One of the many cool things about Route 66 is the number of wacky & crazy things you’ll find along the way… the Wigwam Hotel, Cadillac Ranch, and many more further out west. But yesterday I found THIS little bit of wackiness right in Lexington, Illinois. A large elephant sculpture made out a bunch of random parts & pieces! Sadly, there was no description or explanation… just a fun photo-shoot with an elephant! Now that doesn’t happen every day…

BLOG POST UPDATE :
So here’s a LINK… my friend Tracy found this tidbit.
Apparently Lexington artist Kasey Wells hauled this crazy-looking scrap metal elephant around the USA in 2020 in a failed attempt to become President of the United States.

Who knew?!

Yesterday I went down to Chenoa to celebrate Fourth of July with my best friends from college. Because the festivities were later in the day, I brought my bike with to go for a ride along Old Route 66… so Americana nostalgic of me, huh?!

A fun morning ride… hotter & windier than I expected out there in the midwest farm fields! Basically my route was a big triangle from Chenoa to Bloomington-Normal to Colfax and back to Chenoa… just in time for the Chenoa Fourth of July Parade… and before the storms blew through and promptly cancelled the Chenoa fireworks!!! So luckily, I got a good bike ride in well before the storms!!!

This past week at Summer Camp, my kids did wheelthrowing for the first half of the week, but switched to handbuilding to finish up. Their “challenge” was to make two handbuilt mugs that represented two different animals that somehow tied together. Oddly, we had quite a few platypuses… or is that platypi?… NOPE!… but I think it has something to do with “Phineas & Ferb”???

Today was a beautiful day for an other bike ride along the lakefront. Perfect for exploring some of the more hidden areas… and I found LA RONDA PARAKATA. A very cool structure up on a hill overlooking the lake just south of 31st Street Harbor. Designed to honor the monarch butterflies, and built as a “gathering space” along the Burnham Wildlife Corridor. Always fun when you get off the beaten path to explore & enjoy some newly-discovered treasures.

Looks like my friend Rhonda is brightening her weekend with a beautiful floral arrangement in one of my stamped & soda-fired square vases! Those yellow calla lilies look great in there! Thanks for sharing Rhonda… it’s always great to see your work “living” in someone else’s home!

Looks like my pal Pam is having a healthy lunch at her desk today… a nice green salad in a nice green bowl! Thanks for sharing Pam!

This week we may have had a couple “yellow towel” moments… celebrating diversity with our favorite cookies! However… we all kind of agreed that they may have missed the mark… as we were all hoping for some rainbow colored filling, edible glitter, or something else a bit more FABULOUS!!!

Things are coming out of the kiln… like this beautiful bowl that Kristen made in my Tuesday night class last session!

During Week 9 of that class, we did a bowl carving challenge… where they had to take away at least half of the clay weight of the bowl… and THIS is Kristen’s bowl that separated into two parts. Luckily, the patching fix we did in class held together and it has survived the glaze firing… and it’s STUNNING!!! Well done Kristen… good save!

Clear skies. Nothing but clear skies. Okay, and a bit of a side-wind to make my morning ride a bit tougher than expected. Always enjoyable… even though the sunrise wasn’t as “stunning” as I would like it to be!

We’re in the middle of my second week of Summer Camp at Lillstreet… another week of wheelthrowing & handbuilding with my campers! Picture a classroom full of VERY energetic nine 8-year old boys… and one quiet girl in the corner (she’s a trooper)! And, oh but wait there’s more... several of them came in already as best friends from school! And when the Dad dropped off the first one of the boys… his comment was “Good Luck with this one”… and then he left! Yikes!

Let’s just say they’ve been “very entertaining” for me this week. But not too much for them to be following Rule #3… cleaning like the best of them!