Sculpture Along the River Bank

 There is a wonderful sculpture in a park here by the Deschutes River. It is fascinating and so well done. Worth a mention here in my blog.

It is depicting our logging days here in Bend, with a draft horse...

pulling two logs behind it. Of course you can see it is made from metal, but what you can't see is that it is all made from old reclaimed metals items from the past.

Now, you can begin to see some of the things inside the horse...

and here even more. If you click on the image to expand it you can see even better. There are over 100 items in this horse, most I could recognize and some I still can not. There is a listing on a sign close by that lists the items, and it is really fun to stand here and try to find everything. It is like a puzzle. There is a lot of old farming equipment, saws and wood working tools, but some domestic items too like an old sewing machine and vacuum. The logs behind have the same, their insides filled with other items. There is an old chain saw in there. 

What a fascinating sculpture it is, and what a wonderful idea by the artist, Greg Congleton.

Fighting Cultural Aesthetic Relativism

"The world may believe there’s no standard for beauty, but the Word says otherwise."

"My view is this, that there are, however difficult they might be to define and to wield, that there are objective standards for quality and beauty, including quality and beauty in music. I do not buy the lie that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But rather, there are standards of excellence, standards of beauty. That is why the Scripture calls us in the Psalms to play excellently, to play beautifully before the Lord. And I think that we have done the world a disservice when we have rolled over on this issue, when we have embraced aesthetic relativism.
Isn’t it odd that Christians are rightly, jealously fighting against epistemological relativism, the idea that there is no true or false, and fighting that same good fight against ethical relativism, arguing that there is no good and bad. We are arguing that in fact there is, and that God is the standard. And yet when it comes to beauty, the third great virtue, which is an end in and of itself along with goodness and truth, beauty we are willing to concede is in the eye of the beholder. Well, I am willing to concede that—as long as we understand that the beholder is God. When He says to bring our best, when he calls us to worship Him in the beauty of holiness, we had better not say “beautiful to whom?”
Friends, let’s be careful about the cultural bromides that we find ourselves swallowing. We Christians, of all people, who worship a God who is three-in-one, complexity harmonized in the ultimate beauty, should be defenders of the objectivity of beauty."
Dr. RC Sproul Jr

I receive a podcast most days from RC Sproul Jr, and since this blog is dedicated to God's beauty in the world around us I decided his quote this morning was worth a repeat here. As a piano teacher and lover of music, I have wrestled with this issue for several years in the field of music. However, it is repeated in all aspects of the Arts in our culture. Hope you will join me in the fight against cultural aesthetic relativism.

Summer Fun

 Spontaneous moments are just the best! Here is JoAnn, with granddaughters Kendall and Macy all enjoying a few moments with sidewalk chalk, intently producing great works of art!

Before they were finished they colored in those big squares...just to have the sprinklers blur them into impressionist paintings the next morning.

Sketch of Mom

Not a perfect likeness, but I'm amazed that my 11 year old son even attempted to draw a realistic sketch of me. I love it that he loves to draw. :)

Sweetness From My Son

Someone found a heart-shaped rock and turned it into sweetness for his mom. :) Doesn't that just brighten your day? It did mine.

New Engagement Calendar

Every January 1st I get out my new calendar and engagement calendar, and fill them out for the new year. But not this year! This year Lang.com was sold out in November and December of the engagement calendar that I always order. They never did get any back in stock. So...in January I set off for Barnes & Noble to find a replacement. I found a sorry rack of rejects when I got there, all the ones no one had wanted. Neither did I want any of them...BUT I finally found one copy left of a Mary Engelbreit engagement calendar somewhere else, off by itself. This has proved to be a very fun calendar to start off my new year. First of all it's titled "Your home is your canvas, make something of it." That is what this blog is all about really, finding and creating beauty in our homes and appreciating it.

Each week has a fun original picture drawn by Mary E. about home life, and the other page has nice large boxes for writing in events and appointments for each day. It's fun to have a new and different calendar, so I know God had a plan for Lang.com to be out of stock. God is in everything, even in the small details of our lives. I'm only sorry for the complaining that went on when I continually found Lang to be out of stock. A good lesson learned...to trust God for everything!

Happy Birthday From Will to Sam

I was going through a recent batch of uploaded pictures and came across this picture of the card my son, Will (8), made for his brother, Sam's, 10th birthday. The boys are all particularly interested in frogs right now, so the picture he drew was of a poison frog. Will named him "Jessy" and became so attached to him that it ended up being a bit difficult to part with him to give him to Samuel.If you can click on the picture and enlarge it, you'll be able to read Will's words with full effect, but in case you can't read it, here's the text:

"I hope you like your presants. I hope you lik Jessy the poisan frog. We are trully brothers literly and spirituly."

Is that cute or what? My mother's heart was touched. I thought it would be worth sharing. :-)

An 8 Year Old Drawing

My second son, William, made an especially nice drawing for a Mother's Day card for his Grandma Betty last week. I know my own Grandma Bethel is especially fond of birds and has done a lot of drawing and painting of them herself, so I thought I'd take some pictures to share before we sent it off in the mail. He got his inspiration from a nature coloring book from Dover. I was glad to see him do it, because he rarely spends time drawing.

William says that this particular bird is a Cedar Waxwing.