It’ll be interesting to see which shots the Powers That Be choose to turn into cards, and how well (or not) they sell. (This whole commerce thing is always a little annoying. I like doing what I do, but thinking about how other people might purchase or choose gives me a headache. It’s important here, though, so we press on.)

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We had lunch with Loudon Wainwright

Here Come the Choppers
Well, sort of… :-)

The day started with WeatherGirl and I having a very productive strategy meeting with Arne and Athena to work on the design of a MARQS pamphlet in support of November’s school levy vote. While we were deep in planning, who should come into Common Cup but Loudon Wainwright! He apparently came in last night, and spent the day wandering around town and campus on his own, including lunch at our little coffee shop.

Many (most?) artists and speakers that come to UMM tend to hole up in their hotel rooms and spend almost no time in town among us plebs, so it was particularly cool that Loudon was so comfortable cruising around town. We talked about going over and saying “Hi”, but I’m frankly a total wimp about talking to famous people like that. In the end he left before we did, saving me the trouble of having to think about it.

Across the rim
After that exciting time WeatherGirl and I went over to the PRCA Gallery to take photos of art. As a fund raiser for the Center, we’re working on a calendar of photographs of the work of PRCA artists. I already had quite a few relevant shots from outside the Center, but needed to spend some time in the Center of some of the cool stuff on display (and sale) there. We stayed a couple of hours and I took some 150 shots. I think we’ve got a pretty good set of shots to work with, and will hopefully have the calendar design and permissions sorted out in a few weeks.

Beads and bowlsThis fine day was then capped off by an excellent concert by our lunch guest. Loudon played a fine 90 minute set as the opening act of this year’s Performing Arts Series, mixing crazy fun stuff with his great family songs and political commentary. Edson Auditorium wasn’t full, but it was close (400 people?) and the audience was very enthusiastic and supportive, and he got a nice standing ovation at the end.

We bought a copy of Here come the choppers, and Sub-Evil Boy got in line to have it signed. Sub-Evil really enjoyed chatting with Loudon, and I think that Loudon got a kick out of having a really cool young fan. Sub-Evil told him that he’d wanted to request “Unhappy anniversary” (a pretty unusual request from an 11 year old), but he was pretty pumped that Loudon finished up his encore with “Hard day on the planet”.

All in all, an excellent Saturday!

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