Marion Gunderson Art (and the Farmer's Daughter)

When I was an undergrad at Iowa State University, I took one agronomy class to help prepare myself for farm-wifery. It turned out that I was pathetic at having any logic or understanding regarding agronomy, including about weather (although, one agronomy concept and visual that stuck with me is that soybean plants are dicotyledens).

The wonders of nature still get lost on me, including weather-related phenomenas. Thank goodness I have Bill to point them out to me, like he did Friday night. We were out for a walk at about 8:30 PM when the humidity was 78% and the temperature was 75 degrees. Sticky.

Looking east-southeast. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

According to my resident expert, the cotton ball-puffy clouds in this photo are mammatus clouds occurring in a large cumulonimbus cloud. (Rats, that a lot of the photo’s cloud detail is lost when viewed on the web.) Cumulonimbus mammatus clouds are typically associated with strong thunderstorms, oftentimes with tornadic activity and very high winds. For that reason, Bill said pilots steer away from this type of cloud.

Wow. At the link in the previous paragraph (in case you don’t want to click on it and read the info) it says, “The individual mammatus lobe average diameters of 1–3 km and lengths on average of 0.5 km.” From the ground they seem so teeny tiny.

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

Iowa State University Power Plant, viewed from the northeast, spring 2010. (Click photo to enlarge.)

What does the green shed in this photo have to do with my mother, Marion Gunderson? My intent is to fill you in over the course of the next two or three posts beginning mid- or late-this week.

The interpretation of the previous sentence is…I don’t have the next posts written yet, but barring any changes with my dad, I’ll post again later this week. For those of you who have asked, and for anyone else, my 91-year-old dad has bounced back from his fall with determination and is doing well. He’s not as “good” as before, but he’s in very good spirits and walking quite a bit.

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

We adopted Sammy from a family member of one of Katie's Drake University softball teammates. (Click photo to enlarge.)

I don’t get too excited when I read other people’s happenings-of-the-day chit-chat blog posts, so I don’t expect you to, either. However, this post will need to suffice as a filler until we get my dad squared away after his fall almost two weeks ago. He didn’t fracture/break any bones but he’s not ready to live by himself yet. (He would want to disagree with that statement.) I’ll be going to and from Rolfe quite a bit as he gets stronger.

L to R: Sammy and Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty was rescued one bitterly cold winter by our veterinarian's wife. (Click photo to check out Miss Kitty's tongue-to-nose detail.)

In the meantime, here’s a fluff post of photos of Bill’s and my two cats. Miss Kitty is the black and white cat. She used one of her nine lives a year ago when she bit Bill. I keep trying to convince Bill that Miss Kitty really is a sweetheart, although her unladylike meows do sound just like Marge on the Simpsons.

I’ve got new prints to post about. I’ve also got an audio interview about Rolfe that I’ll post within the next month or so. For the next week or two my posts might be “fluff,” or…let’s just call them “smelling the roses.”

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

I’m still traveling to and from Rolfe quite a bit to be with my dad while he is recovering from his spill. Within a week or two I should be back to posting more regularly. For now…the signage in these photos isn’t exactly newsworthy, but just struck me as odd and ridiculous (and a teeny bit humorous).

Looking south toward Lohrville, Iowa. The exact location is the intersection of 230th St. and Sigourney Ave., just north of what will be the extension of Highway 20. (Click photo to enlarge.)

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On the other side of the highway, looking north toward Manson, Iowa. (Click photo to enlarge.)

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Service Signing, L.C. and Iowa Plains Signing, Inc. are the two companies providing this "double vision" signage. (Click photo to enlarge.)

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

After Part I and Part II, this is the last post for a while about mats and glass. Even for me, three posts about mats and glass is a bit much.

For a quick read of helpful facts about kinds of glass, mats and other considerations within the context of framing artwork, check out Mona Majorowicz’s “Picture Framing Materials Guide for Artwork” Squidoo lens. If you read it and find it helpful, if you’d scroll to the end of the lens and leave a comment for Mona, even if brief, it would boost the lens’ Squidoo ranking.

The following photo is of two mats and the corner of a picture. They were framed together in the ’90s, but are pulled apart in this photo to illustrate the fading effects from not using acid-free mats and not using conservation clear glass. Admittedly, the text on the photo takes some muddling through.

(Click photo to enlarge.)

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Today I’m with my 4-year-old grandson celebrating his birthday. The mid-week is full. Unless I surprise myself, I’ll wait until the end of the week to post again.

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

(Click here to go to this blog’s home page. If you haven’t already, for optimum understanding, read Part I before you read this Part II post.)

This original watercolor by Mother (Marion Gunderson) is now protected by museum glass* which blocks 98% of UV rays. Notice that the glare is very minimal. Before this week, the glass used here was just regular clear, which blocks only about 47% of UV rays. With regular glass previously on this painting at this particular location, the glare prohibited anyone from seeing the detail of the painting unless the viewer was very close to the painting. Even with just a single mat, I didn't want to use regular non-glare glass (which also blocks 47% of UV rays) because I wanted brilliant color and crisp detail. Even with just one mat, that brilliance and clarity would not be as likely with the filmy look of non-glare glass in combination with a mat. The reason for that is when there is any distance between artwork and the glass, even if it is just the thickness of a mat, some of the brilliance and clarity is lost. This is even more true when a double or triple mat is involved. (Click photo to enlarge.)

Maybe two or three framers in central-Iowa just figured I already knew all about conservation clear glass and therefore never felt the need to tell me about conservation clear glass. That is understandable. But, I was a little miffed recently when I, in the spirit of shopping locally, took the original of Angel in Wine and Blue to be framed at a central-Iowa frame shop. At the same time, I asked that central-Iowa frame shop owner about museum glass for another painting. The owner pointed to a box of conservation clear glass and said that, yes, the shop carried conservation clear and that it is the same thing as museum glass.

Because of Mona Majorowicz at Wild Faces Gallery educating me, I knew this was not true. I said something else to the owner about museum glass. The owner then repeated that conservation clear is the same as museum glass.

WHEHLLL! Knowing that this was not true, I said that I wanted the UV protection benefit of conservation clear, but that I also wanted the minimal glare that is possible with museum glass. (Museum glass also provides protection against 98% of UV rays.) I got a “look” from the shop owner. She then proceeded to tell me that museum glass is so expensive (which it is) and that it would not be cost-effective to purchase it for the shop because of the expense.

Ok, so why didn’t she just tell me that in the first place? Instead, she knowingly tried to pass off the conservation clear glass that she had in stock for museum grade glass.

Back to Wild Faces Gallery…Mona typically doesn’t carry museum glass due to the expense, either; but at least she was up front in telling me that instead of trying to pull one over on me.

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If anyone asks, I’m not going to mention the name of the frame shop where I was told that conservation glass is the same as museum glass. My point is not to make a bad name for anyone. Plus, I’ve almost always been pleased with the overall look of my framing done at the shop. My point is for people to become educated about framing materials, if they aren’t already.

*Museum glass is quite expensive. The 20″ x 20″ piece of glass needed for this framed painting was about $120, including labor. Except for maybe one other piece of artwork, I probably won’t use museum glass on anything else because it is so expensive. I will use conservation clear glass on nearly everything I get framed.

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)