Who Put The Art In Artica?

Finally, a post going up on time. It seems to take a quiet Saturday evening to get it done (except that Madeleine is on the floor next to me banging on her toy xylophone).

The Artica festival had music, performance art, some painting and a lot of sculpture. I get so fixed on cruising the area for images that I don't talk to the creators enough, missing out on titles and interpretation. The piece above is intriguing. Never seen a figure in a lotus position with up-stretched arms before. See what you like in the colors and symbols on the mannequin. The second photo is, literally, a bed of crutches. Someone said they were going to burn it after the main bonfire Sunday night. I wasn't out that late.      

The road is long...

When I downloaded this photo of me sitting in the road near Jansenville in the Karoo Heartland from my camera onto the laptop and saw it, the first thing that came to my mind was "The road is long..." from He ain't heavy, he's my brother by The Hollies.  The tune, melody, words, everything.  It's probably also the best description of my life lately.  Between work and personal life it's been busy, busy, busy with lots of time spent on the road and driving my desk when I'm not, catching up on admin.  I wouldn't have it any other way though because I love what I do, but in the process blogging was the one thing that was left on the luke hot back burner.  There just hasn't been much for blogging and I really need to make a plan to change that.  But a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step and the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.  So at one stage or another, I need to get back into blogging and this is as good a time as any.  I posted for the first time in over six weeks on Port Elizabeth Daily Photo earlier this week and its time to get Firefly the Travel Guy going again after this break.  So, "The road is long, With many a winding turn..."

Jiminy

It's been a bad week for posts. New dimensions in overwork and several other attention-suckers. I would so like to cut back but it's not easy.

Anyway, back at Artica, crickets were all over the place. A boy got one to rest on his wrist. He was fascinated but worried that the bug might bite him. Do crickets do that? No harm came to anyone.  Oh, and if you don't recognize the title click here.

Artica: Dangerous Clown

Performance art, I suppose. In a corner of the Artica field, a young man wore a collared shirt and skinny black tie, a bowler and clown makeup. He wielded a chainsaw and a machete, sometimes striking statuesque poses, sometimes attacking small logs at his feet. The clown never spoke. It was all very postured and, I must say, a bit puzzling. Maybe that was the idea.    

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Artica: Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor

So there was this woman at the entrance to Artica dressed as a shabby Statue of Liberty. She had the torch and the tablet like the real one, some Americana bric-a-brack and a large artist's sketchbook. I asked her what she was doing. She asked people to stop for an interview about their fitness to enter the country. At the end you got a hand stamp that said either Retained (in the US) or Detained (sent to immigration jail, a square of grassed marked off with yellow tape). I was retained.

The interview was interesting. Being an old guy, she let me sit in a lawn chair and put the torch in its cup holder rather than stand with my arm in the air. Some of the questions were odd:

Q: What is your heritage?

A: Irish and Polish. Very pale. 

Q: What is the most exotic place you've ever been to:

A: Mt. Everest.

Q: Did you climb it?

A: Oh my God no. The air at base camp was thin enough. I got bad altitude sickness.

Q: Of all the places you've been to, where would you least like to live?

A: Cambodia. Never seen anyplace so poor although I'm sure there are worse.

Q: Coke or Pepsi?

A:  Well, I don't drink soda. But I worked a couple of summers delivering Coca Cola and hated it. My father was in the commercial sugar business and he sold Pepsi all their sweetener back in the day. So Pepsi.

Q: Are you from St. Louis?

A: No.

Q: How did you get here?

A: St. Louis U. was the college farthest away from my father that let me in.

Q: Hammer or nail?

A: Hammer. I don't respect authority very well.

And so on. Turns out she was an actress. She and a colleague were working on a play that includes this concept to be performed in New York, where they live. Some people had problems with the interview, others not. I thought it was fun.