Welcome to the meme, "My Sunday Best", which is a photographic and creative meme that allows you to showcase your talents in imaging. Every Sunday, you can post here showing an image you have created using your camera, (and/or) image processing software, and/or painting and drawing in the conventional way and have scanned in. The rules are simple: 1) Create your image and post it up on your blog; 2) Put the "My Sunday Best" logo image link somewhere on your post so people can click and come by here; 3) Leave a comment here once you have posted; 4) Visit other posters' blogs and be amazed with their creativity! Please do not use this meme to advertise your goods or services. This is a creative meme and any inappropriate links or comments shall be removed immediately!
The mural above is found in Normanby Avenue, (corner of St Georges Rd), Thornbury, Melbourne. It is by Hayden Dewar. HaydenDewar works as an illustrator, muralist, storyboard artist and visual artist. Hayden produces imagery of a commercial and a personal nature. Media include painting, drawing digital illustration and design. Commercial pursuits include illustration for advertising and publishing, concept art and storyboard art for film, TV, and animation. Hayden is currently available as a commission based artist for murals, freelance illustration and storyboard art as well as private commissions. This post is part of the My Sunday Photo meme, and also part of the Photo Sunday meme, and also part of the Monday Murals meme.
This angel is a detail from a fresco in the Bulgarian Rila Monastery, the largest and most famous Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria. It is situated in the southwestern Rila Mountains, 117 km south of the capital Sofia in the deep valley of the Rilska River at an elevation of 1,147 m above sea level. The frescoes, finished in 1846, are the work of many masters from Bansko, Samokov and Razlog, including the famous brothers Zahari Zograf and Dimitar Zograf. This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme, and also part of the Monday Murals meme, and also part of the Blue Monday meme, and also part of the Through my Lens meme, and also part of the Seasons meme.
Protesters in the Dandenong Ranges town of Emerald are braving near-zero night-time temperatures to stage a vigil, all in a bid to save a local bus shelter. Cardinia Shire Council has said the shelter is at the end of its life and wants to demolish it and build a new one. The protest has been organised by Emerald Community House (ECH), which uses the colourfully decorated bus shelter as a noticeboard. ECH manager Mary Farrow said the protesters were there to stop the shelter being demolished. "We've been putting up community information and community art [on the shelter] for seven years," she said. "We have an iconic art mosaic that was done by the youth, funded by the state of Victoria." The council maintains that the shelter is unsafe and has reached its useful life. It wants to replace it with a new glass one. Glass bus shelters are regularly vandalised all around Melbourne and the glass is regularly broken by hooligans. You can see the Council's views on the shelter here. This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme, and also part of the Blue Monday meme, and also part of the Through my Lens meme, and also part of the Seasons meme, and also part of the Monday Murals meme, and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.
The Ian Potter Museum of Art has gone through a number of name changes and has been housed in different locations on the University of Melbourne's Parkville campus. First established as the University Art Gallery in 1975, it was located in the centre of campus in the Old Physics Building. Additional accommodation was found on Swanston Street for it in the Physics Annex in 1988. This space housed both the Ian Potter Gallery and the Art Conservation Centre and together with the University Gallery were known as The University of Melbourne Museum of Art. In 1998 a purpose-built art museum designed by Nonda Katsalidis and named The Ian Potter Museum of Art, opened to the public and is now considered one of the leading university art museums in the country. The Potter, won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects ‘Project of the Year’ award on its completion in 1999. Bursting through Katsalidis’s sleek facade is the immense 1993 sculptural mural, "Cultural Rubble", by the Australian-born sculptor Christine O’Loughlin, now based in Paris. She used fragments of classical statuary, architecture and pottery cast in white fibreglass from plaster moulds of originals in the Louvre to evoke the tension between Australia’s European heritage and its future. This post is part of the Weekend in Black and White meme.
