On my way to art class, the sky along the river was beautiful. I wanted to stop and paint it.

 After class was over and we had all gone out to lunch together, we found that there was some kind of event going on in the pedestrian way in the the middle of Josenji Dori.

 We crossed at the traffic lights and started down the length of the walk. It was line with stalls where people were sell stuff. It is hard to describe what it was. There was lots of art work and jewelry and some cloth items, scarfs and things like that. There were also some things best described as knickknacks.

 This walk was has a stature in every block.

 It is hard to see, but it you look carefully you can see a drawing of a samurai warrior in the sand. The artist was doing live performances, using his hands as brushes.

There were also some groups who appeared to be preparing to perform traditional Japanese dances.

An art show in Sendai

 As I left my apartment, I noticed that they were hard at work on repairing the earthquake damage to the river bank. I will be glad when they finish this because about half of our little park is off-limits because of the construction.

 This was art class day and, after class as we usually do, most of us went out for lunch. It was noon time and the place was crowded so we sat at the counter that is mainly used at night. All around the counter is a continuous grill made from large, thick sheets of metal. At night they do teppanyaki, the food is fried on the grill in front of you. The food here is quite good and very inexpensive so we often eat here.

 After we ate, we went next door to an art exhibit. I did not think most of it was very good, but this was impressive. It is a room-size ikebana.

 Here is another picture from a different angle. It looked very Christmasy - all the red and green.

 

 Outside in the arcade, they were selling some handicrafts. Most of it looked very commercial so I did not stop to browse.

A little further on, there was a new shop. The last time I came by here the place was still under construction and you could not see anything. I think that it sells women's accessories of some kind. Again it did not look like anything I would be interested in, so I did not enter. However, I did stop and enjoy the outside.

Set up the Izumi Art Club Exhibition

 Here we have brought all the pictures in from the cars and are about to start unpacking them. The standing man is Wakamatsu Sensei, our teacher.

 The first step in setting up was to place the pictures around the gallery under the spot where they would eventually be hung. It turned out we had more pictures than space, so we had to make a second row for some people. Professors from the Tohoku Kogyo University, actually an engineering university, are in charge of the gallery and helped us set up. They showed us the 'correct' way to place the pictures. First a string is stretch along the height of the bottom of the pictures. Then a tape measure is used to space the pictures and to place a hanger at the proper height.

 Here one of the professors is hanging  the first of my pictures.

 Now he is testing the height of the last of my pictures.

 My five pictures are in place.

This is the first picture that was hung. It is a pen and ink drawing of a statue from someplace in Europe. The ink was applied in little dots. There are no continuous lines anywhere in the picture.