Her medium is plants.

Do you know any artists whose medium is plants? Kim Turos, who recently moved to Seattle, works in a vernacular of organic media. 

Gnarly old roots hang from the 70 foot ceiling like grand synaptic nerves sending messages from one giant bulbous form to another. It is something to behold. Her studio is wild too. It's a glorious industrial cathedral.

David, Simone, Naomi and I stopped by to see Kim and her husband John Gilleland recently. Simone set about watering the plants. There are probably 50 giant pots needing H2O. This could take a long time...best we open some wine and enjoy the extraordinary surroundings.

Take Your Time

Simone and Naomi visited the exhibit of Danish Iceland artist, Olafur Eliasson at MOMA.  There was a smoky mysterious room and a foggy room and a round room that changed colors and a wall of boxy mirrors all much bigger then them....which I should add was a theme on this last trip to NYC, so much of the art we saw was giant (Robert Therrien's plate and bowls.)

Another favorite with the girls was "Who's afraid of Jasper Johns" at the Tony Shafrazi gallery. The flight of stairs into the exhibit space on West 26th street had become a waterfall and the girls got in it immediately as it was 100 degrees outside.  The walls of the gallery were covered in a wallpaper of the previous show with new art mounted on top of it. It was hard to tell what was real and what was wallpaper.  An image of a guard stood next to a live guard.

Back in Seattle Naomi 

and Simone had a great time at the 

Lawrimore Project's Susan Robb exhibit, "The Challenge That Nature

 Provides."  Simone sang her heart out in the private booth and cooked 

delighted in the charred marshmellows from the Digester's fire.  The Digester's fire is fueled by methane from art dealer waste.  A hearth from the ecologically progressive future for sure. 

Fishing at twin ponds on crazy hair day at Evergreen School

Simone's Pre-School class made fishing poles today. The three year olds added hooks and sinkers, squirmy live worms (or bright salmon eggs) and went fishing at twin ponds, just a short hike into the woods from the school. Last year they caught a fish. This year they needed to cook up hot dogs and smores over the coals as there were no nips from the tranquil waters. 

The woods were beautiful! The weeping willow made some lovely shadows on the water to protect the young fishermen from the sun.


It turns out that today is more than just Fishing Day. It is also one of the Evergreen School's Spirit Days. This one is called "Crazy hair day" and the kids take those instructions seriously. Wild things appear on their heads...including, on Eliza, an embedded water bottle buried under her golden locks to create a "Volcano" on top of her blond head. If you look closely at the photos you'll see some spray paint on a shorn scalp (Daniel) or some exciting pink hair (Claire) or extra silly pony tails (Ruby, Evelyn & Simone) or red hair (Zane).

In the next picture you can see that each preschool student has a buddy from the Third grade standing with them. These buddies have been visiting them throughout the school year for fun projects. I overheard one buddy trying to get his underwing to try some of his suggestions about what fishing technique would attract the baby coho salmon to bite his worm. The buddy explained to his 3 year old understudy, "You see you are just half my age, which means I am two times your age and thus I know twice as much as you." The youngster did not understand this complex math at all and thus proceeded to do his own thing with the fishing pole.

Here are the 12 third grade "buddies" standing with 12 preschoolers and 3 teachers about to head out for the hike. Everyone has their fishing pole upright as they are practicing how not to knock into one another with the many poles.

This photo also shows the kids tying strings to poles to make fishing rods. They added the weights, hooks, and the bait to those hooks, a bit later.  

In the back of the classroom picture you can see a fish tank. Right before we left on the fishing expedition, Simone told Dorothy Shark-bait, the fish that lives in the classroom fish tank, "Don't worry Dorothy, I'll bring you a worm, we have more than enough bait. There will be worms left over."  The picture also shows the planets hanging from Teacher Judith's =classroom ceiling.  A few days after this event, the same ceiling was strung with a gray whale, an orca and a blue whale amid a massive bloom (or swarm) of jelly fish.  All of which, the kids made. It is a wonderfully creative place.

Home Depot or Cart Etiquette

We hardly ever seem to be able to obey the proper cart etiquette. 

The girl enjoying themselves in the cart at Home Depot.  They love building projects.  At least for the fist 10 minutes.  Naomi gets sidetracked with play tools and deep ito her own building projects.  Simone tends to jump in with fortifying snacks, which is why the bookshelf has cherrios smashed inside the slats.

You Complete Me

If you look at the window behind Simone you will see, in the lower right, the seam for the door to the Western Bridge. A Seattle museum founded by Bill & Ruth True to exhibit contemporary art. Simone was inspired to do a chalk drawing of her own outside the museum after seeing the exhibit, "You Complete Me." Below are large photographs viewed with 3-D glasses.

The girls hooted and hollered through Switzerland artist, Andres Zybach's yellow passageway. As they stomped down the ribs of the tunnel, the hydraulic system was activated, creating gurgling noises and sending paint into tubes which spew color down the gallery walls across the room.

The last image is from a grey bouncy house by artists' Eli Hansen & Oscar Tuazon. A la " a thinking room" that had the girls climbing the walls.