Willoughby Spit and Beyond

Spent 24 hours in Tidewater and took 800 photos, alot to sift through……….

Wondeful deck protected from the wind over looking the Marina at the Sunset Grill. Cathy D. the owner is a wonderful ambassador of good will for Willoughby Spit and sorry we didn’t get to meet her dog!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sunset-Grill/208268729198443

http://qmato.com/restaurant/sunset-grill-norfolk

http://www.dcschumaker.com/

The summit of Mt. Trashmore

 

The friend we were visiting had a reproduction of this Rodin that is just incredible : “Rodin intended La Danaide to be a panel in his massive work entitled The Gates of Hell, a depiction of those that were condemned to eternal damnation. In Greek mythology Danaide and her forty-nine sisters were married to the fifty sons of Aegyptus. At the command of their father Danaus the fifty daughters murdered their husbands on the first night of their marriage. As punishment for this horrendous crime they were compelled in The Realm of the Dead to fill a container with water but the leading jug could never be filled. Rodin saw the opportunity in this Greek myth of portraying utter exhaustion in a female body, the complete collapse of Danaide from the endless and futile effort of her assignment.

The expressiveness of the human body in all possible positions was a life-long fascination for Rodin. He once more saw the beauty of the female body when he chose to present Danaide in this crumpled position. In his superb modeling of the figure he combined a deep expressiveness with enchanting grace. As his original plan for The Gates of Hell was transformed, he abandoned the original intention to include the statue and, like Le Baiser also intended for “The Gates,” he exhibited it as a separate piece. It is thought that Camille Claudel posed for this statue which was created in 1885.

The ‘Danaid’ was for the first time exhibited as an autonomous work in the Gallery Georges Petit in 1889 and submitted to the Salon of 1890. Here, it was purchased for the Musée du Luxembourg.
The marble version now exhibited in the Musée Rodin (S.1155, 36 x 71 x 53 cm), carved by Rodin’s praticien Jean Escoula, shows the same smooth finish as the Bust of Mme Vicuna. Instead of tense and twisted muscles, we find a polished composition in fin-de-siècle perfection; only the rock, from which the ‘Danaid’ seems to emerge, has retained its rough surface – a juxtaposition very popular with Rodin, who had adapted this style from Michelangelo to suggest the non-finito of his sculpture and the organic evolution of the figure from the block of stone it had been “liberated” from. The wave-like lines of the back and the undulating long hair, combined with this fluidity of execution, seem to make a rhyme to the water theme associated with the Danaid’s story.

Another marble example ist found in Finland, in the Finnish National Gallery (dimensions given as 32 cm x 45 cm x 67 cm). Like in the case of ‘Fallen Angel’, the marble versions have been used to create bronze casts.”

We didn’t eat here but I couldn’t stop saying China Moon that night. These dear old friends are a constant laugh fest. The Kroger Crows photo I’ll try to do soon. Another catch phrase that I was repeating. There was a tiny tree at the Kroger we went to that had a dozen of the biggest crows in it I’d ever seen.

The Kroger Crows were shot from a moving car with extreme belly laughing going on, so I wasn’t expecting much, just a memory.