Lego Art - Nathan Sawaya

Went to a really cool exhibition at the Amsterdam Expo last week, by American artist Nathan Sawaya who chose Lego bricks as his art medium. The work is really neat, as he does everything from recreating/reimagining classic paintings and sculptures, through to his own original work. With Lego, he uses a mix of both 2D and 3D depending on what he wants to impart. He has also recreated many famous sculptures including "David" and also "Venus de Milo."

An example of how Sawaya uses 2D and 3D to bring focus to different sculptures. On the left is Klimt's "The Kiss" and on the right "American Gothic." There were also ones like "The Scream" with the central character in 3D with the rest of the painting in 2D behind, and "The Wave" with layers of waves.

Sawaya will also use smaller or larger Lego bricks depending on the desired effect. On the left is a highly pixelated Mona Lisa with pretty large bricks. On the right Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is mostly 2D, with a large 3D pearl earring to put it clearly into central focus.

Bet you've never seen or imagined creating a Lego stained glass. Super cool.

A life-sized replica of Yo-Yo Ma's cello, and a very cute polar bear cub.

Some really cool work here. I really love both this swimmer and the "Disintegration" piece on the right.

Sawaya started in corporate law but saw the light and became an artist instead. Many of his personal pieces focus on breaking out a shell or conformity into a new world of your own passion and dreams. He also does most of his own sculptures in primary or monochrome colours, which has the effect of making them stand out in stark relief. The piece on the left also follows the "let your dreams be free" motif, but I kept coming back to "Man with Boy" on the right, with its use of a "toy" to sculpt such a serious scene.

And then there's this 6 m long T-rex!

The Mint

Now the mint in Ottawa is only used used for collectors coins, and investment coins, but it used to make all of the coins that we used. Now all of the regular coins are made at the mint in Winnipeg. We went to the Mint while we were in Ottawa, and we learned the worth of gold and silver. Silver is worth $23.27 CDN per ounce, and gold is worth $1433.40 CDN per ounce. We took a tour, so we got to see the whole process of making coins. At the mint we bought a Silver coin of an Arctic Fox (we each got one). They we 20 for 20, so they cost $20 and are worth $20.

The mint also makes some of the medals we use in Canada. They made all the medals for the Vancouver Olympics (which you can see on the left), one thing that makes them interesting besides their strange shape, is that they all came with a scarf, The scarf had a picture of an Orca (Olympics) or a Raven (Parolympics) on it. If you put all the medals together, you can make the picture on the scarf with them. So all the athletes that won a medal at the Vancouver Winter games can find their part of the medal on the scarf they got with it.

These are 2 pictures of the front gate at the Mint, with the mint logo.

Me and Jacob lifting a real GOLD bar!!!

Dream Away

At the University museum in Utrecht, there was a game, where you create your dream future, and see how it would be for the ecosystem, where red is bad and green is good. It was fun seeing how our dream Future would be, dad chose a 5 star hotel for his vacation!! whereas I took a tent, now it is quite obvious which is better for the enviroment, but a lot colder since we both chose snowboard holidays!

There were different sections for the game,including food and vacation. There were  3 other things but I didn't remember them. We also went to the Spoorweg (Railway) Museum on the left, and the Speelkloek (Musical Clock) Museum on the right.

There was also a counter in the University museum that counted different things, when we were there, there had been over 1 billlion cell phones bought!! On the right is a monkey sculpture made from old sandals and handbags, and believe it or not, at the Utrecht Centraal station they had a vending machine for dim sum!

Daddy's feet returns!!

On the 21, we went to the ZuiderZee Museum at Enkhuizen, it was an Open air museum which was on an island. there was a place where you could try on some old types of clothes and also clogs. We went there with Hein and Elly, there was also a cafe where we had something to drink.

After the ZuiderZee museum, we went to a town called Markham,where we had dinner, we had Bacon and Cheese pancakes, and fish soup. We walked around after dinner in the town, and saw a memorial from world war 2.

Went to the fishing village of Marken for the evening. It's formerly an island village with very distinct houses built up high together on mounds against the tides. Now there's a causeway to the mainland and lots of tourists, kind of like a Dutch Peggy's Cove.

The ZuiderZee Museum was quite neat, and you can even get freshly caught and dried fish and smoked herring there! Jacob with his vintage car on the right.

Pez socks and clogs!

Vermeer's Delft

While we were in Delft we spent some time at the Vermeer Centre Delft. Johannes Vermeer (Oct 31/1632 - Dec. 15, 1675) is an artist that was born, lived and died in Delft and so he is always associated with the city.  He was a member of the St. Luke's Guild and the Vermeer Centre today is housed in the St.. Luke's Guild House.

