Little Rock Arkansas Day 3

Hi again,

Today the Art Jewelry Forum trip starts so you will get the full onslaught of the trip. We started out at the Clinton Library. Interesting architecture.

As interesting as the outside was I must say that I didn’t find the inside displays all that engaging. They showed the Clinton history with photos, text and videos which of course made me very nostalgic for those days. So sad that those times have taken such a sharp turn away from all the promise of the liberal agenda for the people and turned to the fake agenda for the people. And remember the surplus funds that Clinton left for Bush to squander. Sigh. Here are a few shots of the displays.

Ah, those were the days.

Little Rock Nine. More about this in a minute.

Moving on to the Arkansas Art Center. We were greeted by Brian Lang, the Chief Curator for an introduction to the Robert Baines show. Robert is an Australian who is very interested in the past history of jewelry and bases his designs on past pieces with some humor and a though knowledge of old techniques and attribution. It starts with a postcard of an Iranian 11^th century armband which is reproduced in gold by Robert.

Which morphs into small rings:

And then into

In his talk to the group, he talks about how design morphs from one thing to the other and how it can go quite far in its influence.

Here is an example of a piece that is part of what he called The Official History of the Compact Disc: The BC and AD of the CD… another funny origin story.

Here is a brooch on a small CD.

And another

Here are a couple more without CD.

Here is the group in the exhibition.

We wandered back into the back room and on the way passed a Diego Rivera from a time he was in Paris. A rare cubistic Rivera.

Here are some things I gave them in their storage clothes.

Next we made an special stop at the National Park Information center for the Little Rock Nine. The Little Rock Nine were 9 incredibly brave black children who integrated the segregated high school in Little Rock in 1957. Ranger Randy gave us the whole story of what happened. It is amazing to me that there were 9 families and kids who were willing to put their lives on the line to take this historic stand. Here is Ranger Randy.

Why indeed.

Here is the High School. It is a huge and very beautiful school.

The gas station across the street from the school is where the press was allowed to stay. They couldn’t get any closer. It is part of the preservation of this history.

Next we went to the State Capital building to see this statue commemorating the Little Rock Nine.

Then we went to Marion’s house.

Here is Marion greeting us and talking about her collection. You can tell she is a character (sorry Marion) and very enthusiastic. She loves her jewelry and has a very personal relationship with it. She says if one piece goes out on a loan that she misses it and feels very uncomfortable until it returns. I’ll show a series of tables with jewelry laid out on them, which were set up in the dining room and on the sun porch. There are also some pieces spread around the living room. But most of the jewelry is in the small basement room in the vault and in a series of locked drawers. There are some incredible pieces just laying around here.