Merry Christmas!

Wishing all my blog readers a very Merry Christmas!  I hope you are having a safe, peaceful, and enjoyable holiday.  Thank you for stopping by and visiting my blog over the past year!

carved palm tree heads

12/15/2012, Tucson, Arizona

I drove past these guys Saturday morning, did a double-take, and had to circle back around to take a few pictures.  I've seen wood stump carvings before, but I don't think I've personally seen any carved out of palm trees  -- very interesting texture, almost looks like pressed sawdust from a distance.

tilting at windmills

12/2/2012, Tucson, Arizona

This picture shows two things:

1. A cool looking windmill made out of bicycle fenders at the Whistle Stop Depot
2. That my lowlight handheld camera shake is very questionable 

BICAS Bicycle Art Auction (Dec 2nd 2012)

12/2/12, sculpture by Zach Lihatsh

The annual BICAS Art Silent Auction fundraiser was held at the Whistle Stop Depot last Sunday night.  This is the fourth time I've attended -- always a good time looking at and bidding on such a diverse collection of way cool art made by some incredibly creative artists!

BICAS (Bicycle Inter-Community Art & Salvage) is local non-profit collectively-run community education and recycling center for bicycles that welcomes people of all ages and walks of life.  Among the many positive things they do for our community are: teaching classes on bicycle repair, renting tools/shop space to work on your bike, recycling bicycles into new working bicycles, recycling bicycles into art.  This event is their primary fundraising event of the year.

Friendly faces greeted people at the Whistle Stop Depot in downtown Tucson.  If you were planning on bidding on anything, a quick signup sheet here provide you with a bid number that you could write down on any of the silent auction bidding sheets located next to the art, along with your bid.  This was a nice improvement and made it much easier to bid or update a bid on any of the bid sheets inside.

Early evening, plenty of room to scope out all the cool art and see which ones strike your fancy for possibly bidding on later.

There were hundreds of art objects up for silent auction, designed and made by many different artists.

I really liked the desert scene below, a great example of what can be accomplished with bike parts and an especially creative mind!

12/2/12, Desert Scene by Colin Holmes

 I really liked this lamp below, made out of wheel quick-release levers.  I bid on it several times, but it didn't make it home with me.

12/2/12, Lamp by Erik Bang

12/2/12, lamp by Erik Bang & Monique Laraway

 Ah yes, the Javalina.  You may remember him wandering around in a prior post when I saw him at the Bicycle Swap Meet recently.  A lot of bicycles spokes went into the making of this guy.   Very well done, and very popular at the auction.

12/2/12, Javalina by Troy Neiman

12/2/12, sculpture by Troy Neiman

 Earrings made from bicycle parts

In addition to the art, there was music, a puppet show for the kids, food, drinks, and even cotton candy!

Great turnout for this event -- here is the crowd as it got a little closer to the 9 PM bidding cutoff

12/2/12, sculpture by Emerie Charley

perfect for those "deer in the headlights" moments?

The artists, organizers, and volunteers should all be very proud of the event -- a really outstanding event and fundraiser!  BICAS holds this auction around the end of the year each year, keep your eyes out for it next year and drop by to see and bid on some very cool art supporting a great organization.

Color Vibe Tucson Run at TMC (2012)

Saturday morning I went over to the Tucson Medical Center campus to take a few pictures of the Color Vibe 5K run.  This fun event involves a lot of food-grade cornstarch dyed powder, runners with white shirt and clean faces, and, well you get the idea.  Looked like everyone had a lot fun, lots of smiles!

Here's a slideshow of 46 of my pictures on Flickr (click bottom right icon for fullscreen):


http://www.flickr.com/photos/23727418@N02/sets/72157632154489286/

Note to self: when shooting an unknown event with a somewhat ambiguous course route direction, make sure you have the route direction right or that perfectly chosen morning sunlight in their faces location suddenly becomes a nightmare shoot into the sun situation.  Ooooops.

Learning is fun!  *smile*