Tag Archives: Kansas

Convergence 2024 in Kansas – Day 5

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I left off with the second post for Day 4. I am so far beyond Convergence now that it’s hard to go back and finish but I like these best if they are in order. One more day and it’s a short one.

A fried asked if I had seen the troll yet. I thought she meant one at the Botanica Wichita but it turns out that there is another in town. You can find out about it in Atlas Obscura, something that I didn’t know about until now. The troll seems hidden but is in plain sight if you know where to look. It also pops up on Google maps when you enlarge that area.

The troll is a 7 foot tall structure chained under a grate of a storm drain. It is easy to miss if you’re just walking over the grate.

I angled my iPhone in a position where I could get a better image.

It is truly grotesque…

…down to the details of the fingers.

Another view of the Exploration Place on the Arkansas River.

I had signed up for two sessions on Sunday.

The first was another by Robin Spady. This is a technique that I have never tried and it intrigues me. She includes a booklet of most of the info she shares in class, and I look forward to finding time to try this technique.

I took a class in the afternoon about designing your own color and weave drafts.

The keynote speech was presented Sunday evening by Nikyle Begay who gave an emotional talk about the Navajo (Diné) experience with sheep from the early days of government intervention to the present.

The view from my room. I flew home early Monday morning.

Besides being greeted by Dan and Ginny and the sheep, look what I found on my one zucchini plant. (See mug for scale.)

Convergence 2024 in Kansas – Day 4 (more)

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The last post left me looking for the entrance to Botanica Wichita.

I found it.

Just inside the entrance I saw Lego images. I may have taken more photos of Lego art than of plants. Lego bricks were (and are?) a big part of a couple of my kids’ lives.

These images were impressive enough, but wait until you see the statues outside.

Each Lego artwork is accompanied by a sign that tells a little about the image from the perspective of an artist and of a scientist. The signs include the number of Lego bricks and the time it took to build the piece. The artist is Sean Kenny from New York who has been creating Lego art for 20 years. To see the incredible array of his work check out his website (but come back here). This Nature POP! show is one of his traveling exhibits.

There were also beautiful flowers at Botanica Wichita!

I don’t know if you can read this sign the way I have it formatted here. It tells that this sculpture uses 73,500 bricks and took 279 hours to build.

There was a collection of rabbits and off to the right out of the photo there was a fox.

One of many begonias. I didn’t just look at Lego art.

I walked through the bee garden and found this enclosure at one end. It was difficult to get a photo of this but you can see some recently emerged butterflies at the bottom and on the right side. These are all chrysalis’ along the rods, many with labels.

I walked through a bird sculpture garden.

This dragonfly is near the exit.

Black-eyed Susan.

This little excursion gave me a 7-mile walk. After I returned to the hotel I spent time in the vendor hall and visiting with friends.

One more day…

Convergence 2024 in Kansas – Day 4

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Look here for Day 3 of Convergence. I had not scheduled anything at Convergence for Saturday and looked forward to a day to choose to do anything or nothing. I decided to go to Botanica Wichita, a collection of botanical gardens on 18 acres, not too far from the hotel.

I started with the same route along the river I’d walked the first three days. I got side-tracked by flags along the way. The Wichita Flag Pavilion starts with a plaque about the first “flag”, probably a staff with eagle feathers carried by the Native Americans as a way for tribe members to follow their leader.

There are plaques for each of these later flags starting with the flag that flew over Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria. There are photos of those plaques at this link.

The Flag Pavilion is at the edge of the Wichita Veterans Memorial Park where there are 21 memorials. I wandered through and found the Vietnam Memorial. I am just young enough that none of my friends were drafted, but I was in high school during the last years of the Vietnam war. I think that the Vietnam era is responsible for the culture in which I grew up. It was notable that the word “war” is not on any of these memorials.

From Britannica.com: “Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States.” Maybe that is why there was such an impact on us. We sent our young men half way across the world to experience atrocities and die for what reason? We were not at risk, and this “conflict” had no bearing on our safety at home…but I digress.

After I left the Veteran’s Memorial Park I continued along the river path following the map in my phone until I saw the marker for the Wichita Gardens,

This marker was deceiving. It is at the edge of the gardens but as I walked along the path that bordered the gardens I found gates closed. The trail looked as though it was going farther away from the garden. I think eventually I would have found a street that brought me to the main entrance, but since I was on foot I wasn’t sure how far afield I should go. I stopped and called the number listed for Botanica. Amazingly, a person answered the phone. She told me I had walked too far, and I went back the way I had come, turning at the Art Museum and worked my way through a neighborhood to get to the main entrance.

To be continued…

Convergence 2024 in Kansas – Day 3

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This is Day 2, when I taught the Clasped Warp class. I signed up for some sessions on Friday and Sunday.

I went out early on Friday morning to walk along the Arkansas River. There are paths on both sides.

This is the Exploration Place. From a quilt on this side to a helicopter inside on the opposite wall it looks as though there is something for everyone here. The bridge that you see is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers at the confluence.

This is another view of the statue you see in the distance in the first photo. It is known as the “Keeper of the Plains” and was donated to Wichita in 1974 by the Kiowa-Comanche artist, Blackbear Bosin.

There is a small pavilion behind the statue and where the rivers meet.There are several displays about Plains Indian culture and beliefs.

Back at the hotel, I took a morning class from Robyn Spady about cool things you can do weaving with four shafts.

In the afternoon I had a short session about ice dyeing with indigo. I did a lot of that last summer but never had all these colors. Since I’ve been home I tried to get purple and failed. I’ll try again.

After this session I wondered through the fiber arts exhibits and the vendor hall. I have a lot of photos but will include only a few here. As usual, I am frustrated that I will never have time to weave all the things I already have in my head and now there are more!

Great boots!

Beautiful wedge weave rug.

The following pieces are just a few that were in the previous day’s fashion show.

The Noh coat. This refers to a style of coat that I remember reading about a few years ago. It would be interesting to weave fabric for this. I’ll add it to my list.

Woven in tencel.

Cotton top with the gradients of color different for warp and weft.

Remaking a jeans jacket.

I spent some time in the vendor hall. Lunatic Fringe took the Kansas location to heart with the yellow brick table drape and the legs hanging from their banner. They also wore witch’s hats the first couple of days.

In the evening I walked with a friend back to the Keeper of the Plains where fire is lit for 15 minutes every evening at sunset.