Wonderful Visitors

Three of the fantastic teachers I taught with at La Serna have come to visit for the weekend. Linda, Marsha and Judy. It has been a wonderful visit so far. I feel terrible about having to leave them on their own on Saturday for Pyramid Atlantic, my fault - for not making sure I wasn't scheduling a thousand things at once.
Jacques was not so thrilled with the visitors. First thing in the morning, Jeff the contractor came to look at what we were going to do with the bathroom, they will start maybe next week. Leah came - bless her - and cleaned. Then Mike the knife sharpener came with the blades for my board shear and guillotine. (Yippee! Now I'm in business!). And then the three ladies showed up. It was a tough day. So to let me know this, when we were upstairs looking at the last room in the house, he sat on the bed with the brand new sheets and covers I had bought for the visit and peed all over it. It was amazing. They were so nice about it though. Thank goodness. That could have been really awful. Sigh.
By the time I got home from the fair the next day, they were all on the best of terms. Jacques and Linda seem to have really warmed up to each other. Here he is on her lap. Animal love is good - especially for someone who had had their wallet stolen that day. :(!

Today - Sunday -
We took the Mural Arts Tour. This is a two hour bus tour to look at just a few of the over 2800 Murals that are in Philadelphia. We had a terrific guide and I saw parts of Philadelphia I'd never seen before. Some fantastic murals too. It's like visiting old friends. We stopped at the Underground Railroad Mural on 7th and Chestnut - and here you can get an idea of the size. This is a mosaic mural, the most expensive mural. My ladies are standing in front of it.

We went to Redding Terminal for "lunch" at 3pm, and then went to look at a few more murals and we stopped at Isaiah Zagar's Secret garden which one can now go into and look around. It's fantastic. Here are the ladies looking down in one of the little grottoes. Zagar is a local artist who is continually working on this place, everything, the entire house, is covered in this style. It's fantastic.

But maybe the highlight for me this time was going over to Girard and 40th to look at the little girl reading a book with butterflies flying out of it. There is a new mural there as well and so we drove around the block to try to get an idea of what it looked like in the twilight. And lo and behold, the mural did exactly what they are supposed to do, give people pride in their neighborhood and bring people together. Dante - a block captain - (a young person maybe 16 - 18?) came over and talked to us about both murals. His younger brother was on one of them and the little girl was another friend of his on the same block. His pride in the murals was evident.
More adventures tomorrow - HSP collections, my show, Valley Forge and Susanna Foo's.
It's going to be a great day.