Rain Catcher

Last fall we saw work beginning on the centerpiece of Newport Hills' city-funded street beautification art project from Orcas Island artist Bruce Myers -- "Rain Catcher."  

This week, Bruce installed the long-awaited sculpture. The previous steps had been the placement of the large stones, and then the installation of the concrete base. Friday morning, the scaffolding went up.  

Bruce brought down the three steel trunks, studded with leaves of several types, from his Orcas Island studio.

Wouldn't want that scaffolding to tip over.

Pastor "Bug" and his daughter, plus Scott MacDonald (left) from the City,  helped offload the pieces.

Bruce and his assistant positioned the first piece...

...and hoisted it up...

...and secured it onto the base.

Unfortunately I had to take off at that point for my job, but upon my return that evening, the piece was complete!

Looking good from any angle.

This anchor point complements the pieces already in place around the bus stops.

The final step in the art project is to complete the mosaics that will adorn some of the stones.
Here's what they looked like in their initial state last October.

Schoolroom interiors

 The second elementary school in our neighborhood to be torn down in the last ten years.  I took these shots of some of the old classrooms, outer wall sheared off, through hurricane fencing, while fending off a suspicious security guard.

Behind the Pink Door

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Independent Bikes

Another Fourth of July picnic in the Newport Hills neighborhood.

Barbie

Hats

Babies

Training wheels

Streamers

Trio

Pink

Bowtie

Out cold

Flags

Keeping it clean

Shade

Backstop

Shroud of Factoria

The local P-patch continues to grow (spring being what it is), but April weather is also what it is: notoriously fickle. So the young plants must be swathed in cloth to keep the frost off. A perfect example of the beauty of a bit of blankness. Again I took the liberty of punching these shots up with a little watercolor effect.

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Something There Is...

...that does not love a fence, to paraphrase Robert Frost. Here are three paths (of varying upkeep) in my neighborhood that one must go to a certain length to access. The last one is so popular as to have engendered a full-blown "path of desire."

My Dear Watson

At last the sun came out on a weekend and I had some spare time to go shooting in the neighborhood. Here are three nearly monochromatic views of the grounds - literally - of the local elementary school where my wife Robin works. The playfield looks rather like a lunar landscape littered with mysterious hieroglyphics and artifacts.

Semi-festive hemi-bollards

The road to Espanol

The Western Hemisphere in danger of going down the drain

What would an alien Sherlock make of such a landscape?

Holiday Backstage

This weekend, the neighborhood's annual holiday bazaar materialized briefly in the vast space once occupied by the Red Apple grocery. I was there in the early hours before the throngs showed up to shop for jams, candles, scarves, greeting cards, jewelry, and other mostly locally produced gifts. As always, I was more entranced by what lay behind the scenes, in the bowels of the old store: vacancies within the larger vacancy, relics of commerce.