Tag Archives: painting

Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 6 of 9: The Year in Art, 2-D Division

August 29, 2023 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A pink-haired manga-style girl in a black robe. Behind her is a collage of black-and-white panels from her manga "Spy x Family".

Anya Forger from the manga Spy x Family.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…and wow, did a lot of art stop me in my tracks this year. We’ve shown some pieces done in Lego and in other sculpture media. Here’s more art but of the imagery-on-flat-papers-and-canvases variety, from artists of many ages!

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The Spring Birthday 2021 Trip, Part 5 of 8: Maximum Bob Ross

June 8, 2021 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Bob Ross landscape.

If 2021 is the year we’re all looking for palliatives for our 2020 mental health issues, might I suggest a few contemplative minutes with some happy little trees?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

For the past several years my wife Anne and I have made a tradition of going somewhere — anywhere but home — for each of our birthdays. Last year my birthday trip was among the billions of traditions ruined by the pandemic, all of which paled in significance to the millions of lives lost (and still counting). This year is a different story. Anne and I have each received our pairs of Pfizer shots and reached full efficacy as of April 24th. This past Friday and Saturday the two of us drove out of Indianapolis and found a few places to visit in our eminently imitable road-trip fashion…

For my birthday weekend seven years ago we drove up to the city of Muncie, mostly known to folks outside Indiana as the favorite vacation destination of the Gergich family from TV’s Parks and Rec. Among our other May 2014 highlights we visited Minnetrista, Muncie’s leading cultural center, art venue, community gathering space, and gracious host for a Saturday morning farmers’ market during the nicer seasons. In 2020 they added a new exhibit to honor a man whose celebrated works of simple aestheticism and encouraging entertainment were painted and recorded in a building on their very campus when I was a kid.

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Of Gods and Gilding: Gamboling (Not Gambling) in French Lick

November 17, 2018 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
hotel hallway!

Probably our deepest selfie ever.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Twice each year my wife Anne and I drive down to southern Indiana. Usually it’s for the sake of visiting relatives, helping family keep in touch, doing something nice for others, that sort of thing. Usually it consists of one three-hour drive down slow highways behind lackadaisical drivers, four to six hours of sitting and chatting and letting the older folks enjoy each other’s company while we might or might not nod off, then another three-hour drive home. We’re adult enough to accept not every weekend can be a convention or even a trip to the movie theater.

Dateline: October 24, 2015. My aunt suggested we break routine and get together for a bit of Indiana tourism. We headed out to the twin towns of French Lick and West Baden. When I was a kid we drove through them frequently but rarely stopped in either of them except for gas. Fast-forward four decades later, and now each town has a special attraction to boast as their own. For West Baden, it’s the enormous West Baden Springs Hotel, a structure with a history dating back to 1855 filled with frequently changing ownerships, periods of disuse, extensive restoration funded by multiple donors, and a new life today as a premier getaway in the southern Indiana area…

Next door to the West Baden Springs Hotel is their sister establishment, the French Lick Springs Hotel. Though they occupy adjacent lots, together they’re a joint resort as inseparable as the two towns themselves, united around a single establishment: the French Lick Springs Casino.

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Our 2018 Road Trip, Part 12: Not Just Another New York Art Museum

September 19, 2018 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Number 2 1949!

Jackson Pollock’s “Number 2, 1949”, daring me to fit it into a single shot without walking backward into someone behind me.

Longtime MCC readers know Anne is the history buff in our family, while I’m more like a history Biff. In planning such a history-heavy vacation, Anne was concerned I’d get bored quickly for lack of attractions that speak to any of my interests. Anne dug into the upstate New York research with no small amount of persistence and was proud to find a stop that would resonate with my tastes and connect with a previous experience. In essence she found us a de facto sequel to our 2016 tour of Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum — same state, some of the same art movements, and the same classiness a mere 240 miles from NYC.

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My Kid Could Paint That. And Did.

May 12, 2013 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , 7 Comments

alien worlds, high school art class

This weekend our local school system held its biennial art fair, a celebration of the efforts and creations of students of music and art from all age groups. I had one or two drawings on display in my junior year, though two decades later I no longer remember which ones. My wife and I were pleased to learn that my son, now in his final month of high school, would have several pieces on display this year. We made a point of checking out the fair not just for the sake of parental beaming, but because we knew this might be our last chance to view his works.

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