Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog

Today is Easter and close enough to month’s end to post an article of little things that weren’t quite strong enough to be posts unto themselves.  Since almost all of our holidays have a significant material culture connection to them…it’s “natural” that I would find some of the remains here at the Falls of the Ohio.  Just looking at recent images, here are a few such holiday related objects and images to ponder.

Crushed and mix among all the other debris is the remains of what was probably a child’s Easter basket.  Although a novel item, I can remember in “my day”, the colorful wooden baskets worked just as well as the plastic ones, but without the long-term ramifications.  Interestingly, this plastic basket “mimics” the texture of an actual wooden basket.  Here are a couple of “egg-related” images to enjoy.

I certainly would be very afraid of the giant American Robin that laid this large blue egg!  This is how it appeared when I first encountered it on the driftwood pile.  This picture is from last year and I eventually used it for an all-blue colored assemblage.  This egg does not come apart and was made to be purely decorative.  One more egg picture to go and here it is.

Two views of the extremely rare and transient bird, Heisenberg’s Hammerkopf, interacting with a found plastic egg.  I photographed this bird investigating/playing? with this bright yellow plastic egg with a Sponge Bob Squarepants design on it.  I’m certain the egg once contained Easter candy in it, but now that it’s empty it becomes a candidate for the worldwide junk pile.  To see more Heisenberg’s Hammerkopf images please see my previous post.  People ask me all the time…”Al, have you ever found anything of real value?”  Usually, I reply that I’m waiting for that solid gold ingot to wash up here…but I’m not holding my breath on that one!  Recently, however, I did come across something that had great value for someone and here it is.

Walking along the riverbank in the eastern section of the park…I spied a soggy and muddy purse at the water’s edge.  Investigating further, I could see that there was a wallet and checkbook inside and so I opened up the wallet to see if the owner’s name could be found.  As it turns out, this person’s credit cards, insurance cards, driver’s license, etc…were all still there.  I took the muddy purse home and called the person whom it belongs to and she was thrilled that her purse had turned up somewhere.  She had given it up for lost after someone had broken into her home a week before and took the purse along with a few other electronic items.  The thief who broke into and entered her home only took the seven dollars in cash she had and then threw the purse into the river.  The elderly woman whose purse this is was most anxious to get back the family photos she kept in her wallet.  Included among them were precious black and white photos of her own parents that could not be replaced.  Since the owner lived in Southern Indiana we met the following day at my place of work in New Albany and I gave her property back to her.  That certainly was my good deed for that day.  Here’s another lost and found item I’m posting just for fun.  First, here’s how this object appeared as I came across it.

On first blush…I recoiled slightly because I associated the brown fur with a dead animal.  I have found several dead deer out here this year and if this was that…I wanted nothing to do with it.  Looking more closely and since few animals are this uniformly brown I could make out that it was synthetic fur and not the real thing.  So, I reached down and lifted the mystery object from its sand, mud, and wood chip debris matrix to reveal…

…this good size plush toy of the Tasmanian Devil (aka “Taz”).  I guess he was waiting to ambush any unsuspecting prey like me that came across its path.  Years a go, I found a much smaller Tasmanian Devil and posted about that one too, but this one was truly “trophy size”.  And now, to introduce someone who actually knows something about the history of Tasmania.

This is Chiel Kuijl who is visiting from the Netherlands and is at the time of this writing the current Artist at Residence at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, Kentucky.  I ran into him the day the Heisenberg’s Hammerkopf was spotted out at the Falls.  Chiel is creating a site specific work at Bernheim using rope to create an elevated space that people can explore.  He needed some interesting pieces of wood for his installation and the Falls of the Ohio State Park is a great place for that.  I have had the chance to interact a little bit more with Chiel so far and look forward to his finished project and hanging out with him more.  Oh, Tasmania was visited early on by Dutch sailors who help put it onto the world’s map.  Holland has a great seafaring tradition and I wouldn’t doubt that some of Chiel’s skill with ropes and knots is a part of that heritage.  One more artist to talk about before closing…

The current issue of Southern Indiana Living features an article about me…the Artist at Exit 0 written by good friend and retired Courier-Journal columnist Bob Hill.  Bob now in his “retirement” also runs Hidden Hills nursery where unusual and rare plants and trees are offered for sale.  Every once in a while, Bob will invite artists to place projects at Hidden Hills which is what I will do in late May.  The day we went out to see something about the world I like to explore it is was about twenty degrees or so and an earlier attempt at a photo shoot was thwarted by snow and extreme cold.  Here is the link for the article should anyone care to check that out…Artist at Exit 0 magazine article.  This issue is good for one more month and I have had a lot of fun with this and have been gratified by the response from friends and family through Facebook.  The actual article begins on page 22 and the link allows you to turn the pages of the magazine which is cool too.  Well, there you have it…my odds and ends post to conclude March 2016.  Spring is starting out warm and promising and I look forward to many more new adventures on the Indiana side of the Ohio River.  See you then!

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