Tag Archives: Art

The Magic of Moon Marble Company

Even though it has been around since 1997, I first heard of Moon Marble Company a few years ago, when the Kansas Sampler Foundation named it one of Kansas’s 8 Wonders of Commerce. After hearing everyone from our 12-year-old nephew to my historical society executive director singing its praises, Jim and I finally made our own trip to the mecca of marble making.

Moon Marble Company: Where the magic happens.

Moon Marble is one of the most whimsically wonderful places we’ve ever visited. The building’s exterior only hints at the happy energy inside. The place is filled with marbles and toys, bright colors and staff that truly love what they’re doing.

As you’d expect, bins and bins and more bins of beautiful marbles line the walls of an entire room.

You’ll find bins and bins and bins of beautiful marbles at Moon Marble Company.

There are also cases of some of the most beautiful art marbles made by true craftspeople. Many of the marbles showcase the work of Moon Marble’s own marble masters, but the company also sells marbles by other glass artists from around the country.

I love this marble SO MUCH. (Artist: Cathy Richardson)

Many of the marbles made in-house are mesmerizing. (I didn’t catch the name of the artist who made this one.)

Three days a week, Moon Marble marble makers offer demonstrations on how marbles are made. You’ll learn the difference between machine-made and handmade marbles and come to appreciate the science and artistic skill that goes into making a truly beautiful and unique marble. The day we were there, artist Ernie Kober made a marble for us, rotating a ball of molten glass over a 2000° flame as we all leaned in toward the safety glass.

Marble-making masters offer free demonstrations three days a week.

Many of these beautiful marbles can fetch a handsome sum (and rightfully so). However, visitors will have an easy time finding marbles they can afford. Jim needed a few hundred marbles for a physics lab he was teaching, and Moon Marble lets you fill a container that holds about a hundred small machine-made marbles for just $8.50.

Now, here’s the part of Moon Marble that was a total surprise to us: room after room of vintage toys. I have no idea where they get them, but if you’re yearning for a plaything from yesteryear, you will probably find it at Moon Marble.

Moon Marble is a mecca for old-timey toys.

We expected to spend a half hour or so at Moon Marble, but our short visit lasted an entire afternoon. It’s a fun place to learn and shop and will appeal to the whole family. If you’re in the KC Metro area (especially during the colder months when you’re looking for fun indoor things to do), Moon Marble is a fun choice.

The Boyer Museum of Animated Carvings in Belleville

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Last month, an old murder case I’m researching took me to Republic County, Kansas, a county in central Kansas that shares the boarder with Nebraska. I’ve never had a chance to explore this area before, so when I wasn’t buried in a back room somewhere researching, Jim and I wandered around, visiting museums and driving the back roads.

For a county with fewer than 5,000 people, Belleville has a lot of neat things to see–enough to merit several blog posts–but today I want to mention the fascinating and quirky Boyer Museum of Animated Carvings.

A lot of people are mechanically inclined, and a lot of people are artistically inclined. Paul Boyer is one of those people who looks at mechanical things and finds artistic ways to repurpose and apply them. He was just a child when he made his first carving, but after an accident left him seriously injured when he was 35, Boyer took refuge in his art. The result is dozens of wonderful animated carvings, whirling gizmos, and spinning things that mesmerize you with their cleverness and charm. Some of his pieces were created over the course of thousands of hours.

This beautiful sculpture, with it’s whirling gears and fans that fold and unfold like peacock feathers, is completely mesmerizing.

Each creation is housed in a case, and museum guests are invited to press the magic buttons that set the animations in motion. Jim and I easily spent two hours playing with these creations and puzzling over how they worked.

The museum is operated by Boyer’s daughters. Candy and Annie are passionate about their dad’s work, and they can often share the back story of how a piece was crafted and the challenges of keeping it running.

But words can’t do these pieces justice, so here is some video of two of my favorite animations.

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The Boyer Museum is definitely worth a visit if you’re anywhere in the area. Because it’s a family-run place, you might want to call ahead to make sure it will be open that day, especially if the weather is looking ominous (Paul Boyer has instilled a healthy fear of tornadoes in his daughters). I will mention that a few of the pieces might be considered risque or culturally insensitive by some visitors, but all are pieces of amazing artistic and technical achievement.

If you’re interested in spending a day in Republic County, a trip to the Boyer Museum is easy to combine with a trip to the Pawnee Indian Museum, which I’ll be blogging about soon.

Cemetery Soldiers

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Happy Veterans Day.

Civil War Memorial, Burlingame Cemetery

Civil War Memorial, Burlingame Cemetery, detail

Grubs Memorial, Maplewood Memorial Lawn Cemetery

Grubs Memorial, Maplewood Memorial Lawn Cemetery, detail

Spanish-American War memorial, front.

Spanish-American War monument, detail.

Sunday Snapshots: Photographs of Kansas in Missouri

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This weekend, Jim and I crossed the state line into Missouri to visit the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which was hosting Heartland: The Photographs of Terry Evans. Evans grew up in Kansas City and studied at the University of Kansas. Her portraits are beautiful, but I was most moved by her amazing photographs of the prairie. It’s very difficult to capture the movement, shape, and texture of grassland, but her photographs are full of depth and energy. Her portraits and landscapes from Matfield Green, Kansas, truly capture the spirit of the Flint Hills.

Heartland The Photographs of Terry Evans at Nelson Atkins

Heartland: The Photographs of Terry Evans is on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art through January 20, 2013.

With an hour to spare after touring the exhibit, we dashed through the halls to see some of our favorite pieces. We were disappointed to discover that our absolute favorite painting, Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness by Caravaggio, is on loan to the Los Angeles County Museum (lucky LA!). But many of my other favorites, ancient pieces that have fascinated me since my middle school class visited the museum to see the ancient Greek sculptures after reading Homer’s Odyssey, were still on display.