While visiting the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, there is a high probability that you will visit one of the nearby villages, which is a standard part of the "tour". The livelihood of the villagers depends on selling trinkets, souvenirs, sculptures and bric-a-brac to the tourists. We visited such a village and went on a tour of the alabaster "factory", where we were shown how the alabaster ware were made. Needless to say that the alabaster vases are mass produced in a Cairo factory using modern equipment and they are then shipped to these local shops where they put on sale. The "workmen" in these village "factories" go through the motions of "making" these vases using traditional techniques. I was more interested in the naive art murals that adorned these villages. As well as some copies of ancient Egyptian wall paintings, the majority of the murals depict folk art renditions of trips to Mecca. All Muslims who are capable of doing so must go on a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca at least once in their life. It is beyond the means of most villagers and if one does succeed, it becomes a wonderful occurrence, which is commemorated in a series of murals on the home walls! So much for travel snaps... This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme, and also part of the Monday Murals meme, and also part of theBlue Monday meme, and also part of theThrough my Lens meme.
At the weekend we visited Canberra and on the way there we had a stop in Benalla. This is a small city located on the Broken River in the High Country north-eastern region of Victoria, Australia, about 188 kilometres north east of the state capital Melbourne. At the 2011 census the population was 9,328. It is the administrative centre for the Rural City of Benalla local government area.
We came across a trio of large portrait murals, painted side by side on the brick walls of the SEC building closest to Bridge St. It was easy to recognise the one by Rone, a well-known Melbourne street artist who has painted many murals in Melbourne and elsewhere. His trade mark is faces of women executed in a very realistic, chic style.
It turns out that Benalla hosted a street art fest from Friday the 27th until Sunday the 29th of March, when local and international street artists transformed 13 walls for the "Wall to Wall Festival". Wall to Wall is the first annual street art festival in Benalla, curated by Juddy Roller with the support of the Benalla Street Art Committee. The festival is all about rejuvenating the regional town and what better way to do is is to invite some big names in the street art world to paint bomb the walls out of Benalla. The line up for the three day festival includes: Adnate, Askew, Choq, Deams, Dvate, Ears, Guido Van Helten, Slicer, Rashe, Rone, Shwan Lu and Sirum.
The image by Guido Van Helten is painted from the photo of Ned Kelly’s nephew standing at the Kelly homestead in Greta West, just outside of Benalla in 1922. The wall in the picture is covered with carved initials. They included K.K., A.S., J.B., N.K., D.K., S.H., carved by Kate, Sherritt, Joe Byrne, Dan & Ned and Steve Hart, The Kelly gang and Family. Van Helten calls this image "Nostalgia I".
The central image is by Matt Adnate, an Australian painter who has established himself as a Street-Portrait artist. His realistic style is the signature to his work, using spray paint as his main medium. This stunning image of an Asian child clearly stands out for me as the pick of the three portraits here.
The last image by Rone is entitled "Darcy". This is the portrait of local Hides Bakery's waitress Darcy Spinks. Rone has given her the glamour treatment, allowing her to join his bevy of beauties of his past work.
1920s Photo of Ned Kelly's nephew used for portrait above
Matt Adnate's portrait of Asian Girl
Rone's portrait of "Darcy"
The real Darcy Spinks!
Unfortunately we did not have time to explore more of the murals in Benalla, but there is a video relating to the "Wall to Wall Festival" you can see here:
I snapped this using a zoom while on a tram at stop in the City. I didn't expect it to come out as well as this, but the light was very good. The more I look at it the more I like it, but then again, blue is my favourite colour... This post is part of the Monday Murals meme, and also part of the Blue Monday meme.
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its nickname is the 'Showplace of the Nation', and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city. Its interior was declared a city landmark in 1978.
The Rockefeller Center is the centrepiece of activity for thousands of New Yorkers who have embraced it as not just another boring office block, but as a warm symbol of a great city. Its rise to national stardom came not so much from the historic name it bears, but because for almost as long as there has been broadcasting, Rockefeller Center has been the home to some of the most powerful networks in the United States. The highlight of the complex is the General Electric Building, formerly the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) Building.
