Lovely Saturday

(I had to split the photos across two posts - below is all the text you're going to get this time!)

It is only 2 in the afternoon, and I feel like I've done so much today! It is a lovely sunny day, nice breeze, and the colors just pop - something about the light, plus, of course, all this color...

Buses this morning seemed to be screwy, but I caught a #3 up the hill on Harrington Hundreds to go to Kaleidoscope and its Elliot Gallery. They offer some adult classes (as well as providing a lot of arts education for kids), and I'd been interested to see what all was there - they carry some art supplies, they have a cafe on site, just sounds like an interesting spot. (And they will order whatever I want from Dick Blick, an on-line provider I've used in the US, tho the price is double what Blick lists, to cover shipping and duty. But knowing I can get the stuff easily enough is nice!) Their prices on papers and canvases were much better than the one other supplier in town.

Plus - the show presently on view is by one of the islands more respected working artists, these pieces being from his shift from water colors to acrylics. They are very different mediums (media?) to work in, acrylics having some of the characteristics of watercolors and some of oil paints; Chris is a master in watercolor. If I had a spare $1200, there were two small pieces I'd have bought. Various water and beach views, some views down streets or pathways - very Bermudian, but in a soft-focus, evocative way.

Have to admit I still prefer his watercolors. Some of these seemed like he had attained a level of comfort, others didnt work so well. Brave, tho, to put it up for exhibit and comment!

I'd gotten off the bus at the Old Devonshire Church, an Anglican church. With the very blue sky, the very bright morning sun, and the very white old church, it was startlingly beautiful. A few photos - nothing fancy about it, just simple elements in contrast given the strong light. (Also, I don't feel I see that well, and react to light/dark, pattern, shape, texture and color, and this is mentioned to explain why I seem so hypnotized by the very rhythmic shapes in the roofs and gable ends here, and the colors now becoming so apparent.)

Then I walked along Middle Road, down Tee Street to Berry Hill Road and into the Botanical Gardens for the Agricultural Show. I stopped off first at Masterworks to see the two shows on right now - one on black Bermudian artists and their works, one of contemporary mosaic work by a woman with an interesting aesthetic. I got kind of stuck there - one of the volunteers struck up a conversation on the mosaic work that carried on for a while, but one of her kids is a professional painter, presently in France, and another a local architect, and it is always interesting to hear things...She had volunteered at the Ag Exhibition and insisted on literally taping her volunteer band on my wrist so I could get in free, as one ex-pat for another.

I didn't use it - I left it on, but I bought admission, which seemed only right. I wasn't overwhelmed by the Exhibition - not nearly as fun as our State Fair in Raleigh, but in its relatively innocent way was a boisterous, happy place. Kids were showing, and oohing and aahing at their animals - goats and horses today, lovely horses drawing those small one-person carriages, can't think what that is called, a sort of racing. They were gorgeous animals, and colors. Rabbits and roosters (ever so glad the ENORMOUS black roosters on display are not part of the feral chicken crowd out here - I've never seen such big chickens!), quail and pigeons, geese, ducks, guinea pigs...Then, on to the fruits, veg, orchids and 'market basket' displays...then the cut flowers...And, after a stop for a ginger beer and fish cake sandwich, a nice wander thru the gardens and out to the bus stop to come home.

Photos of bits and pieces of all of this.
Enjoy!!