Filed under: Art, Phoenix | Tags: Art, Downtown Phoenix, Lalo Cota, Murals, Phoenix
Before and After…
Yes, I bought another Lalo Cota piece. This is the original one that I wanted the night we bought our first Lalo at Barrio Café. However, it was already sold. A few days ago, we drove over to Calle 16 because I knew that the mural on the back of the gallery had been overpainted. Por Vida Gallery (Lalo’s gallery along with Thomas Breeze Marcus and Pablo Luna) happened to be open so we dropped in and met the lovely Leilani, Lalo’s significant other. I mentioned how I had wanted the little yellow one but it was sold and she said the deal had fallen through and went and got it for us to look at. So I bought it (I’m done with art purchases for awhile now).
Have you ever had a de la Rosa? We hadn’t but Leilani offered us some. They’re delicious, a marzipan/peanut confection. You can buy them on Amazon.com if you can’t find them in your area. Lalo likes using found objects to make his art; hence the de la Rosa box.
So here is our Lalo area at home:
This is a postcard that Lalo sent after our first purchase. I have a lot of other Frida Kahlo stuff so it fits right in.
And this is the back of the gallery (on Calle 16) as it appeared a few weeks ago. Before…
And this is what it looks like now, by Kaper and Shewp. See them painting it here. After…
Check out this cool 1-minute video of Lalo painting part of Calle 16.
Thanks to Phoenix Taco, where I first saw this video. Many more murals to come in the next few days…
Last weekend when we rode on the Verde Canyon Railroad in Clarkdale, we couldn’t resist stopping in Cottonwood, the next town over, before heading home to Phoenix. It was early evening but still light and Cottonwood is one of those quaint and charming little towns with nice cafés, fun bars, and cool antique stores all around.
Barb, Jere, and I checked out a few shops while Tony and Craig had a couple beers and then we joined them for dinner (and more beers). It was the local high school’s prom night so there was a lot of action downtown and it was fun to sit on the patio and watch the night life in this little town of 12,000 before heading back to the big city.
I wish I had taken more photos but I wasn’t really planning on taking any at all there. By the end of dinner, a couple of us were thinking how fun it would be to have a little vacation home or condo in Cottonwood. It’s about 8-10 degrees cooler than Phoenix in the summertime and very close to Sedona, Prescott, and Jerome, all interesting, beautiful places to go to beat the heat.
And, yes, they’re big on wine and chocolate there so what’s not to like?
With all the activities in Cottonwood, combined with all there is to do in the surrounding towns, I don’t think we’d be bored there at all, and it’s less than a 2 hour drive to Phoenix. I’m still keeping that as a little dream for now.
Happy Earth Day! Yesterday we went on the Verde Canyon Railroad again with some friends. We last went in November. We obviously think it’s fun. So I got some shots that seemed “earthy” and appropriate for today.
Have you noticed, if you’re on WordPress, that the photos lose a lot of resolution when you put them into your posts? Maybe it’s just the particular template I chose which makes the photos too small and seems to distort them so they do not look nearly as crisp as they are. If you click on them to enlarge, they look fine but I seriously doubt that many people are going to click on all my photos here. I should probably switch templates but that would mess up all my previous 3+ years of posts and I would have to manually correct them all. That’s a little more time than I can invest. Well, anyway…I digress.
Here are a few more photos from the trip.
Big sky…
The caboose!
Divine intervention!
What are you doing for Earth Day? I think I’ll plant some catnip seeds for the indoor cats and another batch for the outdoor cats. I also donated 4 framed photos that I took about 3 years ago to Earth Night 2012‘s silent auction to benefit the Arizona League of Conservation Voters. I could have gotten a free ticket to the event but we had already booked our train ride for yesterday before I knew about it. Next time…
A little over two years ago, I wrote a blog post titled Hometree. We had just seen the movie Avatar shortly before and then I came upon this tree in a little greenbelt close to our bank. It’s an odd area, amidst office buildings, with no benches or other comforts to encourage anyone to visit there but it’s very lovely. Maybe it’s just meant to be appreciated as you drive by but I like to stop there from time to time.
Anyway, this Hometree is a mammoth mesquite tree with huge, winding, gnarled limbs wrapping around each other and even wrapping around limbs in adjacent trees. A few weeks ago, Tony and I stopped there after going to the bank because he had never seen Hometree up close. Poor Hometree looked pretty sickly, dead limbs, dried leaves. In fact, several of the mesquite trees looked pretty bad even though the grass is plush and well-watered.
Then, about 2 weeks ago, I drove by and glanced at Hometree and half of her was gone! I took my camera back a couple days later and documented what is left.
I think the largest of the two main limbs is what was removed.
A little bit of a difference, huh?
She still has a certain grace but not the majesty she once had.
This one, below, is Hometree’s partner tree, also thinned out. Hometree’s branches (on the upper right side of the photo) still reach toward and intertwine with the other tree’s limbs.
I’m glad they are attempting to save the trees rather than cut them down, though.
You can see that there were several more large limbs removed.
Hang in there, Hometree.
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now – whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
Filed under: Arizona, Home | Tags: Arizona, Bad Haiku, Butterflies, Flora, Home
Last year, in my yard, I got a Variegated Fritillary, some Skippers, and right down the alley, some Giant Swallowtails. This year I’m starting earlier and have a new one that I had to identify on the internet. These photos are of a Painted Lady!
There may have been 2. They’re fast and they’re hungry! Once again, as last year, they’re loving the lantana.
So I wrote another bad haiku in their honor:
Probing proboscis
Guzzles sweet nectar juices
Happy butterfly
And the Skippers are back, too! And probing. You can see their proboscises better by clicking on the photos.