The house where Vermeer was born is now a cafe. When he was 9 years old, he moved with his family to the Mechelen Inn, which is also still standing but with another use. Vermeer's father was a inn-keeper and art dealer, so the young Vermeer grew up surrounded by art and artists.

He converted to Catholicism to marry Catharina Thins and lived with her wealthy mother - Maria Thins. The house where they lived together on the Oud Delft canal is now the site of a church.  It is very close to the Nieuw Kerk where Johannes and his sister were baptized. Johannes and Catharina had 15 children together, 4 of whom died at young ages. Johannes himself died at the age of 43 leaving Catharina with 11 children and a mountain of debts. He is buried in the Oud Kerk near the main Markt.

Artistically, Vermeer had a remarkably small oeuvre. It is thought that he only painted 40 - 60 paintings during his career and only 37 of them survive, although there is some dispute as to the authenticity of some of them. There are 5 Biblical scenes, 2 landscapes and the rest are "tronies", paintings of a certain type (ie peasant women, old man etc). Many of his paintings show women or groups in small intimate indoor scenes.

The Vermeer Centre doesn't have any actual paintings but they have copies of 37 that are the actual size with descriptions and locations.  We have seen several of the originals at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and Gemmentemuseum, Den Haag but "the Girl with the Pearl Earring" is on loan in Japan during renovations at the Mauritshuis Museum at the Hague.

Vermeer is best known for his amazing use of light and the fact that he used a relatively small palette of colours to achieve spectacular results. The remainder of the centre concentrated on his use of light and colour and all the emblems of love that are contained in Vermeer's work.

No Delft Blues Here!

We spent today (July 17) touring the western town of Delft. Like Brugge, it's just an incredibly beautiful small town/city, perfect for walking and wandering. Delft is the hometown of the famous painter Johannes Vermeer, of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" fame. It's also home to the famous Delft Blue earthenware. And of course, what would a Dutch city be without a series of beautiful canals?

Two kerks dominate the town centre - the Oude Kerk behind the boys (1240 AD) and the Nieuw Kerk (1380s). Again, Pisa's not the only town with a leaning tower, just the one with the best PR firm. The Oude Kerk's tower leans rather scarily over the canal! Inside the Oude Kerk is the gravestone and mausoleum of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, one of the pioneers of microscopes and seeing the incredible world previously unseen.
Another very famous person buried in Delft, with a mausoleum in the Nieuw Kerk, is Prince William of Orange, who led the rebellion against the Spaniards ruling the Netherlands. This was part of the 80 years war, and we saw a good bit of it detailed at the Prinsenhof Museum. At the Prinsehof itself was St. Agatha's Convent, where William was murdered by a Catholic. Those are the bullet holes from the assassin's (Balthazar Gerrard) pistols there from July 10, 1584.

At least the Dutch are more original with their souvenirs than some other places we've been to on this trip. Looks like they've raided the town's attics to collect old strap-on ice skates on the left, and the giant clog on the right can double as a bobsled!
Also found this rather cool cheese shop on the main Markt. All sorts of pretty exotic cheeses, including green pesto and red pesto cheese, smoked cheese with chili, and all sorts of goat and sheep cheese. The boys tried some samples, then tried the old "dine and dash" routine with a cartload of cheese!

Openlucht Museum

One of the really cool museums we went to in the Netherlands is the Openlucht (Open Air) Museum in Arnhem (the ultimate objective of the famous paratroop battle "Operation Market Garden" in WW2). For those of you in Vancouver, it's like Burnaby Village museum at Deer Lake, only MUCH bigger. It is on many hectares, and buildings from all periods of Dutch history from the past 500+ years are relocated and exhibited here. It's really well-done, and is actually celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

http://www.openluchtmuseum.nl/en/

You can walk all throughout from building to building, or you can take the historic trams from stop to stop. In one row of tenement houses, they built up one apartment as it might look in the 1970s, another as it would be in the 1800s during the industrial age, and another as it might be for the tenement nurse. The newest buildings focused on the immigrant experience over the past sixty years - really neat.

There are also, naturally, lots of windmills. But also cool portable dessert stands Popperjes (little waffle-like treats), a cheese factory, a rebuilt train station, even part of a fishing village.

The other really impressive part was the "Holland-Rama." The theatre is on a flight simulator type platform, and you are rotated and tilted all over inside to see different aspects of Dutch history.

Gratuitous Windmill Pic!