Some cool yard art uo near the springs
After giving up on the birds we were able to wander and enjoy the mother nature's salty creations. Not a spectacular day for photography, but a wonderful day for salt crystals.
And why is the water pink you ask? As the lake lake level decreases due (it's very low right now!) the salt concentration increases, especially on the north end that is cordoned off from the rest of the lake by the Union Pacific Railroad dike. The halophilic bacteria in the lake make the pretty pink color. Click here for some cool drone footage of the lake
I've not posted anything about art in quite sometime, but I had an experience a while back that I thought I should share. This is not about my art, but about found art and delightful surprises.
Living in Salt Lake we are lucky to have the Sundance Film right in our backyard and for the last few years I been able to see a few movies and spend an afternoon or two wandering the streets of Park City checking out the festivities. There's always some fun things to see and interesting people watching.
At the same time Park City is also host to a second film festival... an 'alternative' film festival, Slamdance. While wandering through town we stopped at the Treasure Mountain Inn to see what Slamdance had to offer. There we found a table covered with post cards for all the different offerings. Amid all the glossy, professional postcards we found of a couple ordinary paper cards, but they were hardly ordinary, they were actually hand printed with original designs, signed and numbered, and had a sticker on the back directing you to the website of Gabrielle Kash, a young animator living in Brooklyn, NY. I thought the hand made prints were a pretty cool marketing idea!
There were not many prints left, so not wanting to be greedy I just chose one - "Lizard" 37/50
"Lizard" is a character in the movie she was advertising; an animated short called Lorem Ipsum which asks the following 2 questions:
I was pretty jazzed to randomly find a cool piece of art, so I went and bought a little frame and it is now hanging in my living room. Thanks Gabrielle for the gift! I wish you well in your career!
If you want to watch Loren Ipsum, it's here.
As it turned out it proved quite interesting to go the same place every week and see what changes mother nature had in store for us, I especially had fun watching the transition of the wild flowers over an entire season.
Week 1 June 9 - the first week the Mirror Lake Highway was open
Week 17 Oct 1
Literally.
I never realized that saying was one that was so steeped in literal origins, but, apparently it is. Back in the spring while adventuring across the west desert we found what we thought was an odd case of bullet holes inside the Simpson Springs outhouse. Odd enough to me that I turned it into a creative writing contest, asking my friends to post their imagined scenarios of explanations for our odd find. And then last weekend... We were out exploring again. This time we headed east and stumbled upon the ghost town of Piedmont, Wyoming, an old railroad town based around charcoal kilns that supplied Salt Lake City and the Union Pacific Railroad trains. As ghost towns go, Piedmont was pretty cool. The kilns are preserved as historic landmark, and there are several old decaying buildings still in existance. Enought that you could wonder what the place was like back in the day. There was one small building made of rusted corregated steel, which I assumed was a shed unil walking around to the open side and discovering it was actually a four hole outhouse. Now there's a first... I've seen many two holers in my life, and often pondered "Why?" as in "Why would you want to go to the potty in pairs?", but a four holer really makes you wonder what three people in the world you like enough to want to defecate with. If that was not thought provoking enough, the building ws riddled with holes... bullet holes, which on close inspection we realized were not from it being a distant target, but from shots fired from inside the outhouse. Putting on our forensic science thinking caps and examining the curvature of the metal 'Exit Wound" we realized that the bullets were shot from inside the outhouse, most likely from the proximity of the four holers.
Now once again I have to ask the question, who shoots bullets from inside an outhouse???? What is the scenario this time? Four fellows, after a few beers and a can of beans,taking a dump, one of the guys lets her rip... flatulence that is. Another of the three fellows can't stand the smell and decides to ventilate the room using his handy side arm? Gives new meaning the the expression "Shooting the shit!" doesn't it? And here are some photos of the rest of the ghost town and historic charcoal kilns of Piedmont, WY...
