Nothing brings out the holiday spirit

like an exploding Christmas tree!

Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang staged one of his "explosion events," to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Sackler Gallery

A live pine tree erupted in fireworks, followed by black ink-like smoke that mimicked traditional Chinese brush drawings. A tree-shaped cloud of smoke was meant to create an image of two trees, one real and one of smoke. It kind of worked until the breezes got hold of it.

Explosion Event by Cai Guo-Qiang

African Cosmos, Stellar Arts

This month's lecture on astronomy covered Africa's role in space. The closer launch sites are to the equator, the more fuel efficient they are. The lecture was a little unfocused - the speaker spent too much time on the earth's formation and not enough on current events - but it was still interesting.

Afterwards, I saw African Cosmos, Stellar Arts at the National Museum of African Arts. Really interesting. Some were artifacts from ancient times and some exhibits were modern art. I saw this and instantly thought of a stargate.



Actually, it's the Yoruban equivalent of Ouroboros, the worm that eats itself. It's made from gasoline cans. To the right is a fabric hanging entitled "Starkid" The print was made using ancient adinka techniques. They also had a couple of short films from South Africa modeled after the ones done by Georges Melies.

http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/cosmos/index.html