Hot on the heels of Wednesday‘s Eyecatchers installment, here’s another shot I took of an art installation in Vancouver, B.C.
Quite a different face than Wednesday’s, this is a close-up of a sculpture, located in Yaletown Park, titled Eros Bendato Scripolato by Polish artist Igor Mitoraj.
It’s impossible to get an idea of the scale of the piece from this photo, but I love the texture, color, and moodiness of this composition.
Oh, and I guess I should mention that I messed around with the orientation, too!
If you haven’t seen the sculpture installation in Vancouver, B.C., titled A-maze-ing Laughter, by Chinese artist Yue MinJun, I highly recommend it.
Located where Denman Street, Davie Street, and Beach Avenue converge to form Morton Triangle, on the edge of English Bay and Stanley Park, this collection of 14 bronze figures, each approximately 8-feet tall, each bearing the same, laughing visage of the artist himself, is an intoxicating piece of work.
Intoxicating, meaning it’s impossible to not at least smile, if not actually laugh along, with the 14 giants. I don’t know whether to call it uplifting without being sentimental, or just uplifting and unapologetically sentimental.
Anyway, here’s a close-up I snapped of one of the figures:
It’s going to be quiet around here at Fish & Bicycles for the next few days, as the family and I are heading north tonight for Beautiful British Columbia!
Two nights and a day of city time in fabulous Vancouver, followed by two days and one night in gorgeous Squamish, home of the magnificent piece of granite you see here to the right, a rock climbing mecca called the Stawamus Chief.
For those of you who don’t know the geography, this involves driving about 25 minutes north from here in Bellingham to the U.S.-Canadian border, havin’ a quick chat with a Canuck border officer about passports and our plans, driving another 45 minutes or so to Vancouver, and then on Saturday morning driving another hour north to Squamish.
As easy as pie!
Internet access will be unpredictable, and at times unavailable, so I might not be able to post anything more than a photo or two.
In the meantime, feel free to browse around Fish & Bicycles in any of the following ways:
Tags: In the sidebar, under Stuff About…, you can click on any of the Tags and see all the posts I’ve done that have at least something to do with those topics.
Recurring Series: At the top of the page, hover over the Recurring Series drop-down menu and select from options like Celebrating Progress, which applauds businesses adopting sustainable practices; Eyecatchers, a collection of photos, graphics, and videos that have, well, caught my eye; Video Fridays, my favorite video of the week pick; and more.
Archives: Towards the bottom of the sidebar, select a specific month to see everything I posted in that time period.
I’ll back at this blogging thing before you know it, but if you are REALLY going to miss me, I wouldn’t mind if you left me a comment telling me so. (hint, hint, nudge, nudge)
Ok, I know, I’ve been obsessing on The Flaming Lips here this past week, and I promise I’ll move on to different topics soon, but there’s just no way that I can not reflect on last night’s concert, a concert that was arguably the greatest show I’ve ever seen.
Saturday, as Bellinghamsters will recall, was an absolutely stunning bonus summer day, and the only reason I didn’t totally enjoy it was because there was rain in the forecast for Sunday, when I was due to attend the Lips show, outdoors in Vancouver’s Malkin Bowl Amphitheater. I’d been looking forward to the concert for months, and there I was on Saturday, in the midst of a gorgeous sunny day, trying to picture standing in a muddy field in the pouring rain.
And when I awoke on Sunday it seemed my worst fears had manifested. It rained non-stop all morning.
However, by noon the rain stopped, and while the skies didn’t clear, there were occasional, fleeting sunbreaks, and as my friends and I set out northward towards the border I was starting to be optimistic.
We stopped for food and drink at a restaurant right on the water near the convention center, dined outside, and the excitement of the impending show grew as we enjoyed a lovely meal in a lovely setting.
From the restaurant, we walked around the seawall for a few minutes before heading into the interior of Stanley Park towards the venue. I have to admit that I was disappointed when I first set eyes on Malkin Bowl. It seemed incredibly small and the field was muddy and it was hard to imagine the hugeness of a Flaming Lips show in such a small place. Most of the time I prefer a smaller, more intimate setting for live music, but the Lips just aren’t that kind of band.
Once we settled in at the pub adjacent to the amphitheater, I started to really enjoy the setting, nestled amongst towering firs and cedars and spruce, it was tremendously peaceful.
As for the show, words inevitably fail to capture the totality of the experience, and it seems like everything I think of is cliché. Yet, there’s a fine line between cliché and quintessence, and it seems to me that the Flaming Lips strive to create the quintessential psychedelic experience for the audience.
The concert was a lush audio and visual experience, and I enjoyed every single minute of it. The song selection was great, the band was in top form, and Wayne, in particular, was every bit the warm, wacky mad genius he’s known to be. He was characteristically talkative throughout the show, and when he’d say, “Come on, come on, come one, Vancouver!” you really had the sense that he really needs to know that the audience is having the best possible time they could have, and that if he sensed that they weren’t he couldn’t go on.
At the end of the show, as many were making their way towards the exit, a small, dedicated group of fans remained in front of the stage, hoping for one more encore. Suddenly, Wayne came out to address the crowd, pointing out that the venue prohibited music after 10pm, and he very sincerely apologized and expressed his hope that everyone could hold on to what they liked about the show and not let the understandable disappointment overshadow the rest of the evening.
It certainly didn’t overshadow anything for me!
Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, there’s actually a handful of clips from last night’s show, and fortunately someone posted my favorite song of the evening:
And so, to celebrate this auspicious occasion, to celebrate the weekend, and to celebrate the end of 12-straight days at work, at the risk of Lips overkill here at Fish & Bicycles, I really can’t think of anything more appropriate for Video Fridays than this:
I still don’t really know what this song means and why the fake blood is particularly important, but I love it! It’s glorious, operatic, and supremely freaky in all the right ways.
