On my way in to work today, I spied something odd sitting at a bus stop at Country Place and Country Club Road.  Driving by it looked like a person covered in cellophane:

I instantly thought of Mark Jenkins and turned around to check it out.  Parking was kind of dicey though, Country Club is a two lane street that is kind of a mess in the morning.  Props to whoever did this, it certainly was collecting a bunch of stares from the morning commuters that passed by.  Upon closer inspection, there was a few things that were a little off…time for an impromptu art critique!

Jekins’ balloon pieces work because their interaction with the surroundings is subtle but integral to the piece as a whole, the piece below is an example:

The bent bus stop becomes the perfect prop for the balloon boy to pull down.  The illusion works because the angles and proportions are correct fooling your mind into believing the impossible.  I had initially thought that maybe the anonymous artist might have reconstructed the bus stops signage to be incorporated into the message but that’s not the case. Its a simple advertisement for insurance.  So what is the message here?

Scrawled in black sharpie are several words:

Fat, Disproportional, Dunce, Thunder Thighs, Empty, Cow

Note, I would have not known this by simply driving by.  The text isn’t large enough to discern from the street.  The intent may have been to draw the viewer in but without adequate parking most people will go on with their lives.

If you did stop you would notice the figure appears to be female so in that context the words are some sort of play on two possible obvious themes. One, disparaging remarks made unto the sculpture as a reflection of the artist being treated by others or Two, a inward projection out, of how the artist feels about themselves. There is a crumpled bag of Funyuns under its right hand so we might have a clue.

Now to me that presents a bit of a problem. Are you fat and have thunder thighs because you eat junk food all the time? Do you eat junk food because you feel empty causing you to be fat thus fulfilling your our self hate prophecy? Was the Funyuns bag just trash that happened to be there during the installation.  As the viewer we don’t know. There’s not enough information.  Using big heavy rocks to hold the sculpture in place, breaks up the continuity of the piece as well and distracts from the intended message.  The black X across the heart may have any number of meanings but the X on the right thigh only confuses that.  Is the whole thing some sort of “Anti Bully Message” that’s all the rage in schools these days? Who knows.

I will say this, I did stop and take a look so in that regard the piece was successful. Despite some presentation and constructions problems it did make me snap a few pictures and write about it so the joke may be on me.  Well there may be a few other people who get duped into taking a look at it.  As I was leaving, I heard sirens in the distance but couldn’t place the direction.  Traveling up Country Club over the Rio Grande bridge, an ambulance passed heading towards the bus stop quickly followed by a fire truck.  I guess somebody else saw it but didn’t have the time top stop and check it out before reporting it to the authorities, funny.  Score one for guerrilla art!

Full Set of photos here: The Fat Dunce

Usually about once a year I get a craving for El Paso’s favorite local rolled taco dive:

I called my friend Vince and we headed over to Chico’s and had double orders with fries (no extra cheese, I’m getting to old).  We went to the Alameda location and across the street sits Evergreen Cemetery.  After stuffing ourselves with rolled tacos, we finished up and decided to walk them off by checking the cemetery out.

View Evergreen Cemetery in a larger map

Concordia Cemetery may be the “big thing” in town, due to the John Wesley Hardin tie in but Evergreen has its own uniqueness that makes it worth visiting.  It was established in 1894, about 38 years after Concordia and there’s quite a bit of different between the two.  Most of Concordia is dirt and loosely organized; Evergreen has a lot of grassy areas, trees and tightly laid out plots.

The cemetery is still active so there are whole generations of El Pasoians here including many prominent names that you will find on businesses and streets.  It’s a lot larger than it looks and it took us about 45 minutes to cover the main path, skimming the plots as we went.

Like most cemeteries, vandals have left their mark hacking off the heads and hands of many of the statues.  For the most part though it seems to have survived better than Concordia.  There were some neat features I haven’t noticed before at any of the other cemeteries I’ve visited, namely these old limey portraits affixed the graves:

Oxidation was really present on many of the markers and I’m not sure if that was just unique to the stone that were used there or if it was from watering over the years to keep the weeds grass green.

Many of the headstones were really ornate, more than I’ve noticed elsewhere in town.  There’s lots of statue use as well. We also found some cool gothic lettering on one:

There was even this odd juxtaposition of names that was quite amusing:

We even found this fellow who was waiting for his hole to be dug:

We had covered the main path and circled back to the entrance so it was time to pack it in and head back to our days jobs.  You can visit my full flickr set here:

Evergreen Cemetery

Ages ago I posted a pic of a painting I was working on.  Unfortunately, it met an untimely end… it got wet in my garage.  I scrapped it and focused on another project at the time, finishing up our demolished bathroom that had been idle for the greater part of a year since the February 2011 freeze.

Anyway finish bathroom, Christmas, New Years, my birthday, all of February 2012 and a quick trip to Lubbock passed by. Well I’m back on track and just recently started a new painting:

It’s moving along pretty quick and I already have a couple of ideas stacked up behind it.  I’m still photographing interesting/weird stuff that I come across and will continue to post those mini adventures as well.  Finally I brought back from the dead my previous Blogger blog, the j10chronicles about my J-10 Jeep truck and moved it to a wordpress site, the NEW j10chronicles.  Right now its just an archive of the previous site with a new theme. There is some activity going on with the truck that i’ll be updating soon.

Lots going on, stay classy El Paso!

The end of spring break brought us a quick trip to Lubbock, Texas.  We have a nephew there and our boys love to hang out with their older cousin.  His birthday also happens to be the same week as St. Patrick’s day so it always makes for an interesting trip.

View A Few Things in Lubbock in a larger map

We were there Friday to Sunday, working around his parents schedule so there wasn’t a lot of time to do a bunch of stuff but I did manage to get a few shots of some interesting things while driving around Lubbock.

On Saturday morning we had some time to take the kids to the National Ranching Heritage Center. The facility was established to preserve the history of ranching, pioneer life and the development of the livestock industry in North America. They have large collection of original ranching buildings on the grounds that they have restored.

The building collection is pretty impressive, they have everything from pioneer dugouts to the fancy Victorian house above.  There’s also a steam engine with caboose, a small train depot, windmills and several barns.  The walk doesn’t take to long and by far the boys were most interested in the steam engine.

We headed out for lunch and after getting a quick bite to eat stumbled upon some carved wooded sculptures along 98st.  It looks like at one time these were trees that lined the property but this crafty individual chopped them down and carved them up into what you see below.

I’m not usually into this sort of thing but you have to admire the individual who has the drive to not only cut down some very large trees on his property but to then transform them into folksy works of art.  The most impressive was the attacking eagle, with its wings outstretch and claws out, it makes the best use of the previous trees shape.

Once we wrapped up there we dropped the boys off at their cousin’s so they could go golfing with their Uncle and Grandpa.  Virg and I headed off to the depot district to check out the Buddy Holly Center.

The center sits in a refurbished train depot on the edge of the depot district.  The Buddy Holly sculpture that used to reside around 8th street has been relocated across the street in a park that has a local “Walk of fame”

We did briefly tour the museum whose admission will also get you into the Silent Wings Museum, though we didn’t stop there.  That was enough sight seeing for the day so we headed down the street to the JJJ Chophouse and then on to Crickets Grill for some frosty beverages.

It was starting to get crowed from all the St. Patrick’s day revelers so we decided to head back to the family for dinner.  For a better view of the Ranch Museum, carved sculptures and the Buddy Holly Center, click on the Flickr link below:

Lubbock 2012