October Theme Day: Rest and Relaxtion

 

Well, now ... my visit on Friday to Newfields (nee the Indianapolis Museum of Art), could not have been more suited to this month's theme; not only was it a day of rest and relaxation for me, but my visit to the design exhibits also suited the theme.

Here is the Slice Chair created by Danish designer Mathias Bengtsson in 1999. He referred to it as "a piece of furniture cut away from a cliff and scaled to human proportions." It was first sketched by hand then sculpted in clay as a full-size model. The clay model was cut into slices, with each slice then digitized on a basic scanner (I think of "basic" as the little one in my desk top printer. I doubt it would accommodate the size of these slices.) Then each scan was traced using a program to create a three-dimensional model. A computer-controlled laser then cut the layers out of thin aluminum sheets, which were assembled and hand polished.

And! The Slice Chair has a happy face!

The first of each month is marked as a "theme day" by City Daily Photo, whose members post a related photo to their blogs. Their contributions can be seen either by linking to the group's Facebook page, or by clicking on the logo to the right of this post.

@Newfields #DiscoverNewfields

My little prize gets a prize of her own

 Years ago, I began collecting old postcards showing steamboats that cruised the western rivers, primarily the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and their tributaries. During one of my searches of a *popular on-line auction* website, I saw a listing for this cup.

I couldn't think of why the seller was letting it go, except perhaps it didn't fall within his own interests, but I was willing to make a small gamble. Thinking that other bidders would quickly put the price beyond my reach, I was surprised a week later, when I was notified that my bid had "won" and, for about $29.00, I was the new owner. 

When it arrived, I found that I was the owner of a bit of riverboat history. The cup had been hand-painted with a picture of a side-wheel steamboat, the Belfast, that plied the southern Mississippi River from about 1852 to 1857. Along with the gilt decorations the cup was inscribed to the buyer's wife: to "Mrs. Hannah F. Thornburgh from her Husband." 

While the inscription seems formal to us now, I imagine the effort needed to have the gift made possibly took the captain (or pilot, or clerk) to a shop in New Orleans that specialized in the porcelain painting of dishes and other items that decorated affluent homes of the ante-bellum era. In order to promote their skills, artists such as Rudolph Lux furnished samples of their work to be used by the passengers on the more luxurious riverboats, all of which displayed the maker's contact information.

So ... Mr. Thornburgh may have paid a visit to one of these studios and commissioned this small, loving gift for his wife. 

Entire settings of the painted china have survived to be displayed in museums, but my cup, showing signs of its use over the years, sits on top of my bookshelf and holds a few ribbons I got for swimming competitions. However, it now also holds its own ribbon, received for placing second in its category at the Indiana State Fair. Not first? Meh. There's no way it could have beaten the twelve-inch punch bowl that was decorated with hand-painted purple flowers. The bowl was beautiful, but my cup has, maybe, connections to steamboat pilot Sam Clemens and artist Rudolph Lux and stands proudly on her own.   

"What I did with my Olympic diving medal"*

  

Yep. He did it. He climbed the little tower to the even tinier platform that was eighty feet above the water's surface. Then he dove off. The climb seemed like the hard part because this guy has been diving off university diving platforms since he was a kid, but accessed those by stairs.

He was one of a half dozen people who performed three times a day to the upturned faces of hundreds of awed spectators at the Indiana State Fair, myself among them. For the past ten years, I've often watched competitive divers learning, practicing, and honing their skills at the IU Natatorium, so there was no way I'd miss this show. 

When I was a girl, I once went to a nearby shopping center to see a man named Barney Cipriani climb a similar tall, skinny tower to dive into another tank full of water. Some years later, I remember watching Cipriani taking part in a cliff diving competition in Acapulco that was shown on ABC's Wide World of Sports. 

On occasion, I've wondered whatever became of the traveling high divers, thinking that a jaded public was no longer interested in watching people hurl themselves into space, turning and twisting as they plunged towards the pool many feet below. Apparently, they're alive and well, taking their act (and their babies) on the road during the summers. And people are just as willing to watch them. 

* I'm being facetious: There were no Olympic medals involved here.

London gets the "Shard", the "Gherkin", and the "Walkie-Talkie". We get ...

 

The Underarm Deodorant Applicator!

Early one recent Saturday morning, I was waiting downtown for a bus that would take me to swim practice, enjoying the beautiful summer dawn, when I noticed the oval-shaped (sort of) building rising from behind the corporate headquarters of Cummins International.

Over the past several years, buildings have been sprouting up all around the city's downtown area. They are primarily apartment buildings. At first, I thought they were intended as housing for the large student population attending the universities located here, but they're all so expensive, exceeding what I imagine would be the usual student budget.

We have a lot of hospitals that are affiliated with the medical school. A couple of the corporate offices are the lairs of lawyers and accountants. One building, originally constructed by a large banking firm, now is the headquarters of a tech business. 

But where is the large population of a young workforce that should be filling all the surrounding apartments? I just don't see them.