i recently wrote a friend about this piece, before it was finished:
it's cast resin that looks like a chunk of ice that fell, presented
on a pitch black low-to-floor pedestal. i stenciled in some text on a
couple pieces - an excerpt from this song:
beautiful song, but actually quite eerie/spooky lyrics.
the title will be the longitude & latitude coordinates of a rural area i know. a vague and potentially
confusing piece, but to me, it's this difficult-to-describe love of
folklore/storytelling that comes with old-tymey midwestern rural life.
natural elements occasionally seeming supernatural, frightening, etcetera.
Since Kel only had to work a couple hours on our last saturday in Stockholm, we spent most of it together, doing some touristy stuff. The morning was again spent in Gamla Stan. We started off by venturing inside Storkyrkan, the old church (c. 1279) that is next door to the Royal Palace. the place was phenomenal:
We hung out some more at the Royal Palace and caught part of the guard ceremony:
And then we spent time at Stortorget Square, which is right next to the Nobel Museum. This square is interesting, because it is a historic site that relates back to a horrible massacre that happened in 1520
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Bloodbath
but nowadays, serves as some sort of an open-air market. I mean, this is a place where, several hundred years ago, the invading Danish promised amnesty for the Swedish nobilty, but, lying through their teeth, proceeded to cut everyone's heads off. But now you can buy some pretty candles while standing on the grounds. ...huzzah?...
There's also a wishy-washy tale of one of the buildings surrounding the square. The building in the photo below has a cannon ball embedded in the corner of it, just above the sign. See it? The story goes that this is a Danish shot at the island (plausible), and that the ball embedded itself right where you see it (bullshit?). Who knows. At any rate, it makes for a cool story for young kids, or something.
After leaving Gamla Stan, we took a tram over to see the VasaMuseet. This museum houses a 1600s warship called the Vasa, which happened to sink shortly after embarking on its maiden voyage, right off of Swedish land. Several attempts were made to right it and bring it back to shore, but it wasn't until the 1950s or 60s that modern equipment could do such a task. The ship was supposedly 95% intact, and it's super impressive to see in person. Here is a vid and some pics:
All right, I'm tired of writing. Time to get some sleep.
Since kel had to work all day again, I again wandered around
downtown.I spent the morning in
the more modern parts of town, but soon wanted to head back into the Gamla Stan
area, so I headed that way again, after lunch.
Now that I knew my way around better, I spent more time at the Royal Palace. The first video below is somewhat funny, but probably more serious than anything, since I crossed an imaginary line and got approached by an armed guard:
K-sweet worked all day the first and second day in
Stockholm, so I was left solo to wander around downtown Stockholm and take in
the sights.Unlike our stay in
Amsterdam, our Stockholm hotel was right downtown in the thick of it, so that
made getting around much easier/quicker.
I took a 10 minute walk onto an island called Gamla Stan,
which is the old, original “stake in the ground” location for Sweden’s new
capital city way back in the day, after a ditching (due to continual looting)
of the first “capital” city.The
place was very striking – lots of architecture that was older than what I saw
in Amsterdam, and the island was also home to some amazing churches, as well as
the Royal Palace. Here are some pics and vids:
After spending all day in this area, I met back up with Kel
and we ate some traditional Swedish food and had some beers at a nearby Pub.Hell yes.
We took the train downtown again right away in the morning,
since K-Sweet had to work at the Fulbright Center later on in the afternoon and
we wanted to cram as much in as we could in the morning (TWSS).There was a lot more of the walking
around and taking in of everything on the streets, but we were slowly making
our way to the Anne Frank museum for the main thing to do for the day:
The modern part of the museum takes up the entire building
that is directly adjacent to the actual Frank family home, so throughout your
visit to the museum, you go in and out of the real rooms where the family hid,
and the other more modern exhibitry parts of the adjacent space.Walking through the hidden passage that
is covered up by a replica bookshelf is pretty somber stuff, as is spending
time in the living quarters of the family.Their furniture has been removed, but there are encapsulated
areas of Anne’s bedroom wall, where what seems to be the real decor that she
had placed on the wall still exists – newspaper cutouts, magazine covers,
etcetera.A few friends had told
me that this experience is pretty sad stuff, but completely worth it, and I’m
definitely in that club.
After lunch at another Dutch pub, K-sweet had to head off to work, so I
accompanied her to Fulbright and then took the tram solo to head back into the
city to go to the Stedelijk Museum – Amsterdam’s contemporary and modern art
museum.
On my way away from the museum, I noticed that I must have
run into the time of day where everyone was coming home from school.I can’t describe the sight very well,
but over and over again moms and dads were rolling by with their kids on their
bikes, and they were singing what seemed to be Christmas songs.It was charming as hell and it made me
miss my girls big time.
Shortly after this, my tram ride was interrupted by some
sort of protest march for immigrant rights, and it was funny that it didn’t
even seem to phase any of the other passengers on-board.Must be somewhat common to see public
marches.(Jason, I didn’t see
Paul, Olav, or Jos from Seein’ Red.what the hell!?!?.haha).
I wandered around town solo again, stopping to eat at a
charming little Italian place (funny, huh).After more walking, I wandered into a record store that I
had looked up and chatted with the owner about hardcore and punk bands we both
liked.Good guy and awesome store.
Kelly
finished up her night at 9:00, and we went back to the hotel to crash.
