The ruins and ball court as seen from the short trail from the visitors center.

At long last, this is the final of my Arizona posts.  There was so much to see on our family vacation after teaching there…LOTS of fodder for quilts, quilting designs and color inspiration.  My husband loves to research things on the internet, plan vacations, and do all that sort of thing.  (I’m more the sort that would plan about half of it, get the hotel reservations, then rely on serendipity about where to go and what to do.)  Well, while waiting for Paul and the boys to arrive in Flagstaff, *I* got on the internet to see what was there to see (yes, late in the game I know).  I read about the Wupatki ruins, which are in the middle of a fairly large, empty space northwest of Flagstaff. Fortunately, they were near Sunset Crater which Paul wanted to see, so we were able to add this stop, which ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for me.

The view of the ruins as you walk from the visitors center; to the right are a ball court and another outdoor facility probably for games and rituals.

The National Park Service summarizes it this way:

Less than 800 years ago, Wupatki Pueblo was the largest pueblo around. It flourished for a time as a meeting place of different cultures. Yet this was one of the warmest and driest places on the Colorado Plateau, offering little obvious food, water, or comfort. How and why did people live here? The builders of Wupatki and nearby pueblos have moved on, but their legacy remains.

and:

The people who built Wupatki and other pueblos here were ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, and other puebloan peoples of today. Archeologists recognize different cultural traditions based on differences in pottery styles and architecture. According to these classifications, most of the monument’s sites are called Kayenta Ancestral Puebloan; others are Cohonina, and Sinagua. But these are modern terms.  We don’t know what people called themselves or how different groups related to each other.

The NPS website tells us that there was more water then than today, but it still sounds as though it was a challenging environment.  We were there in late April, and it was already hot and dry:

The landscape as seen from the back side of the ruins: wide open and arid.

It was absolutely fascinating to see there ruins…with only a little bit of modern reconstruction and re-inforcement.  Imagine….these buildings have been there fore EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS!  Europe was in the Dark Ages… Columbus hadn’t “discovered” the North American continent… WOW!

The boys wanted me to take a picture of the lizard:

Then more about the desert creatures:

On the path down there was a petroglyph, a carving of a snake in the red stone.

The buildings fascinated me, along with the shapes and patterns in the stone:

a closer view

Paul & Joshua on the near side...

Look at the quality of the stone cutting, wall construction, shapes... and then think about quilts and design...oooh!

There was even more inspiration in the gardens at the Getty Museum when I visited in spring.  One of the coolest things were the bougainvillea “trees.”   Rebar…the stuff used to reinforce concrete walls, was formed into these tree shapes, then the bougainvillea vine grew up the center and out into this colorful canopy:

Here’s what it looked like underneath:

How utter cool is that?  If we ever have a garden with SUN so I can grow flowers instead of moss, guess what I’m gonna try (albeit on a more modest scale!)?

The flowers were varied and beautiful…couldn’t resist this shot of a rose alongside the path down to the lower part of the lower gardens:

Again, I was lured by the tracery of the branches:

and their shadows; in this next photo, the “braid” pattern in the stonework is repeated in the wood of the bridge over the run-off culvert which was when I was there a very small babbling streamlet:

Here’s a wide-angle view from the gardens looking back up to two of the main exhibit buildings:

At the very bottom there is a maze/knot hedge which “floats” on raised beds inside a circular pond…. spectacular (I bet you’re tired of my gushing about this place, eh?

Even the drain covers had pleasing designs (notice my lovely lime green sneakers, too):

Another of my obsessive “through the trees” shots:

And a final view back up the hill:

Wow…what a place!

The landscaping at the Getty Museum gardens is just as much a work of art as the buildings and their contents.   The picture above is of the run-off culvert and bridges, with Los Angeles city in the distance.  The Getty website page about the landscape says:

Landscaping the Getty Center has been a collaborative effort involving a number of distinguished landscape architects, consultants and craftspeople through the years. Emmet Wemple, landscape architect for the Getty Villa in Malibu, began the project and conceived preliminary designs. Richard Meier conceived the master plan, which called for developing 19 of 24 acres as landscape or gardens. Dennis Hickok of Richard Meier & Partners served as liaison and for design and development of the works for the architects and landscape architects. Laurie Olin and the Olin Partnership, Philadelphia, PA, joined the team in 1992, and have remained through the project’s completion. Fong and Associates of Orange County and Raymond Hansen assisted in plant selection, procurement, and administration. Daniel Urban Kiley consulted on the project beginning in 1990. The landscaping would not have been possible without the work of numerous other consultants, contractors and craftspeople who helped create this impressive environment.

I love the tracery cast by the shadows of tree branches especially in the non-leafy seasons.  Here, Joyce is walking down the stairs and  path in front of me:

And here I am taking a picture of someone taking a picture…ya think this place inspires?

