Dangerhart's Studio

 The Flying Spaghetti Monster appeared upon the prow and led us through a maze of reefs upon moonlit waters, his noodley appendanges touching us all! He was greatly pleased to find our swarthy crew of Pastafarian sea pirates, and ran our pursuing Corsican enemies upon hidden shoals. We came about and loosed a volley of cannon fire, snapping their main mast and opening them amidships to the shark infested waters. A fierce and bloody struggle was avoided, when they offered up their greatest and only treasure: the fairest lady of Atlantis- Elizabeth. FSM pronounced us as "Fork and Spoon before a great Pastafarian feast", then he threw a great meat ball around the moon, and catching it again, created a high tide that carried us far and away.
Here we are at our nuptials, where the FSM did bid me to inspect the wondrous booty, and know his blessings.

While I was out of the country two public art commissions came through for me! I made this small mobile last week to play around with some of the concerns that will arise at full scale. The finished form will be 30'x28'x10' and hang in the glass lobby of a new library (the library will be finished next September- they have just poured the foundation...) The disks will be Himalayan Salt Stone inscribed with consonants, and the cubes will be industrial Salt Block, ie salt licks, inscribed with vowels. My next step is to place a small order of salt stone and begin playing with a few hanging methods.
The second commission is for a local neighborhood park- I'll run a post on that soon...

The "sun dogs" it throws across the ceiling/walls look like colored water reflections or the aurora borealis...

We really like how it changes when lit- a pretty ceiling decoration during the day, and magic water color at night.

 

Here we are in Greece getting married, again! Well, not in Greece, but in international waters near the island of Corfu. Elizabeth's parents celebrated their 50th Wedding anniversary by inviting Elizabeth's sister Allison and Allison's husband Peter, and Elizabeth and I to join them in Rome and board the largest sailing ship in the world for an 11 day trip around Italy. Things just progressed from there...

The captain performed our "ring ceremony" while we symbolically took the helm. Nearly half the passengers on board swarm in the background as an adopted wedding party.
The Royal Clipper unfurled her 42-sail 56,000 square foot party dress for the special night, so we could dance under the sails on open water to the "musical stylings" of our on-board pianist, -Laszlo-!

Below is a nice shot of our little group of landlubbers. The tall fellow in the background is Peter, standing behind his wife Allison (Elizabeth's not-twin sister) in the floral print dress. Walter and Kaye are the happy parents of the bride, and Elizabeth grins ear-to-ear while I man the wheel.

Here she is with the sails up: The Royal Clipper. A great ship to take to all the historic port cities through Italy, Greece, Croatia and Montenegro. And a fine vessel to get hitched on as well.
more to come...

The Rain Gods, as always, know when we head off for a vacation in the outdoors and provided daily thunder-showers just the way we like it! We drove the convertible through Grand Tetons National Park with the top down and the rain was swept over us by the wind- not for everyone, but we were game for it.  We had our commuppance when the convertible top stopped working on our last day, luckily it wasn't stuck down- just a quick trip to the Ford Parts store to replace the faulty button when we got home.
Saturday morning we left our little Bed & Breakfast for a quick hike to Ski Lake, and took this shot of all the mosquitoes hiding behind the wildflowers, probably a thousand behind each petal. Other hikers were begging us for repellent, but we didn't have any either. An amazing morning for Alpine flower enjoyment, the long cool & wet spring/summer had many flowers blooming "out of season". 

We went for a pleasant little walk up a river and around a lake at the Rockefeller Preserve, just opened to the public it is quite serene as only 50 people are allowed at a time. The visitor's center is worth stopping in, unlike any other national park experience as it was created to Rockefeller's wishes- a meditative nature sound room was time well spent (and an amazing feature that puts any science center to shame, and I spent my time around planning tables for these things...)

Fairy Land of Columbine. and skeeters- stopping for each picture brought me closer to needing a blood transfusion. Still, I have way too many pictures of Columbine.

Building thunderheads let us know its time to let another pair of tourons replace us in the preserve.
Nice views.
We scared up some critters just past the dog-walkies destination of Ski Lake. The moose seemed surprised that two-leggeds wandered beyond the lake to their hillside retreat. They brushed up pretty quick...
Its not so bad being a Touron in Jackson Hole.
We seem to have gotten married while we were there. Does anyone remember that happening? Oh that's right, we eloped!

A few sunshine picures before the hail and rain and thunderstorm arrived.
Mother nature wanted to know if we were really serious about the whole endeavor, and threw a wash-out hail and lightning storm between the sunshine pictures and the little jump into the park for our ceremony at Jenny Lake. A wise fellow at the B&B stated, "Nothing can go wrong at a wedding, it can just be more interesting." Then his little boy gave us bottle of Maple Syrup that they had brought all the way from New Hampshire.

It is rumored that wedding vows under rain showers bode well for newlyweds. Here, Dan tries to keep Elizabeth warm...with Diamonds...sucess!
Mother Nature put on quite a show, with thunder punctuating our vows. The Grand Tetons were a wonderful cathedral, and the music of the elements was unsurpassed for our special day. Two minutes after the ceremony was finished, it all closed in...and we drove back through rain and lightning and hail (and stopped for one last "Bridal photo of bravery" seen below)
in the image above I would like to draw your attention to the tree sprouting dramatically from Dan's head. This was  a popular theme with our photographer. We will spare you the "nose tree" shots. Seriously, what is wrong with a little direction- take two steps to the right- problem solved. aarg!
As seen in Napoleon Dynamite, or any other romantic Western, we had horses at the ready for our ride off into the sunset/storm- then we thought about the drycleaning bill for my rental tux not to mention the horse sweat stains on her satin dress...so we opted for the blue Mustang tethered offscreen.

In other news, E & I bought a house. It has a pond. After long battles with everything that can go wrong with a pond, we have Lilly pads, flowers, fish, waterfalls- a lovely water garden! and an amazing studio. and a great house. someday we may even have internet at the house. as it is, I head over to the local coffee shop.

E needed a break from all the Stimulus Grants, so we joined her parents in Santa Fe for a mini-vacation. Her parents rent a lovely adobe house that had belonged to an artist who died young- the family still owns the house and rents it out. We did the Santa Fe shuffle through the art scene, went to some great Anasazi ruins, and E & I slept out on the porch and every night it rained and thundered. a perfect reset button.