Artisphere with the New Yorkers

Of course, my sister and Andrejs didn’t fly to Greenville only for the Willie Nelson concert. It just happened to be a certain someone’s 4^th birthday, and although we had celebrated with vecmamma Inga and a group of friends a week earlier, A² being here enabled us to stretch the celebration out for an entire week. We kicked everything off with the concert in Simpsonville, but the next day was spent at the annual Greenville art and culture festival, Artisphere.

We attended with the grandparents last year, but as the artists performing and exhibiting their work change from year to year, we were guaranteed to have a novel experience. We started in the Kidsphere, where I got busy with the boys while the rest of the crew took a short look around. This year’s activities included paper hats, butterflies, puzzles, a building area (utilizing Roylco straws and connectors) and stained glass frames. Lauris enjoyed the stained glass, but the hit was the building area. I had not seen these straws before, but now we have a big box at home (thanks ZAIG!) and they are genius! There are variations as well, for example a different brand has dozens of different connector styles that aren’t limited to 6 connections, but the boys will play with them for a good hour. That day at Artisphere was no exception, we had to pull them away.

The original plan had entailed making a beeline for Spill the Beans and then slowly working our way back up Main Street, but as they say about the best laid plans… Half the crew enjoyed a demonstration in the plaza while I waited in the super-long line for ice cream and the rest of the group checked out the scene, but no sooner had the boys finished their ice cream than we got caught in a deluge. We took shelter under the Tate Plaza canopy along with everyone else who was in the immediate vicinity (including the aerial artists that had been up on their rigging when the downpour started), and waited out the rain. Luckily it didn’t last too long, and once it was down to a drizzle we dashed across the street and made our way down to Papi’s Tacos on the Reedy River.

Stomachs fortified and rainstorm outlasted, we climbed back up to Main Street. There we found that some of the live demonstrations on “Artist Demo Row” that we had put off in our hurry to get ice cream had been deferred due to the rain, but luckily the glass blowing was still in action, and the boys (and their mom) watched entranced as the molten glass was formed into a big bubble vase.

After one more go in the Kidsphere’s straws and connectors area (and wow! Andrej, your ability to build on demand is certainly a talent!) and a few more treats sampled from Culinary Arts Café (the food section that featured numerous local restaurants) it was time to head home and eat cake, per jubilārs vēlās tradition. Luckily we still had that evening and the following morning to spend with our guests before they had to head back to NYC.