The Orange Show and Art Car Museuem

This Friday we went to the Orange show and Art Car Musuem. It was certainly like nothing I've ever seen with both locations. The Orange Show was super cool with its homemade buildings while the Art Car Museum was unique with its crazy cars.
The Orange Show was built by a guy who absolutely loved oranges and believed that life wouldn't exist without them. I think the buildings in the Orange Show were really cool because EVERYTHING was hand made from the staircases to a boatlike vehicle. It seemed somewhat dangerous to be walking on top of a homemade rooftop with 8 people on it because it somewhat felt like it would break. I thought the Orange Show was cool because it had a bunch of cool sayings on the wall written in small tiles. I think that the guy who made this wasn't crazy but actually had a passion for oranges.
The Art Car Musuem was different. I thought that the 3 cars that were in it were really cool also. They had so much detail to them. I can just imagine sitting there for weeks maybe months gluing pieces to a car. It also had some cool pieces of art there as well as the cars. They seemed to have a liking for the Abarth Co. You may recognize that company from Fiat's new 500 car. The pieces also had a bunch of stuff relating to Texaco. Overall I thought that both the Orange Show and Art Car Museum were cool in their own way.

Glenwood and Olivewood Cemeteries

On Friday we went to go to some of the oldest cemeteries in Houston. One was real fancy and well kept. The other not so much.
We saw some pretty old graves at Glenwood. Now this is the fancy one where wealthy people in Houston are buried. Anyways so some of the graves we saw were over 150 years old! The graves were in really great condition for being that old to. They also had some interesting statues there to. Some were old tombs. Others just regular statues.
At Olivewood however the condition of it was poor. Some of the stones were in the woods and covered with trees and bushes. I even saw one grave that appeared to be carved by a knife. The oldest grave I saw there was from 1846. The whole place looked like a haunted cemetery but I'm sure it's not. One epitaphs that I found cool was this: "In my fathers house are many mansions"

Public Art in Houston

We went to go see the public art in Houston in the second trip in HOTG. I personally like art especially this kind. I like it because most art isn't made for people to actually touch or anything it's just for your eyes. And this stuff (if you wanted to) you could climb it. They don't really care because its there for the people.
So we went to Sam Houston park to go look at a old statue carved about 20 years after the Civil War. This statue was definitely more traditional than the other art we saw. It wasn't that much modern. I personally don't like the art that's traditional because it seems bland. I'm into the modern stuff.
Geometric Mouse X was a really cool piece in Downtown. It's like smack in the middle of it. It's pretty big, made of metal, and red. A whole lotta red. I wasn't to sure what it represented but that's how art is. You have your own thoughts of what it represents. To other people it might not mean the same thing. Geometric Mouse X appeared to be chained to the ground.
"In Minds" was a different piece we saw because it looked like it had faces in it. I couldn't really see the different faces but I knew they were there. That piece is more modern than the other ones as it was made during 2001-02.
"Seven Wonders seemed to be cool to. It was basically a bunch of children's drawings etched into stainless steel. They were seven towers the drawings were on so that's probably why it's called seven wonders. It was next to another piece of art we saw to. It was this guy who put a red button on a bridge. He wanted to see if people were curious amd would push it. Whenever you push it it makes the water in the bayou it covers turn into like a whirlpool.

Hindu Temple: Shri Swaminarayan Mandir

This was the first trip in my HOTG class. It was certainly the most interesting trip. We visited a Hindu Temple somewhere near Downtown Houston I think. It was a huge hand carved temple made up of various stones. The floor was made up of marble and the outside a mixture of ash and concrete.
The whole temple was mostly white except for a few gold toned poles on the dome. You could definitely tell you were in a holy place whenever you first walk in.
Here are some figures the guide told us:
Over 33,000 pieces of stone
1,500 angel statues
3,000 human figures
1,500 horses
1,000 elephants
To carve one pillar it took 9 months over 3 people carving it at once.
When we got there we just happened to get there at a time whenever they do there prayer session. We had to go to the center, sit cross-legged, the women sat behind the men. During that time they would light a candle at a gold statue of one of their gods and pray. They had music you could sing to whenever you were praying.
I thought the temple was very cool and I would love go back. That trip was definitely the most culturally diverse so far.

Houston MFA Trip

So on Friday we went to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. I thought it was pretty cool. I got to see a lot of different and generic pieces of art. I thought that they weren't gonna have cool paintings like Van Gogh and stuff but they did. We walked around the whole musuem in about 90 minutes.
During the trip I kept trying to find some Andy Warhol pieces of art there but it seemed nobody there knew who he was. But I did like the art there especially the abstract art like Picasso and stuff.
One thing I found interesting was the fact they had 2 or 3 Vincent Van Gogh's there. I thought it was cool because you basically were standing in front of painting thinking that the last time someone was there was Van Gogh himself.
They also had some ancient art from Greece and Egypt there also. Some of the that art was probably over 800 years old.