Blogject #7

The one painting I found at the DIA was called Indian Summer, and it was painted by Jasper Francis Cropsey in 1866.  Cropsey used oil based paint on canvas and many different colors.  It is a painting of a fall landscape overlooking a valley with a river flowing through it. The beautiful fall colors are clearly evident in this picture.  They are truly the main part of this painting and give this piece meaning.  The use of colors in this painting captures the beauty of this piece and grabs the viewer’s attention.  This painting shows the true beauty United States.  Cropsey is showing the viewer how beautiful parts of the country are.  Cropsey is trying to show Americans the beauty of the frontier.  He shows how the Indians live in such a beautiful part of the country and is trying to keep people from cutting down so many trees and ruining the landscape.  He paints a few cut down trees to show how some of the beauty in this country is starting to become ruined due to greed and cutting down trees.  Cropsey is trying to show fellow Americans the true beauty of this country and warn them that it could all disappear quickly.

It reminded me a lot of when my dad and I went on a camping trip in cub scouts.  That trip was loads of fun. We shot BB guns, arrows, and went on lots of hiking trips.  Those hiking trips were the best part.  You were able to relax and just observe the beautiful nature.  Another one of the things that I remember well is the skit that we had to do in front of the whole camp.  We found these good campfire songs online before we went that would be funny, just in case a situation like this arose. One of the songs happened to be “God Bless My Underwear,” and the guy in charge of the camp had these famous fortune cookie boxers.  The guy in charge, Moody, was not a small man by any means, so these boxers were not small either and they made a great flag.  So our group leader snuck into Moody’s room and “borrowed” the boxers.  So our group stood up in front on the whole camp, put these boxers on a really tall stick and held it high in the air and started singing the song.  That skit was talked about at that camp many years later and is an experience that I will never forget.