Adventures in Banner-land

My art post for tonight is MY NEW BLOG BANNER!!! I actually made it for the opening of my store on Zazzle, to market Halloween cards, and cards & postcards of other designs as well.  I've been in a real time-crunch lately, which threatens to extend right through the holidays. Usually Halloween is the only event in October, but this year, I have an activity on at least one day of every weekend throughout the month. Well, what can I say, I've decided to just get loose with 3SIXTY5, my collage-a-(almost every)-day project. I should have thought of doing something like this when I was still young enough to bear up under the commitment! But I was too busy being a sybarite.

Today my mother and I went to see "Vatican Treasures" at the Heinz History Museum in Pittsburgh's Strip District--a warehouse & market district so named because it occupies a 4 block wide strip of land between the Allegheny River and the bluffs that rise to neighborhoods atop them.--NOT because of entertainment you will find there, LOL! Anyway, my Mom loved the whole adventure, but I found the exhibit somewhat meagre on "treasures." I also couldn't help but register the evidence of immense wealth and luxury enjoyed, historically and into the present day, by the Popes in Rome and their huge retinues. Be that as it may, the exhibit displayed many genuine works of art, albeit the majority of them by "unknown artists " rather than those by recognized masters (do I detect insurance considerations at work here?)  Which is not to disparage the quality of those unknown works, they were still breath-taking! But the "blockbuster" pieces, such as the Pieta, were reproductions. I had a similar experience many years ago, when I went to see an exhibit in Speyer, Germany, of the "science and drawings" of Leonardo da Vinci. There were many impressive constructions of machinery and engines from his designs--but all the Leonardo art was bogus. I took off my glasses, the better to take in Leonardo's brushstrokes, and found myself looking at benday dots!

Thanks to everyone who visited my blog from Three Muses and Theme Thursday! It's always fun to "spend time" with friends this way.