September 9

Flew Changchun, Bejing, Moscow today for the symposium in Penza. The organizers meet me in the morning and since I arrived in Moscow late I just found a good bench to stretch out on and get some sleep. By 6 am I am walking around the airport, Akmed spotted me as a sculptor and by the time we met with Valentina we had a group of about 10 sculptors sitting around sharing stories and coffee. Off the downtown Moscow as the bus to Penza doesn’t go out until about 9 or 10 tonight when all 49 of us are here. The metro (subway) was a real thrill but nothing compared to the architecture and art in the downtown. We did a walking tour of Red Square, the art museum……and had lunch at McDonalds. Ha ha ha, lots of traditional fare to follow I’m sure.

A group of us that went to downtown moscow

September 8

An interesting sculpture at the museum of art in Moscow

work site at a resort outside Penza

This is Muntata from Kenya

September 7

Spent the morning at the conference, with 3 screens behind the stage most presenters had photos to accompany their speeches. Wow, I am blown away! My interpreter, Cherry, meets me every morning in the lobby and keeps track of me until bedtime. Without a baby sitter for each participant I’m sure there would be a lot of lost sculptors to find at the end of everyday, Changchun has a population of 6 million.

September 6

Up early for the conference, met several people I didn’t know during breakfast and made many more new friends throughout the day. The conference hall is set up theatre style with the seating descending to the stage area. Simultaneous interpretation in 3 languages allows almost everyone to hear the speeches as they are made, we all got a book of the speeches so we can go back and reread the ones that were of particular interest or ones that we missed. I met some people that I will see in Penza later this month or who know people that will be there.

September 5

On September 5 I flew out at 6:30am for China, arrived in Bejing and flew on to Changchun. The hotel is beautiful. 129 sculptors, architects and government officials representing 120 countries are attending. In total there are over 500 participants at the conference. Each attendee is assigned an interpreter which is wonderful, allows us to do things at our leisure, well at least some of the things that we would like to. The presentations are informative, inspiring and interesting. 3 delegates from Canada made presentations including my friend Jock Hildebrand.

Blog Update for September

Well, now it is Sept 22 and it is obvious to me that I will not get this blog updated the way I would like to on a daily basis. My internet connection does not work here in Russia, it takes too much of my time trying to keep up and I’m not being successful anyway. The difficulty is photos so I will just do a daily text update and fill in with some pictures when I can get on the net with my own computer, I hope that will be when I get to Viet Nam. I have so many nice pictures I would like to share. Here are some shots of the sculptures completed at Bergen Rocks, commentary re: China, Russia and Viet Nam follows.

Aug 22

Bergen Rocks...Aug 22

Cuong has started to polish "Maintain". This sculpture will be utilitarian, the base will extend about 4 feet out in front of it and viewers will be able to sit on the hand and enjoy a coffee and the other sculptures.

Vahe's shells are really becoming realistic, placed on an oval base this will be a beautiful landscape sculpture.