Art, Birds And Automobiles

 Now why would I go all the way into the wilds of South Carolina? Well, for a rather unique experience of course. Way up in northwest South Carolina is a little town of Greer. It just so happens that it is the home to the Spartanburg BMW plant and …..they offer factory tours!!!!  

This place is huge. It employs 11,000 people and the plant itself is an eight million square-foot establishment and they are expanding as we speak. They produce 1500 vehicles a day and these vehicles are shipped worldwide. There were many numbers told to us, of which I remember very little. I do remember though that they had an insanely low employee turnover rate. It sounded like once you became an employee for BMW, you were part of the family and you had a forever job.

We start off with having to present our documents before we get a badge. We can wander around the museum, looking at some of their special models before we are loaded onto a bus. It takes us about ten minutes to get to the part of the plant where we are going to start our tour. On the bus ride, the tour guide tells us that we need to turn off our phones and if we even look like we are going to take a picture, security will swoop down on us and cart us off to who knows where.

I think they said that this plant is about 90% automated. The conveyor belts, the robots swinging their arms around as they bolt, screw and move car bodies around were awe-inspiring and also a little scary. I kept muttering Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics under my breath hoping that the robots will not all of a sudden run amok. 

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Seriously – this was impressive stuff. The people working the lines switched jobs three times during the day which was to make sure that they did not suffer repetitive injuries and this also kept them from zoning out as they did the same thing over and over. Quality control seemed to be fore front here. I cannot tell you how impressed I was with this plant and with BMW.

This was my favorite BMW in the museum

After leaving the wilds of South Carolina, we meandered up to Charlotte, North Carolina, the largest city in North Carolina and home to the North Carolina Raptor center. Besides rehabilitating between 800 – 1000 birds a year, they have a bird trail where you can see the raptors, many of whom can no longer be released back into the wild. Eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures and even ravens and crows were present. There was even an Andean Condor – the largest flying bird in the world.

The Condor with his ermine collar

There was also a little side trip to see Metalmorphosis.

Supposedly each layer would rotate and when everything lined up, water would come out of his mouth.
  I didn't see that happen - it was Sunday - maybe it was his day off.

The Mint Museum is an art museum and has nothing to do with numismatics – the study of currency. They had an exhibit that sounded interesting – Picasso Out Of Bounds. Who knew that Picasso did landscapes? I'm not a super fan of Picasso but I had seen an exhibit a while back of Picasso Tapestries which I liked and I thought this exhibition could be interesting.

It was very crowded.Lots of poeple must like Picasso.

An example of a Picasso landscape.
I rather liked this one.

Also at the Mint:

Fashion Reimagined – fashions from 1760 to 2022 divided into three thematic sections: minimalism, pattern and decoration , and the Body Reimagined.

Minimalism

Pattern and Decoration

Body Reimagined

This was my favorite.
Please disregard the skirt behind -not part of this outfit

The Mint is also known for it's decorative arts exhibits.  There was many items that pleased the eye.

Wood Branches: Diversity N. 17
Nacho Carbonell

Verdant Ceres
Josh Simpson
This artist constructs his 'megaplanets' out of glass.  This piece weighs about 70 pounds. 
Yes, that's right - this is a giant paperweight.  It is beautiful and wonderful to see in person.

Yumi Chair II
Laura Kishimoto

Ring of Iron, Ring of Wood
Kay Sage
  

I really like Yves Tanguy's work.  I saw this  across the gallery, got all excited and headed straight for it thinking it was a Tanguy.  Turns out Kay Sage is Tanguy's wife but more importantly she was an instrumental member of the French Surrealist movement during the twenties and thirties of the last century.