Garden at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Virginia, May 8, 2009

Glass Blower at His Furnace, Clarksville, Missouri, June 8, 2007

Petit Jean Mountain Rendezvous Campfire, Early Arkansas Reenactors Association, Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, November 28, 2009

Restored 1903 One Room School (interior), Ash Hollow State Historical Park, Nebraska, July 8, 2010

Hornbek Homestead Buildings, Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument, Colorado, September 9, 2011

Florissant Fossil Beds (Exit 78)

“Adeline Hornbek was not a typical homesteader.  In the 1870s, after the loss of two husbands and two homes, this single mother of four moved her family to the Florissant Valley.  At a time when women had few opportunities to own property, she filed a claim to homestead 160 acres here. Within seven years, Adeline had built a sizable house and nine outbuildings, and had acquired $4,000 worth of livestock.  On top of the daily work of homestead chores and raising children, she added a job at the general store in Florissant.”

Digging for Diamonds, Crater of Diamonds State Park, Arkansas, January 29, 2011

Crater of Diamonds State Park is the  only place in the world where the public can dig for diamonds.

Latest recorded finds.

“Humiliation “ –  John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 26, 2013

John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, memorializes the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, the worst civil disturbance in American History.  (See more at Reconciliation)

Art on Sunday #1

“Maman” (1999),  is a bronze, stainless steel, and marble sculpture by the artist Louise Bourgeois. One of an edition of six sculptures created from the original has found a home at the entrance to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, August 1, 2015, Bentonville, Arkansas.

The sculpture, which depicts a spider, is among the world’s largest, measuring over 30 ft high and over 33 ft wide (927 x 891 x 1024 cm). It includes a sac containing 26 marble eggs and its abdomen and thorax are made of ribbed bronze. The title is the familiar French word for Mother. The sculpture was created in 1999 by Bourgeois as a part of her inaugural commission of The Unilever Series (2000), in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern. This original was created in steel, with an edition of six subsequent castings in bronze.  Wikipedia

The original is at Tate Modern in the UK.  Four of the five other castings are in the collections of

• National Gallery of Canada, Canada,
• Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain,
• Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, and
• Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, South Korea.

Some of the editions in permanent collections often tour on exhibit.

Crystal Bridges’s acquisition of a bronze cast of the sculpture fulfills the artist’s wish that it be owned or exhibited by a U.S. institution. (Architectural Digest)

Nabholz Corporation:

Recently, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art acquired Louise Bourgeois’s “Maman” a large, bronze spider sculpture, measuring 30 ft. 5 in. x 33 ft. 7 in. For Bourgeois, the spider alludes to the strength of her mother, with connections to spinning, weaving, nurture, and protection. For Nabholz, it meant combining forces to get one giant spider (and priceless piece of artwork) in place!

Our construction, industrial, and equipment teams combined to tackle the challenging job. The schedule was tight; the museum closes only one day a week and they needed the exhibit installed in two weeks. The scope of work included demolishing existing concrete in the courtyard, pouring new concrete and placing footings for the sculpture, transporting the deconstructed spider into the courtyard by crane, assembling the spider, and pouring new concrete to complete the finished look. Different crews coordinated an around-the-clock work schedule that allowed Nabholz to finish on schedule while the museum operated as usual.

“Maman” has found a permanent home at Crystal Bridges, and is sure to delight and surprise the thousands of patrons who visit Crystal Bridges every month!

Note: all of the still images are mine.  Because of the size of the sculpture and the size of the courtyard, there was no way to get all of “Maman” in one photo at ground level; thus, the top and bottom images are a composite of 3 or more photos stitched together.

Log Structure Detail, Animas Forks Ghost Town, Colorado September 8, 2009