Again, successful use of elements of design:  rhythm, repetition, line, contrast (trees are organic, walls and stones are rectilinear), depth and dimension…..sigh….. I want to make art every time I look at these pictures! The next photo is one I think, with some tweaking in Photoshop, could make be used to make a great screen for printing onto cloth…..

Here is a view of the lower gardens:

On the way, you pass this stunning building-view:

And a cropped version that I may turn into a quilt for a Frayed Edges project:

Hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of my trip to the Getty…clearly way more than a day’s worth of   inspiration in just one visit!  more down the line…

You can tell from the just-leafing-out buds of green that I was at the Getty Museum (Los Angeles)  in Spring.  I love the gnarliness of these trees, and how the bark picks up the white of the buildings and the shadows and darkness in the windows, and how the contorted shapes of the branches contrast with the square blocks of stone, the perfectly smooth straight and curved lines of the architecture.  A perfect lesson in design:  line, contrast, shape, form, repetition…..

Another lesson in design, form and shape is the tables and chairs in the courtyard.  There are (if I remember correctly) five main buildings with galleries at the top of the hill that form a rough circle.  In the center of the circle are the fountains (seen in the photos in my first blogpost) and seating areas, like this one.  The way the buildings cluster mean that you don’t have to walk miles to get from one to another… again, smart planning and design in what might have been a challenging site:  a fairly steep hillside.

Oh how I love those crisp shadows……And the good design extended to inside, even in the cafeteria.  Here, environmentally friendly bamboo was the material for the condiments items… a nice composition even in the the cafeteria!  Remember…there is inspiration EVERYwhere!

The end grain of the wood for the floors made another pattern in squares that echoes the stone squares that clad the walls, inside and out:

And an angled view of the wall, to show the rough surface of the stone facings, what amazing texture and line and movement:

We sat outside under a pergola for lunch, Joyce, Susan and I:

It was while sitting here that I got a call from Paul and learned the very nice size of my Jan-March royalty check and realized my book had sold through the first printing already…whooooohoooo!  Back to the architecture…look at those lines on the exterior stairs!!!!!

And the undulating waves of the buildings and the shadows cast by the slats (I’m guessing they are position to help block the sun from damaging artwork inside but still permit maximum natural light):

Another, cropped, shot of those patio tables and chairs and lines and shadows that I clearly adore:

And one of the vistas around the end of the buildings…wow:

More to come…….

When I told my beloved sister in law, Joyce, that I would be able to come for a long weekend, she asked what I wanted to do!  Well, most of all I wanted to be with Joyce and meet her friends, but I thought…hmmm…How about the Getty?   I’ve been inspired by photos of the Getty on my friend Deborah’s blog (see here for her pics) and some photos of the Getty in Lura Schwarz Smith’s fabulous book, Secrets of Digital Quilting, From Camera to Quilt (click here to go to Lura’s website, the title links to the book on Amazon or buy an autographed copy from Lura here).  Well…get ready folks.   I seriously shortened my list of photos…and I still have over 30 to share!  So I’m going to break this up into several posts….

The photo above is walking up to the top of the hill to the galleries from the main entrance.   To back up a bit, admission is free, but parking isn’t.  You must park at the bottom of this tall hill that looks out to the Pacific Ocean, then take one of the frequent trams up the hillside. The sheltered-from-the-elements space is carefully designed to move MANY people efficiently.  Here, the maze of waiting lines:

I loved this view of the blue skies through the trees…even the leftover bits from the ivy or clinging vine on the wall seems like art…

And on the tram (blurred the faces since I have NO idea who these people are and can’t ask permission to include their faces!)

Then you see this incredible statue of a swimmer by Aristide Maillol (one of my FAVORITE European sculptors…late 19th c.):

Here is Joyce at the start of our time (before we got pooped and sore feet!) on the way to see the Leonardo exhibit:

The buildings themselves, by architect Richard Meier, are a work of art, and the landscape is another work of art (more on that in a future post).  My breath is simply taken away by the stunning lines, curves, shapes, the subtle play of the smooth- and rough-faced stone, the perfect pairing of the color of the stone with the blue of the sky and the green of the trees:

And a better photo (tho gives less of a feel for the grounds):

And more:

Even the white interior balconies, railings and skylights were stunning in their simplicity and line:

And of course the color and contrast in the tables outside–you could buy food there or bring your own and eat in the shade of the umbrellas–love the lines and circles and stripes and shadows and the one blue bottle cap on the chair seat….

WOW!  Wait till you see the next photos….

The Leonardo Exhibit, by the way, was phenomenal.  Because these works were on loan, photography was not allowed, but I saw ACTUAL journal pages, in sepia ink by the master himself and…drumroll..one was of a DRAGON!   He liked dragons, too!!!!!!   To think, those pages are over 500 years old, and the lines made were made by Leonardo himself…. utterly mind-blowing!