Weekly Wrap-Up...I wish!

Handiwork/Manual Skills

Last Saturday we started renovating our laundry after discovering a hot water leak below the concrete slab (why anyone would run water pipes underneath a slab is a mystery to me). We were eventually going to re-do this room - but not right now.

The idea was that we'd re-run the pipes & join them up with the new pipes we'd put in when we did the kitchen a few years ago. This would mean I still could use the washing machine. Well, that didn't happen because while jack-hammering the tiles off the wall, a pipe was punctured, spraying cold water everywhere.

So there was no water on Saturday.
That night Zana, my 22 yr old and I escaped from the scene of domestic disaster to see Shakespeare Abridged with four friends, something we'd arranged a few weeks before & thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We arrived home late that night to find everything cleaned up & the water reconnected to most of the house.

On Sunday night we discovered our water cylinder wasn't heating.
No hot water for 4 days.
It was cold showers for everyone. I boiled the kettle and had a bath in about 2 cm of warm water at one stage - it is still winter here.

No washing machine until the laundry pipes are complete so we had a few trips around to various family members to use theirs.
I was hoping this would be all wrapped up by tonight...

Nougat contemplating where the pipe is going...

This was all after hours work but today my husband took the day of work to cut the brickwork for the pipes so Nougat (apprentice plumber) could do that on his day off.

* Benj finished Algebra 2 at the end of last week & has had this week maths free, except when he helped his younger sister with working out how to find the area of some shapes.

* His free reading included finishing up C.S. Lewis's Cosmic/Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra & That Hideous Strength and Ten Fingers for God by Dorothy Clarke Wilson.

* Moozle's free reading has been mostly re-reading this series of biographies written by Janet & Geoff Benge and published by YWAM. Cameron Townsend, George Muller & Harriet Tubman were three that she enjoyed most:

I saw this post last week and shared it with a group I belong to & thought I'd post it here also. It's something most of us know but it's always good to be reminded of the importance of taking your children outside. Here's Why!

This was written in November 2014 but I only saw it this week. The Ethics of Egg Freezing

...just because we can use technology to do an end run around nature does not mean that we are necessarily wise in doing so. 

I've finished reading: The Spartan by Caroline Dale Snedeker & Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute.

Artist Study

The Fighting Temeraire by Joseph Mallord Turner, 1839

The Fighting Temeraire was voted as Britain's favourite painting in a poll conducted by the BBC in 2005. The story behind the painting is here.
Khan Academy also has some very interesting commentary about this painting.

Linking up with Weekly Wrap-up

Picture Study: Inspired by Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was one of the artists featured in a set of Montessori artist cards I used with my children when they were little but it wasn't until earlier this year when I was reading Island of the World by Michael O'Brien that I became interested in learning more about him and his art.

 The Three Candles (1938-1940)

In O'Brien's book, Josip, the main character is speaking to his friend, Caleb, a troubled and rebellious young youth whom he had befriended some years before. Over time Josip had encouraged the boy's latent academic ability and when Caleb wrote his poem, Giraffe Wars, he gave it to Josip to read.

"So, how did you like Giraffe Wars?"

"I regret that I did not like it, Caleb."

"Oh, thank you very much."

"However, I did notice your technical competence, and your growing sense of creative intuition."

"Oh, then it's my hypothesis you reject."

"Poetry must never be a vehicle for ideology."

"That's ridiculous. Poetry is always a vehicle for somebody's ideology! Look at Ezra Pound!"

"I cannot read him. His Fascism disturbs me, just as Picasso's paintings disturb because they derive, consciously or subconsciously, from his Communism."

"I like Picasso - a lot!" the boy says in a challenging tone.

"You should go to the Metropolitan and spend time with Chagall."

"Who is Chagall?"

"I will take you to meet him on Saturday. He is in painting what a poet should be in poetry. These heroes you are fond of, Picasso and Pound, they disturb not in the way a painting or poem should disturb. Instead they create a malfeasance in the subconscious - and in the soul."

It's interesting that Francis Schaeffer commenting on Picasso in his book, How Should we Then Live, stated, 'In great art the technique fits the worldview being presented, and this new technique of fragmentation fits the world view of modern man.'
Marc Chagall's view of life was rooted in his faith and permeates his art. A Hasidic Jew, he was born in Vitebsk, Belarus in 1887. He lived through the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution and when WW2 broke out he and his family escaped at the eleventh hour to America in 1941. The links below have information on his life and work:

Marc Chagall Net  has probably the most comprehensive collection of his art work that I've seen plus biographical information. The art work I've put in this post came from this website.

 Peasant Life (1925)

 To understand the symbolism in Chagall's art see here.

I and the Village (1911)

The Birthday (1915)

Abraham and the Three Angels (1958-1960)

“The Bible is life, an echo of nature, and this is the secret I have endeavored to transmit."

Besides painting, Chagall work included murals, ceramics, tapestries, stained-glass work, theatre and costume design.

 A Midsummer Night's Dream (1939)

 

The Marc Chagall Museum in Belarus

 “I did not see the Bible, I dreamed it. Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time.” 

 Bride & Groom of the Eiffel Tower (1939)

 

Some art work done by Moozle, inspired by Chagall's Bride & Groom of the Eiffel Tower ( also known as Newly Weds on the Eiffel Tower)

A sculpture using air drying clay

How Chagall's background influenced his art

The story behind this painting done during 1939-1947 is here.

Picture Study - Winslow Homer: American Artist 1836-1910

The Sun will not rise or set without my notice and thanks.

-Winslow Homer

The Lifeline (1884)

Fox Hunt (1893)

Fresh Eggs (1874)

The Gale (1883-18930

The New Novel ( 1877)

The Fog Warning (1885)

The Sharp Shooter (1863)

Snap the Whip(1872)

A Basket of Clams (1873)

Breezing Up (1873-1876)

The Gulf Stream (1899)

Winslow Homer is mostly known by his maritime scenes but he was also an illustrator and spent time on the front during the Civil War making drawings of everyday life there.

See the home and studio at Maine where Winslow Homer lived and worked and found inspiration for his maritime paintings.

Picture Study - Hans Heysen

Hans Heysen (1877-1968) is said to have been the first Australian painter to have recognised the beauty of the Australian eucalypts, or gum trees and has been called 'the portrait painter of the Australian gum tree.'

Heysen was born in Germany and came to Australia when he was six years old. He eventually made his home at Hahndorf in the Mount Lofty Ranges of South Australia, an area which inspired many of his paintings.

An Early Summer Morning Ambleside

The Art Gallery of South Australia has an excellent guide for families for a study of Hans Heysen's paintings:

'Look at how Heysen has used layers of watercolour to paint this landscape.

What weather report would you give after looking at this painting?

 How has Heysen created a sense of mood and atmosphere in this painting?' 

The Wet Road 

The Hillside, Glen Osmond

Summer

 Flinder's Ranges Landscape

 Edge of the Clearing

 Drought Sheep

Colin Thiele said of him, 'Hans Heysen was one of the great landscape painters of Australia. His superb draughtsmanship, his wonderful control of medium – especially watercolour and charcoal – his handling of light, his power of composition and his intense awareness of natural form and texture, combined to make him unique among the representational painter of this country. Nobody in Australia had studied the gum tree as he had, or analysed its singular character.......His, indeed, was one of the longest and most distinguished careers in the history of Australian art.'

Sewing  (The Artist's Wife)

A Lord of the Bush