A Funny Thing Happened on the Trip to Wisconsin

Had a great week at Valley Ridge.  A great couple of workshops and much much more.

Part One:

Workshops

Started off with a grand Urn Your Keep class.  The basic idea is that everyone to build a resting spot...as I always say: there is plenty of time to be a stick in the mud when you're dead.

Below is Jackie's very nice resting spot...

what it lacks in spaciousness it makes up for in charm.

Next up is Jenny's:

Perfect for the Post Mortem-er Client on the go.

The next workshop was mask-making:

It all started with a bare face and a bit of plaster...Gary goes under:

Finished?  Well Jessica and Pam are looking pretty stylish:

As is Judy:

And Michael and Kelley:

Of course Gary had to be a bit different...he planted a rusty bolt and look what grew.

Part Two

Hollywood Midwest

I decided to do a little promo for my upcoming Online Art Laboratories (more on that later).  So I convinced my buddies Kathy Engen and Gary Niebuhr to help out.  In between class, during lunch breaks and after cocktails we did a bit of filming.  Pretty fun and it turned surprisingly well...considering it was pretty much ad-libbed and almost all done in one take.

So without further ado, here is:

O.C.D.D.  Case study 232: Gary

and of course no big time production is worth its salt without a showing some of the out takes:

Great times.

Part Three

A Very Strange Place

Once classes were over Kathy and I wandered down the road to the House on the Rocks.  Basically it was a Frank Lloyd Wright parody that turned into a strange warehouse of anything and everything...and then some.

The first portion is the actual home which is weird and covered with carpeting (on everything).  It reminds me of a home that I Dream of Jeanie might have been shot in.

see what I mean

From that point on it gets stranger and stranger...take for instance the urinals:

I did in fact use these...it is in the public restroom but I made sure I was the only one around when I did.

From this point the joint is a collection of strange things:

I am a bit envious of the Frog Girl sign...in case you didn't know she's "Alive".

The place has a jillion automated music rooms.  Machines play the various instruments:

Keith Lo Bue came here a few years ago with his sound equipment to record the various rooms.  

This is the Mikado room:

Ironically the music I used in the Gary video is from a recording that Keith did of this device.

I found a nice collection of puppets:

Onward

Down the corridor...

To an amazing merry-go-round:

that no-one rides

From here I came across the thing I really really wanted to see...the Baranger Collection:

I wrote about this company a few months back.  They made automated displays for jewelry stores, back in the 30s and 40s

the House on the Rocks has the largest collection of them in the world...there are hundreds of them.  Here are but a few:

 

I videoed a few of them.  They are included in a little movie I compiled of the various automated goodies I saw:

Pretty cool huh?  And yes that is the music that Lo Bue recorded from the Mikado machine.

Well, that was my week...very pleasant indeed.

M