Agora

One of my cousin Heather's favorite artists is Magdalena Abakanowicz. Everytime that I go to an art museum I search for her work. In Chicago one does not have to search very hard. A few years ago Abakanowicz created an outdoor sculpture for Chicago called Agora. I have gone to visit it before, but I decided to take my new camera there and see if I could get some good pictures.

Apparently dogs like to pee on the sculpture.

I think that this picture was my favorite.

Just When I Thought Things Couldn't Get Worse...

My Grandmother died on Friday March 26th. I had been lounging in bed feeling bad for myself due to the whole not playing in Chicago thing when I got the call from my Mother. Needless to say it was a shock, and helped to put my small problems in life into perspective. Her death was a surprise to all of us. In fact I had been home for 4 days at that point and somehow managed to not get around for a visit. Sadly you can't turn back time. Thankfully she passed quickly which is the way that she would have wanted it to be. (Well maybe not the exact locale!)

She was the last of my Grandparents, and I will very much miss going to visit her.

She would not have wanted a funeral so we had a dinner in her honor with a few friends and family. Mom found a few choice artifacts to decorate with such as the above chamber pot.




Now there is a motley team!

I decided to take a few pictures of interesting things around her house.

I just can't resist when eating extra large olives. (Which was coincidentally her first name, Olive!)

Sure go ahead and flaunt your bigger lens!

Chicken Little (Egg Big)

A Quick Trip To Traverse City

Even though my unexpected break from tour was quickly coming to an end, I took a quick trip up to Traverse City, MI. For a few years now, Traverse City has been my ski getaway since it is centrally located between 3 or 4 ski resorts. (Well as much as Michigan can have a ski resort!) Because of my recent stretch of tours, I have sadly not been able to get away like I used to, and it is especially sad since my friend Lauren moved to Traverse City. The winter that I got The Wedding Singer, I did get a chance to visit Lauren and her husband Nate before uprooting my life. In the years since they have bought a new house, and they just had a baby. Well I just couldn't stay away even if I only had two days!

This is Rhys...

and like all babies, he wasn't too keen on me!


The Traverse City area is full of little wineries. With the family get together for my Grandmother, I decided to buy a bottle of wine for everyone. Imagine my surprise and amusement when I saw that Chateau Grand Traverse had a bottle called Ship of Fools. Needless to say, I chose that as the most appropriate wine for the family.

Sadly it was not a very good wine. Oh well!

Jekyll and Hyde

Photography sucks! Just in case anyone is wondering, it just plain sucks. As much as I like to take pictures, especially of theatres, photography can be very frustrating. (The most frustrating subject that I have tried to photograph so far is birds! Stupid birds!! They won't ever sit still.) Take the pictures below for example. These are taken using two different settings on my new camera. Neither picture exactly captures the colors and light in the Sioux City Orpheum as seen by the naked eye. The darker ones come close, but are well too dark. I have tried to use Photoshop to lighten the pictures, but then it starts to make the pictures grainy and the colors distort. If you want an example of that look at the pictures in the post below. Some of them have been tinkered with. The lighter ones are too bright, but the colors are closer to being right. So I am left with a dilemma. How do I reconcile the difference? Well I just take as many pictures as possible with as many different settings as possible!

In the end I have chosen to go with the darker pictures for the blog. I would have preferred to go with the lighter pictures, but sadly the majority of my pictures were of the darker variety. It is hard to get really bright pictures like the two here without a really strong flash, especially when standing at the top of the balcony! Which reminds me, I need to go out and get a better flash!!!

Sioux Redux

Out of all of the cities that I played on Wizard of Oz year 2 which I turned around and repeated on Beauty and the Beast, Sioux City is probably at the top of the list of cities I was glad to revisit. We played a one nighter on Wizard during the winter so I did not get to explore the downtown area around the theatre at all. Plus I was not happy with my pictures of the Orpheum Theater either. Since we played two days in better weather, I got to address both issues.

I did not actually go to the Art Center, but it is a cool building.

Downtown Sioux City was pretty dead actually. Admittedly we were there on a weekend, but aside from the theatre the only signs of life were at the library. You know it's bad when even the Subway is closed!

The people of Sioux City look funny.




I am not sure why, but for some reason I love the decoration of the Sioux City Orpheum. It is not the most ornate theatre ever plus the pit and backstage areas are maddeningly small, but I still love it.

The lobby has great light fixtures!

So I love my new camera, and for the most part I got much better pictures this time.

The above picture would have been impossible to pull off with my old camera!