DC and the Technicolor Church

At the house on Saturday morning, I guess someone's ears had been burning last week as a couple of hours into the day, the new house owner turned up, armed with a hammer and a big smile. It was great to see her and I know everyone else was pleased too. It was another freezing cold day and we welcomed her support. I didn't take many photos this week, I really didn't want to keep taking my hands out of their gloves. We resumed our electrical task from last week and laid the rest of the cable upstairs.

 Girls with power tools. Yay!

 Robb was a superstar and brought gas heaters for us to eat lunch by and warm our hands at. He even put the front door in which made us laugh and we jokingly reprimanded anyone that came in the house and left it open.

 Trying to stay warm as we ate lunch with Robb in the background doing door duty. We managed to finish laying the cable in the house and spliced all the wires.
 But once that job was finished enthusiasm had waned, thanks to the chill air, and so we wound down about 2pm, promising ourselves steaming bubble baths and frothy hot chocolate once we got home.

 Sunday was another bright and sunny day but this morning I laid in bed and relished the laziness of sleeping in. Kota and Rosie had breakfast and then rejoined me in bed as we sat and watched the sun rise.
Later, I met Emily and Margie in DC as there was a church I'd been trying to see for a while. While Mum was here in October, an artist, Alex Brewer, had been painting an old abandoned church with bright colors and I wanted to see it first hand. He wanted to, "re-purpose it in a positive way." Apparently it took him and his team several weeks to complete the project slapping layers of paint over the building.

I have to admit that I was disappointed after seeing it, an impression shared by Emily and Margie. We walked all around studying it from every angle but I really couldn't see 'the art', and was actually quite amazed that it had taken a team so long. We all agreed that us three could've done the same thing in one day. It just looked like the paint had been slopped over the walls and there were plenty of paint runs streaking downwards from the numerous circles and dots. There has been a mixed reaction from the public, some like the bright colors while others feel that the building has been desecrated. I personally think that if this was to be done, then they should have got a group of local school kids to paint the church rather than a graffiti artist from Atlanta. I really think they would have done a better job. The following quotation from a web site praising his work made me chuckle, "The works take on a life of their own in the process. Remarkably, that often requires re-doing, re-painting, or destroying major portions of the painting during the course of its construction. Often several layers lie underneath each finished product, adding literal and figurative depth to his paintings." Really?
Across the street from the church is an abandoned school and on a wall outside it is a beautiful mural, hand painted and encrusted with broken mirror pieces that glint as you walk past.

This to me was far more artistic and clever. I couldn't decipher a message within the mural, I've never been good at that, but it was something we could stand and enjoy, and I wondered if the things depicted were sources of enjoyment to the artist. They were to us.
The day was getting colder and the wind was picking up so we decided to find a local bar for food and beer to finish off the afternoon. We found an Irish bar and as we walked along the sidewalk this guy strolled past us clutching a huge bunch of silver balloons that the strong breeze was trying to free from him. I would ordinarily have wondered what he was doing with them or where he was going but after the past couple of hours of looking at strange sights, I didn't wonder at all. I just smiled.