Lily's Favorite Art

Lily here to share 5 of my favorite entries. With the exception of #5, mine are quite girly this year. Not sorry, Felicity. XD

The Flowering Wall
The artist cut, crafted, and hot glued all of these paper flowers by hand, each one unique, and arranged them on panels to create The Flowering Wall. You can't really tell from these photos, but Mom reports that many of them sparkle with varying amounts of glitter. The artist created this for her daughter's wedding, as she (the artist) was battling cancer and could not attend the wedding in person. What a beautiful backdrop that made at the wedding reception!

Victorian Dresser

front

back

Yes, it really is made of wood, and yes, it is life-size! The artist laminated 2" thick boards of cherry wood into the general form, did the initial shaping with a mini chainsaw, and then used die grinders to carve the details. Some sanding and a coat of clear polyurethane later, and there you have it, a wooden dress. Totally impractical, yes, but gorgeous.

The Fitting Room

This painting was hanging on a wall behind Victorian Dresser. (I wonder if that was planned?) The subject matter: 3 of the artist's daughters trying on prom dresses in a mirrored fitting room. I love the color palette, the way the artist has captured the effect of all those mirrors, and the artist's "chunky dot" style of painting. (I'm sure there's a way more technical term for it, but I'm too lazy to investigate further at present.)

Origami Bonsai
Here is Mom's photo. The lighting isn't so great thanks to the window, but it shows you the whole thing straightforwardly.

And now for two artsy shots from the ArtPrize website:

Any guesses as to what kind of person it was who created this delicate pink tree? I figured it was probably a girl, and a super girly girl at that. Dead wrong. It was a young, very nice dude. XD He offered to teach passersby how to fold origami butterflies. Mom declined. *Sighs* But I want to know how to fold paper butterflies! There must be a tutorial online! At any rate, I really admire the end result. The branches are curved just right, and the butterflies make the branches look like they're covered in pink blossoms. Pink seems like the perfect color for this - I'm not sure any other color would've been as pleasing.

African Menagerie, An Inquisition

Last and not least, behold the African menagerie! This 7-paneled giant oil painting depicts 209 African animals species. (I'm not sure if that number includes the human or not.) It's 32 feet long and 10 feet high, to give you some idea of its impressive size.

The animals may be realistically painted, but obviously this scene is not. It makes me think of what might happen in Africa if the dude pictured had a magical flute to summon all surrounding animals. ;^)

My favorite two panels are on the far left, where the 3 kinds of zebras (Grevy's, Mountain, and Plains) are hanging out with an (extinct) quagga.

Off to the side was a key informing the viewer of the name of each animal species. Mom spent a considerable amount of time here, as I no doubt would've too.
And now for another small recap. My birthday was this past Monday! I know, a Monday birthday is not exactly ideal. Everybody still did their best to make it special, though, and I've got to say it was one of the best Mondays I've had in a while. We were all busy, but I still made time to visit HI2 for a few minutes and flute my birthday wild horse. I rode the noble Onyx out near the end of Line Isle for this, hopeful that such a handsome dark stallion would attract a beautiful mare...

...but instead we lured in another handsome stallion. XD

I figured the odds weren't good that my birthday horse would be roan, but I kept my fingers crossed for a bay.

The moment of truth came when I ventured up to Mom's room:

Drat, foiled by light grays! Oh well, at least they're quite clean, good-looking light grays. I'm out of time today, but check back later if you're curious to see who end up winning the various prizes in our birthday flute contest!