Thursday, 22 July 2010

Day off in Ashland

Well that’s another 1,000km done! I’m at 4,250km now. Close to half distance. I’m glad of the rest day as I’ve got a slight ankle strain. It began hurting during yesterday’s ride. (And this after I wrote about having arrived at Lake Superior in good condition. Typical!). Not sure how I picked it up but hopefully a day’s rest will be enough. We’ll see.

(Edit: I ended up spending an extra day in Ashland to allow the complete recovery of my slight ankle strain).

I spent most of the morning looking at murals! Ashland has a really cool Mural Walk around the business district. There were around a dozen large scale wall murals to see. It’s a really fantastic (and ongoing) piece of work. It’s the work of two local artists, Kelly Meredith and Susan Prentice Martinsen. I spoke to “Sue” whilst she worked on the latest one entitled “Oredock”. (One of Ashland’s landmarks is the last remaining of 6 former mineral ore transportation docks). A nice lady to talk to and very talented. Some pictures of my favourite two murals follow.  

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Sue Martinsen painting this fantastic mural - "Oredock" (less than half is visible here)
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Mural detail
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Some faces still to be painted…
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Storefront Mural (2002)
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Mural detail
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Mural detail. Just Brilliant.
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Further detail from of above shot

A got of couple of other shots as I wandered down Main St, but the murals definitely stole the show today!

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Ashland City Hall
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Great cafe interior
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But is it art?...
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Nice cafe sign

2 comments:

R & A said...

You can so tell you like art

Jason Dalton said...

The murals are great, I love this sort of thing too. Just think of the opportunity for these in English 'ghost' towns, where lots ifl empty shops stand - would make many a High Street more interesting!!