Sunday, June 30, 2013

Folklife Festival 2013

Art Surrounds Us



Take a look at this current Hirshhorn sign! The little words say Art Surrounds Us. Sweet!

For once we made a good decision (celebrate good decision day!! Yay!) to go into DC to the Folklife Festival on Saturday. The weather was great considering our usual summer HHH (heat, haze, humidity).

The Festival is always a 20 ring circus, and usually in my need-to-see-everything, I study schedules and arrange our viewing times running us from pillar to post. This time I was forced to take it as it comes, as the schedule was all off because a performer was hurt.  Apparently the whole two week schedule was now thrown off, so you had to just go to the tent to see what was happening that day. WHAT??

Actually it was a great day because I put down the need to see everything, and just wandered around seeing what I saw and it was all relaxed and good.

One of the things I saw was this HUGE Puli dog sculpture being constructed by the energetic Hungarians.
They built it out of cut up boards painted black. It is amazing! It was surrounded by people all the time but here's my best picture of it, click on it to see more detail.
BIG Puli dog
 I am dressed for the weather and tromping around for miles. Fashion stops at the knees, right?
Fiber Arts Demos from Hungary
 This woman is making some kind of open machine lace with her treadle machine and free motion work.
I don't know details as not one of the Hungarians I met spoke any English and there were very few interpreters around this year. In previous years I got a chance to ask artisans questions like what drew them to that art form, and how did they come up with designs, what did making art mean to them... not this year.
zither-ing around
I wanted a zither after watching the effortless way this guy played them until I tried to play one.

In the last few years I've increasingly wanted to learn musical instruments. I bought an American Indian flute, a ukelele, a keyboard, and a Woodrow which looks like a little guitar but sounds like a mandolin.

The zither will have to wait although they look like beautiful sculptures just sitting there.

More later on the Festival
LeeAnna

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