Carvings – RDZ Photography

As mentioned in an earlier posting the Tucson Gem and Mineral Shows are far more than just gems and minerals. One of the more colorful, and larger shows, is the African Art Show.

There were rows and rows of vendors with all sorts of colorful items.

First up – a Ghana Djembe.

A Benin bronze statue.

A grouping of wooden giraffes.

A Bembe carving from the Congo.

Many of the booths had walls of masks.

Senegalese woven grass baskets.

A collection of masks from the Congo.

According to the all knowing Google Images these small carvings are most likely from the Ivory Coast. Once again proving I should take better notes.

This bust has a great mix of carving and bead work.

The same booth had these amazing full bead work sculptures.

They also had these colorful baskets.

The artist nailed this one.

The mystery ladies.

There was once a forest of ash trees near the Leila Arboretum in Battle Creek, Michigan. As with thousands of these trees across North America, they fell victim to the Emerald Ash Borer disease and died.

But in the ultimate ‘if life gives you lemons make lemonade’ story the park brought in chainsaw artists who transformed them into a ‘Fantasy Forest’.

They had a competition in 2015 for the artists, who came from all over the country.

Some are the more traditional animals that you see from chainsaw artists.

Others are more whimsical.

Even though I have thousands of destinations on my list this was not on it, we just got lucky and drove by.

The website for the arboretum has before photos of the dead trees – what a great transformation.

Battle Creek Bigfoot?

My favorite – the strange disappearance of Farmer MacDonald.Notice the UFO abducting the farmer. Not seen on this view is the wife outside the cabin with a shotgun trying to fend off the aliens.