A day at the museum

I've sat down to write this dang post so many time last week, but someone, or something kept interrupting me. So while everyone is still in bed, I have some quiet time to myself.

Last Sunday, Jan, Jane, D & I took the light rail to downtown Phoenix to the Heard Museum. They have free admission every Sunday through the month of July.

One of Jan's co-workers told her about it, so we thought we'd make a day of it.

The goal of the Heard Museum "is to educate the public about the heritage and living cultures and arts of Native peoples, with an emphasis on the peoples of the Southwest".  To be perfectly honest, it was my first time there, and not really my cup of tea.

Don't get me wrong, they had some interesting sculptures and a few paintings I liked, but I thought there would be more about their lives and how they lived here in Arizona.

The one thing they did have, which I really enjoyed, was a group of Indian Native American dancers. It was a husband and wife duo with their two children. Their 3-year old daughter was so adorable, and you could tell she loved the attention when she was out there dancing. And their 12-year old son is the 3 time World Champion of hoop dancing. He was amazing! I shot some video with my iPhone, but it came out really horrible. Which I'm bummed about, because that kid's hoop dancing was spectacular.

Oh! And they had this one room with a huge, bizarre mural on the upper part of the walls. I wanted to get more shots of it, but because of the people, and the layout of the room, it was a little difficult. But this is a small example of what the content of it was like...

Just so weird.

I love it!!

While we were downtown, I told my sisters we have to go to the Phoenix Convention Center and walk around. There are these metal bug sculptures I wanted them to see in the front of the building, plus some more inside the center that I took pictures of when we were there in January for a home show.

I've only seen the metal sculptures out front in passing, never up close, so I was pumped to get there to see them and take pictures. (More excited about that then the Museum, truth be told!)

I knew they were metal bug sculptures, but had no idea they had things like this:

Each sculpture had these little guys and what looks like hockey pucks around and on them. This poor guy got stomped by the scorpion.

The scorpion with the hockey puck guys attacking it. (You really need to click on the picture to view it larger)

 A centipede.

With the little guys cleaning up after it??!! (So weird.)


And a grasshopper....

...with breasts? An udder??  You tell me....

There was so much more going on with these guys, but it was very hot (over 100°) and D had to go pee, so we left the udderly (get it??) strange bugs and hockey puck people to walk around inside the cool Convention Center, get a drink (they have water coolers! Not just nasty ol' drinking fountains!), and take a bathroom break.

I showed my sisters and D the two cool glass totem pole people, but didn't take pictures since I got some last time I was there. I also had to show them the sand sculpture, and I did get a picture of the piglets.

Because they're so cute....

We'll have to go again when it cools off so we can walk around more. I think there are more sculptures and the architecture downtown is really pretty cool.

You can see ALL the pictures of our day out here.