Shipbuilding art

Still in the Royal Concert Hall, this is a small part of a massive frieze dedicated to Glasgow’s shipbuilding heritage. I’m sorry I don’t know who the artist is.

Bus Conductor

This figure shows an old-fashioned bus conductor – I loved the detail, like her reading the People’s Friend. If I remember the blurb correctly, there is some speculation that this model is based on the actress and singer Barbara Dickson who played the part in a play or something (I really hope I didn’t just make that up!).

Ongoing apologies for the lack of blog visiting. I have a thesis chapter to be in on Monday and I don’t want to think about how much of it still needs writing. Argh. Thanks for stopping by though, and I’ll return your visit hopefully early next week.

Playing Around

This photo is of a piece of art that was in the Royal Concert Hall (I’m not sure if it’s still there – I took this about a month ago when I was at one of the Celtic Connections concerts). It is by an artist called Jan Miller who is based in Penicuik (south of Edinburgh). The figures are (I think) papier mache, and about 2/3 real life size, and depict real-life musicians (I wish I could remember who!). I really liked them. (I’ll show another one tomorrow).

Model University

This model of the entire University of Glasgow can be found in the Visitors’ Centre at the Hunterian Museum, which is housed in the University’s main building.

Glasgow geology

This was taken whilst standing on the platform at Queen’s Park station – one of Glasgow’s suburban stations (incidentally, I heard the other day that after London Glasgow has the busiest suburban train network in the UK. That surprised me, I expected somewhere like Birmingham to be busier. Certainly New St Station in Birmingham has always felt much bigger and busier whenever I’ve been there than Glasgow’s Central Station. But I digress).

I like to think of this as demonstrating Glasgow’s geology – you can of course clearly see Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous layers here (you can also see some slightly unsuccessful focussing, but we’ll gloss over that. Ahem). Actually, as I understand it the truth is that when the trains were steam trains the wall was much lower, but with the electrification of the railway they had to make the walls higher (on the other side of the wall is a residential street, and the layer of old bricks really isn’t that much higher than the road) so that people were less likely to be electrocuted. To be honest, from the road there’s quite a nasty high drop here down to the railway line itself, so I can’t imagine it was all that safe anyway before the wall was made higher.

I have tons going on this week work-wise (not helped by fighting a losing battle with evil MS Word), so may be a less frequent visitor at your blogs this week. Hopefully though I will meet Friday’s deadline and not overshoot it like I usually do.

Evening lights

I took this picture less than a month ago, at around 5.30 in the evening. Now I’d have to wait quite a while longer for it to be dark enough to look like this – I think spring might be on the way, and about time too! (and this year please can it last longer than 5 minutes? Thanks so much!).

As you all know by now, this is the fabulous ceiling of lights that surrounds 3 sides of the Gallery of Modern Art.

Langside Hall

Last Sunday I showed you Pollokshaws Burgh Hall. This Sunday I’m showing a similar place, this time the other side of Queen’s Park from where I live. Today it seems to be used for similar purposes as Pollokshaws Burgh Hall – wedding receptions, exercise classes, surgeries for local councillors, interest group meetings, that sort of thing. It has quite an interesting history – it was designed around 1847 by John Thomas (no sniggering at the back please) who was also involved in the building of the Houses of Parliament, and was originally the National Bank of Scotland in Queen Street in the city centre. Around 1889 it was removed from Queen Street stone by stone and re-erected in Langside.

Bible tapestry

This is one of my favourite exhibits at the Burrell, a 15th (or was it 16th) century German tapestry of Old Testament stories. Some of them are easier to spot than others – it should be reasonably easy for you to see Jonah and the whale, and Daniel in the Lions’ Den is there too (typical me, I missed most of the well-known stories off the photo). I think there are 34 stories in total.

4 Fish

This is a piece of French pottery (I forgot which century, sorry!), one of the Burrell exhibits which I really liked. Can you see all four fish?

In other news, Jakob from Florida has awarded me a Kreativ Blogger award. I’m not going to pass it on this time due to time constraints and because I visit far more than 7 excellent and deserving photo blogs. But I’m delighted to link to the Florida photo blog, and am thoroughly jealous at the obvious warmth and sun they’re having over there!

Recycling

One of the exhibits I really liked was this one – a set of toys and accessories made from everyday goods: bottletops, telephone wires, etc.