It was America's first billionaire John D. Rockefeller, who in spite of the Great Depression managed to build this huge office complex while others predicted his failure. His fate was nearly sealed when the Metropolitan Opera pulled out of the project. They were supposed to be the linchpin in the operation. Now the problem facing Rockefeller's architects was how to build enough office space to make the project work economically. What they did is consolidate the entire 17 acre property into a single superblock. Thirteen buildings would be short, allowing light and air into the plaza and creating a human-scale experience. The fourteenth building could be huge because it inherited the air rights of its smaller neighbours allowing it to assume its 70-story height. There are now 21 buildings in Rockefeller Center, housing such famous places as Radio City Music Hall, the Rainbow Room, and the of NBC's shows like "Today," and "Saturday Night Live." They are connected by a series of underground tunnels which, themselves, support a variety of shops.
Hildreth Meière's large, enamelled metal rondels, “Spirits of Song, Drama and Dance,” on the 50th Street facade of the Radio City Music Hall building give an indication of the activities that take place inside this famous building. An artist representing Art Deco art and architecture, Hildreth Meière (1892-1961) was the creative force behind some famous murals of the mid-twentieth century. This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme, and also part of the Monday Murals meme, and also part of theBlue Monday meme.
We often see this type of mural in Melbourne: An artwork reproduced on big sheets of paper (a photocopier may be involved), the pieces joined together to form the image, various amounts of trimming and then pasting on a wall much like a poster. Some paint may be used (as in this instance) to highlight aspects of the design. This one on an old building in Collingwood. It is signed "Lucy Lucy".
In Spain, polychrome tile murals are a very common and attractive way to adorn a wall. One may see many beautiful murals both small and large covering walls in public spaces, public buildings, as well as in private homes. This tile mural created by Ceramica Sta Ana was found in one of the streets of Seville, Spain. It depicts the Feria de Abril.
The Seville Fair (officially and in Spanish: Feria de abril de Sevilla, "Seville April Fair") is held in the Andalusian capital of Seville, Spain. The fair generally begins two weeks after the Semana Santa, or Easter Holy Week. The fair officially begins at midnight on Monday, and runs six days, ending on the following Sunday. During past fairs, however, many activities have begun on the Saturday prior to the official opening. Each day the fiesta begins with the parade of carriages and riders, at midday, carrying Seville's leading citizens which make their way to the bullring, La Real Maestranza, where the bullfighters and breeders meet.
For the duration of the fair, the fairgrounds and a vast area on the far bank of the Guadalquivir River are totally covered in rows of casetas (individual decorated marquee tents which are temporarily built on the fairground). These casetas usually belong to prominent families of Seville, groups of friends, clubs, trade associations and political parties. From around nine at night until six or seven the following morning, at first in the streets and later only within each caseta, there are crowds partying and dancing sevillanas, drinking Sherry, manzanilla or rebujito, and eating tapas.
Subiaco Library (Evelyn H. Parker Library) is located on the corner of Bagot and Rokeby Rd, Subiaco, Perth. It is a beautiful library and has a great selection of books. A striking mural can be seen high up on the wall above the service area. It is by artist, author, film director and designer, Shaun Tan.
Shaun Tan grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. In school he became known as the 'good drawer' which partly compensated for always being the shortest kid in every class. He graduated from the University of WA in 1995 with joint honours in Fine Arts and English Literature, and currently works as an artist and author in Melbourne. The artist says this about his 2004 mural, "The Hundred Year Picnic", in the library:
"...I visited the nearby local museum, which houses a vast collection of old photographs, mostly drawn from private family albums donated to the museum. I thumbed through some two thousand images of streets, houses and people before finding a small photograph that seemed to capture the mood I was looking for; a family having a picnic somewhere, probably around 1920 or 1930, when Subiaco was a relatively undeveloped suburb.
...Rather than simply scale up and reproduce this image I wanted to abstract it in some way, particularly using colour to evoke a certain meditative mood. I imagined that each character was showing a different reaction to their environment, as if they were each living in different personal universes that happened to intersect - some are green, some pink, some white, and seem to be fading in and out of the background like fragments of memory."
