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Vulcan watches over Birmingham, AL

Picasso's model for his untitled 1967 sculpture. The model is in the Chicago Institute of Art, the sculpture is in Daley Plaza.

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Another Picasso from the Chicago Art Museum. This is his painting "The Old Guitarist".

This is the bust of the Egyptian/French entertainer Yolanda Gigliotti, otherwise known as 'Dalida'. In her day she was one of France's most popular entertainers and during her career she sold over 140 million albums and singles. Dalida committed suicide in 1987 and is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.

There are no prizes for guessing as to why certain prominent features on this memorial are of a considerably lighter shade than the rest

LOL!

Photo taken in Bodenwerder, Germany, the home of Baron Münchhausen. This half-horse statue represents one of his stories.

It's not pretty when Godzilla encounters garden gnomes...



(Seen at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art)

Here's a metal bird sculpture next to the mighty Mississippi river in Grafton, Il.

Don't know about "Work of art", but someone clearly put a lot of effort into it.

This is a wood carving found at the visitors center of Pere Marquette State Park.

Ruling from the judges on whether stone masonry work and stained glass are considered works of art?

I took this the other day when we had more snow on the ground. This is the Macoupin County courthouse, built at a cost of over a million dollars in the late 1870s. Infamous around here for bribery and corruption charges during construction. You should see the main courtroom where the dome is, ornate plaster molding work all over the place.



By the way this is the courthouse for a county that largest town (more like a village) has a population of only 6000 people. Maybe they did go a little overboard with it.

I would have thought that fancy decoration at the top of the columns, and various other places, would count as art - it's not there to support the roof but only to look good.

Plus it's Christmas.

Well, you're the only judge that counts around here so....

Merry Christmas!

My friend's wife does all these different craft projects. Here's one she made inside of a small lantern. She used pinecones and the flower in front is sumac that someone carved. Don't know where she got the two birds from.

Patch on my shirt.

Recreation of the Nina. One of the ships of Columbus.

This is a recreation of a local Native American legend called the Piasa Bird.



The first accounts of seeing paintings like this along the cliffs of the Mississippi river by Alton, Il were recorded by French explorers in 1673.

More info can be found here on the Encyclopedia Britannica page for it.

It's an interesting read.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Piasa-bird

Tiled bench at the NC Botanical Garden