The Artist

On Wednesday the Blue Prince was sick with the most recent plague making its way through our home and decided to stay home from work. As Wed is my big work day, he decided that we would save the babysitter fee and he would watch Bella all afternoon. Blue Prince has an odd habit of filling Bella's crib with toys when putting her down for a nap. Wed. he apparently decided to put her down with a coloring book and a pencil. When he went to get her out of bed a couple hours latter he discovered this lovely example of budding talent. He said that she pointed it out to him with the biggest smile imaginable on her face, so proud of what she had done.

An unexpected encounter

Guess who I met at a random Costco in Las Vegas last weekend selling his wares?

That's right Greg Olsen himself, in all his glory selling and signing his artwork next to cases of frozen burritos and huge bags of apples. It was such a random encounter. He was very nice and chatted with me and my sister Emily for a few minutes and even gave us a copy of his art catalog. I almost asked him to sign the catalog but I thought that would be a bit much. Not to mention cheap as he was obviously there as a ploy to try and sell stuff. I guess that is one way to try and take your art to a more mainstream audience.

Casa Pueblo

I realize that I haven't posted many pictures of our Uruguay trip and in looking through them I came across our photos of a little side trip we took to Casa Pueblo, the workshop/home/museum of Carlos Paez Villaro.

Carlos Villaro is a world renowned Uruguayan artist primarily known for his public mural work in many countries. He is probably in his 80's now and has an incredibly long career as a painter, sculptor, architect and a Ceramic artist. His work is influenced by the art of Picasso and in his world travels he worked for a time with Picasso. Another factoid: Carlos's son was one of the Uruguayan rugby players that survived the plane crash in the Andes that the movie Alive was based on.

The home at Casa Pueblo is an amazing work of art and architecture perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The views are incredible. We found out later that a portion of the complex is actually hotel now as well. Next time we go to Uruguay we will have to find out the cost, it may be worth the splurge to stay in such a beautiful setting.

While at the museum I purchased a book that contains some of the colorful animal prints that Carlos has done through the years. Someday when I get organized I hope to frame some and put them up in Bella's room as a happy, colorful addition. My Dad and Kathy having more resources than us decided to purchase a numbered print of one of the artist's paintings of the house at Casa Pueblo. They were in the gift shop debating over two, one signed but with a slight rip and the other unsigned. When the worker at the gift-shop sensed that it was important to them to have a signed print, she asked for them to write down their names and wait for her to go into the workshop area for a moment. She returned a few minutes latter with the numbered print that they wanted signed with a personal inscription from the artist. Apparently Casa Pueblo is still Carlos's working studio and he just happened to be in residence that day and willingly took a moment to sign the print. The cynical possibility is that the gift-shop worker just took it in the back and signed it herself to make a sell but we prefer to believe the first option. Either way it makes for a good story.

Anyway here are some of the other pictures we took of our little group at Casa Pueblo. If you want to see the rest of our Uruguay pictures I have downloaded them to my Flickr account and you can see them by clicking the link on the left of this page. My step-mom Kathy should have some great pictures as well but we have yet to see those (hint, hint). Enjoy: