Christmas Day - 2010

[icvanstra]

My brother and I wanted to get out of the house for a bit, so I took the dogs and the camera along...

[turnnburn52984]

Adorable!

[vneerland]

Wow! How tall is that statue of the dancing couple in the first pic? I first thought that that was an awfully silly tiny tree, to put beside it, but if those are Cino and Abby at the bottom..............

[sgar-LPC]

Great photos! And yes, very interesting statues! They are enormous!!!

[Jan]

Beautiful pictures, thank you for sharing. I was impressed by the size of that statue. And by your two very nice looking dogs of course.

[icvanstra]

The statue is left over from a J. Seward Johnson display of his “trompe l’oeil” exhibit that the City of Auburn, IN, had last summer. After the exhibit was over the artist didn't have anywhere to send this large one, based upon ( if I remember correctly ) a Renoir painting, so he asked the city if they would essentially store it for him.

His artwork has been displayed around Auburn twice now and each time most people you talk to love it....except for the piece in the above photographs. This one, pretty much everyone you talk to does not like. Different reasons - though a lot based upon the location of where it is. Most people think it should have been put in Eckhart Park which vaguely resembles the park like setting of the painting.

...

The Santa's Chalet that's in the background of some of the photo's my father and his fellow Jaycee's had built before I was born. I'm sure it's been rebuilt since then... My father was Santa for many years.

...

The library photo's show the addition put on in 1996 - HUGE controversy of course. The original library was built by a local who thought the Carnegie libraries being built at the time were ugly and had too many restrictions put upon them.

here's a rather old photo of the library. I spent a lot of time growing up in that building and playing in the grounds around it.



Charles Eckhart was a carriage maker at the time and his son's started the Auburn Automobile Company --- Where the phrase "it's a Deusy" comes from.

The fountain was added not long after the library was built (by Eckhart again). You can't see it very well, but at the top are two boys fighting over a goose (or duck).

[icvanstra]

I spent a lot of time growing up in that building

Figuratively and literally (all pun intended)

[Jan]

This is most likely the painting you refer to I think Eric:


http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/s06 ... val_2.html

[icvanstra]

Yes, that's it. There is an information stand next to the statue and in one of the photo's you can see that image on it.

[vneerland]

Very cool to get the history on it, and see the picture that inspired the statue. Lovely library, BTW. It seems to have a bit of a chalet feel about it.

[icvanstra]

The dogs did a good job at staying put ... but I couldn't keep their attention/focus.

My brother went with me and was standing off to my side. He kept talking to the dogs and distracting them.

[Marjolein]

Wow, I also thought it was a tiny little tree, untill I spotted the dogs Nice pics!

[GSDNanny]

Great photos, Eric! They look like Christmas post cards. Thanks for sharing and for informing.