AN ARTFUL WEEKEND

People who know me know that I have been feeling sad since my brother died last Oct. Often I like to engage in art activities to work through & transcend the sad times. This weekend (Feb. 28 through March 2, 2008) was full of art related activities, & most were free. I should have taken my camera along & taken more pictures.

Thursday night WyldeFyre Collective hosted our weekly Social at Hot Mamas in Austin. (Last Thursday we had Belly Dancing, Ethnic Drumming, Hooping & Fire Dancing/Spinning). I belly danced & fire danced & took pictures of the other performers. It was a intimate, mellow, outdoor gathering, perfect for late Texas Winter/early Spring activity. The night was only a little windy & we all had a chance to talk with & enjoy each other.


Friday I went through all the pictures & posted 85 photos on the WyldeFyre site & recovered after having bad allergies & very little sleep.

Saturday I went to a Russian & Slavic Festival at UT Austin with Mark, the organizer of the Russian Meet-Up here in Austin. That was a great event. 1st we attended a talk on Bulgarian Rom, commonly known as Gypsys. Then we saw a display that included pictures from many facets of Russian Culture (Music, Geography, Folklore & Fairy Tales, the various Ethnic peoples, & much, much more). My favorite part was watching an exhibition of ethnic Hungarian & Romanian dancers. Yum Yum Yum! It was such a lively show I wanted to dance with them as I watched them perform to their traditional music. The mens' steps looked like so much fun. My 2nd favorite part was when we went to a Learn the Russian Alphabet class. WE were late, towards the end of the alphabet. The leaders would post words & ask people to try to pronounce the words in Russian. I pronounced the words in what I thought was a quiet voice that I hoped Mark could hear. At 1st the leaders said, "Very good" to me as they heard me sound out the words. The comments quickly turned to, "Do you speak Russian?". "I am just learning", I answered with a smile, hoping that made Mark feel good as my Russian teacher seeing my progress. I also met some of Mark's Russian linguist friends, PhD students at UT.

If that was not enough for a Sat. after the Russian Festival I went to some other friends' house & ordered a Fire Baton. Yeah, new fire tools will be here soon! We also worked on costume designs for future fire performances & I drew out many designs for leather fire costumes. I don't draw much anymore but when I was a kid I use to draw for hours and hours. Sometimes I still think about taking figure drawing classes, if I ever find some spare time to try my hand at all the other art & language related hobbies I immerse myself in. And writing classes, more dance classes, maybe some piano & or basic singing classes...

As you can see, I have to limit myself some or I would drive myself crazy trying to do everything that interests me.

Then Sunday, several friends went to Hippie Church at Maria's Taco Express in Austin where we saw Carolyn Wonderland (really good blues) for free. I was pleasantly surprised when a friend introduced me to local, well known actor who said, "Oh I know you, I've seen you around." I guess I am becoming a known Austin artist...