Kids On Ice

St. Paul is hosting its annual Winter Carnival this week, and the ice sculpting contest is always one of the most popular events. This morning the temp was a chilly 5 degrees below zero, fairly cold for standing around and looking, but just right for sculpting and preserving the ice. By 10 AM several sculptors were already hard at work on their newest creations.

Sculpting Ice 1

Ice Sculpting 2

Meanwhile, onlookers were strolling around Rice Park, checking out the sculptures that had been created the day before.

Sculpture 1

Sculpture 2

Sculpture 3

Sculpture 4

It’s cold a drizzly with wind gusts of forty miles an hour out there, not the best morning for enjoying a stroll in the park. In addition, this wind is going to blow down a good portion of what leaves are left, bare tree season is here.

So a little internet exploring seemed much more comfortable. Today’s discovery is a site called the Wildlife Artists Network. The name pretty much says it all, it’s handy portal to many artists’ on-line gallerys. Wildlife artist is one of those occupations in which you know that no matter how good you are, your fame will almost never extend beyond a small circle of devotees. That can be daunting, but it also means that wildlife art is one of those fields that attracts a large percentage of participants who are in it more for the love of what they do.

In terms of creativity, that’s always a good thing.

The Wildlife Artists Network has links to over 400 artists, here are a few examples just to show the range of talent on display.

Charles D. Adkins Wildlife Photography

Barry Jackson Bronze Sculpture

Martiena A. Richter Scratchboard Engravings

In what can only be assumed to be a travesty of justice, no one from Minnesota won the federal Duck Stamp Contest this year. Instead, the award went to a South Dakota artist, Joshua Spies for his painting of long-tailed ducks.

Spies won not only for his artistry, but also for the technical quality and accuracy of his work.

A few other contestants had painted long-tailed ducks but had been eliminated because of improper backgrounds, said judge Wes Miller. “The other entries had the long tails in vegetation, which is not right,” said Miller, of Clearwater, Fla. “Some very good artwork did not get in because of the wrong setting. It has to be technically correct, in anatomy and habitat.”

Let that be a lesson to all of those who are planning to enter next year’s contest.

Here’s a link to a story with a picture of the winning painting.

I’m filling in for a co-worker this weekend, so there was no time to get out and take pictures of a morning hike or bicycle trip. Instead, let me introduce you, if you don’t already know them, to the work of two Minnesota artists, photographer Jim Brandenburg and wildlife artist Joe Hautman.

Jim Brandenburg is well known as a photographer for National Geographic magazine. His work fabulously captures the spirit of the outdoors and his photographs can be found on display in many a Minnesota home, my parents have a copy of his picture of an arctic wolf, “White Wolf’, on the wall of their living room.

Brandenburg has a web-site where you can learn about his work, view his on-line gallery, and even order prints and books. I can say from experience that his photos make excellent gifts for any outdoors lover on your list.

Joe Hautman is one of three Hautman brothers, all of whom are accomplished wildlife artists. All three brothers, Joe Robert, and Jim, have seen their work selected for the Federal Duck Stamp, Joe is the latest to win that honor. There is a joint Hautman website with information on all three brothers, and Joe has a site documenting what he’s working on now.

We’re singling out Joe today because his work is on the current Federal Duck Stamp, and because it’s his drawing that is currently being sold with an already infamous phone number attached. That’s none of Joe’s doing, but if it helps draw attention to the work of a first-rate artist, that’s all to the good.

Hunters and other duck lovers who buy a federal duck stamp this year are finding an unexpected bonus.

The federal government says it has no choice but to reluctantly keep distributing to millions of waterfowl hunters a toll-free phone-sex-service number that features a breathy woman promising callers that they can “talk only to the girls who turn you on” for $1.99 per minute.

About 3.5 million federal “duck stamps,” featuring artwork by a Plymouth (Minnesota) artist, are affixed to a card that bears the misprinted number, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday.

It would cost to much to print new cards for the stamps, so the feds are going to keep selling them. The real number is for buying more duck stamps, the typo transposes two numbers.

Whether you hunt or not, buying a duck stamp is always a good idea. They feature some of the best wildlife artists in the world, and the money goes directly to supporting wetlands and wildlife refuges. And this years stamp already promises to be more collectible than most.

About as close to a perfect day as it gets here in Minneapolis. Blue skies and just enough breeze to cool you in the sunshine. I decided to hike over to the Mississippi, where there were already lots of people hanging out and walking across the Stone Arch Bridge. The crowd included a group checking out a new mode of transportation.

Down by the river shore you could get a good feel for just how high the river is right now.

Up on top of the riverbank, the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts was getting started on its final day. There was already a good number of people there even as the art booths and food vendors were just opening up.

There was quite a variety of art on display. Among the most eye-catching were the Watercolors by Richard Graves.

There were several photographers displaying outdoors and wildlife photos. Some of the best were from Earl Duckett of Ducknest Photography in Osceola, Wisconsin.

Heading back across the bridge, I stopped for a minute to take a look at St Anthonf Falls, as full of water as it has been for quite some time.

Here’s a situation fraught with the potential for ironic symbolism. How much will we destroy in order to satisfy our energy needs?

Along Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon lies what some call the longest art gallery in the world — thousands of prehistoric rock carvings and paintings of bighorn sheep and other wildlife, hunters wielding spears, and warriors engaged in hand-to-hand combat. But now, a dramatic increase in natural gas drilling is proposed on the plateau above the canyon, and preservationists fear trucks will kick up dust that will cover over the images.

“They’re irreplaceable,” said Steve Tanner, a member of the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, which wants more done to funnel industrial traffic away from the canyon to protect the art on the sandstone walls. “When they’re gone, they’re gone.”

The artwork on the canyon walls dates back over 1500 years. With eight hundred gas wells expected to be drilled around the plateau over the next decade, no one really knows what the effect on the prehistoric artwork will be. A combination of dust and chemicals could eat away at the artwork, ruining it forever.

If you were designing a situation to test just how much the relative values of art and profit weigh against each other, you couldn’t do much better than this. The future will tell if we care enough to preserve our connection to the past, or whether we’re willing to let it just crumble away.

The forecast for today in Minneapolis is rain, rain, and more rain, so I was looking for someplace close enough to home that I couldn’t get stranded in a storm. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden fit that description, and it’s always a good place for an early morning hike.

While most of the sculpture is fairly abstract, as you can see in these two examples…

…there are several representations of animals among the sculptures, including two different horses and a rabbit on a bell.

One of the best known animal sculptures in the garden is a giant glass fish, but it’s kept inside the Conservatory, which hadn’t opened yet while I was there. You can check out a picture of the glass fish here.

To cap it off, there were a couple of real live mallards swimming in the spoonbridge pond.

You don’t have to be a fly-fisherman to appreciate this. Check out these examples of Graham Owen’s incredibly life-like, and beautiful, fly tying. They’re so realistic that at least one person has mistaken them for the real thing.

I’m justifying this with the argument that insects are part of the outdoors, but really it’s just an excuse to point the way to something cool I came across this morning.

Steven R Kutcher is an artist who paints with the help of living insects.

As you can see, the results are beautifully abstract paintings. I think my favorites are the hising cockroaches, but I also like the darkling beetle paintings, and the black-and-white simplicity of the mealworm beetle.

h/t to Pharyngula for first posting about Kutcher’s art.