Spring Break Trip: Carlsbad's Living Desert Zoo and Gardens

We got up bright and early this morning to go to the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park here in Carlsbad. The park is situated on a hill overlooking the town and is set up really nice. The park showcases plants and animals of the Chihuahuan Desert, which also extends down into Mexico, west into Arizona, and east into Texas. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it is all part of that Permian basin from 250 million years ago that has been uplifted and exposed.

Animals that we saw included birds of prey such as the bald eagle, javelinas, snakes, bison, Mexican wolves, elk, and a bobcat. Unfortunately, the mountain lion was not out.

Plants included many cactii, agave, yucca, trees, and shrubs.

Rocks included limestone and selenite (the pure form of gypsum). Gypsum is a rock that formed in a shallow sea environment that had high evaporation rates. This gypsum is from the same formation that the White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo is a part of. We'll be going there tomorrow.

The zoo and gardens are a really neat way to spend about an hour or so of your morning.

This afternoon we went back to Carlsbad Caverns to go on a ranger-guided tour of the King's Palace and were awestruck again by the beauty of the caves. I'll post more pictures of that tour soon.

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Neat

"Let all that you do be done in love"
1 Cor 16:14

Cubism in Art

As I mentioned in this Previous Post, part of my job at the elementary school involves working with two special needs 6th grade students while they attend their "specials" classes.  I enjoy attending all three:  Music, PE, and Art, but have learned the most from the Art class.  That's probably because I play clarinet, can sing, and can read music so what we do in Music class isn't all that new for me. And in PE I get to be a cheerleader for the kids while watching my special ones have a lot of fun, which doesn't require any amount of technical knowledge.  But Art is one of those subjects that I always kind of viewed as someone who appreciates the work but who never really got into it much.  I can say, "Hey, I like that painting." or "Well, that's one that looks like a chimpanzee painted it."  (Believe me, I know about chimp art:  there was an old chimp named Bill that painted lovely works of art that were sold by the northern California zoo he lived in--$60 bucks a pop!--see photo on above right).  

At the beginning of the school year the 6th graders learned about Impressionism and were taught how to make their own Impressionistic art by using their fingertips dipped in paint and dabbing them on paper, making "dots" that when viewed from a distance looked like a wonderful Impressionist painting.  This one here on the left was painted by the master himself, Claude Monet, and is called "Soleil Levant", or "Sunrise".

The next theme in Art has been Cubism, which I never had heard of until now but have seen works by artists known to the genre such as Picasso and Braque.  In this unit, our Art teacher has taught us that Cubism involves angles and lines to define an abstract scene and that the color scheme is "monochromatic" or in one color.  For example, this painting by Picasso is in shades of brown.  It is titled, "Le Guitariste" which I can probably safely assume has something to do with a guitarist.

Now the kids aren't painting sophisticated works such as guitarists, but I've been watching some great paintings of turtles, fish, and bowls of fruit develop.  Since my two students weren't able to draw their own cubic art, their art teacher asked me to help.  So I asked each one what they'd like to paint.  My girl wanted a bunny and my boy wanted a gorilla.  I think I drew pretty good cubic representations of those two animals and we're in process of painting them now.  I've never seen such a pretty red gorilla, or a perfect green bunny before!

I can't wait until Friday to see how they all finish up!  

I now leave you with one last cubist painting by Braque:  "Woman With a Guitar"  I believe that this may have been a "copycat" on Picasso's theme since Picasso painted his guitarist in 1910 and Braque painted his in 1913 in roughly the same color scheme.  What do you think?

(credit for master's works goes to Wikipedia--I love Wikipedia!)