The city of Chelsea added a new feature to its downtown this year: the Sculpture Walk.  It consists of ten installations of art by nine different Michigan artists, and it stretches from the Chelsea Center for the Arts on the southern edge of downtown to the Clocktower complex at the north end of downtown.  I photographed the initial work on one of the sites, but I hadn’t revisited the Walk since its competion; to remedy that oversight, I put together a set of ten photos, each highlighting a detail of a sculpture.

Libby (Louis Marinaro, Ann Arbor)

Sentinel (Ray Katz, Pontiac)

Blue Square Back (Gary Kulak, Birmingham)

Soft Descent (Jack Hillman, Ada)

Sentinel (Brian Ferriby, Farmington Hills)

The Gift (Steve Olszewski, Pinckney)

Spiral the Gate (Ray Katz, Pontiac)

Untitled (Andrew Brewster, Royal Oak)

Folk (Open D) (Michael T. Jones, Gregory)

Nicole’s Garden Spire (Robert Sestok, Detroit)

Chelsea’s Sounds & Sights rolled along yet another week, and the beautiful weather brought out plenty of fun-seekers to browse shops and listen to music.

This group — featuring three dulcimers and a violin, along with musicians to play them — goes by the name of the Jammin’ Grammas.

Draper had the right idea: relax with a cold drink.

The Johnsons came all the way from North Carolina just to experience Sounds & Sights.  And, I suppose, to visit their daughter, too.

Jennifer Jones and Deb Mantel played an evening show in the Chelsea Gallery.  Did you know the gallery has a coffee counter?  It does!  And not only that, but the coffee is good.

It had to be the music making Lilly happy, because kids usually just stare at me.

No, there’s not a very tall man walking out of the side of an empty factory.  There’s a very tall movie — Pink Panther 2 — being shown on a very tall movie screen.

(Full gallery.)

As a part of the weekend full of 175th celebration activities, Saturday night featured Chelsea’s first fireworks show in years.  Thanks to an invitation from one of the organizers, I was able to enjoy the spectacle from the launch site on Pierce Lake Golf Course, and I was able to observe that fireworks are POWERFUL.  From my vantage point not too far from the launch site, I had fireworks exploding almost directly overhead, and I felt every one of the blasts.  It was impressive.

I also learned that people who run these fireworks shows are at least a little bit crazy.  For many modern shows, the fireworks are set off electronically from a relatively safe distance; however, for the Chelsea show, the bulk of the fireworks were set off the old-fashioned way: with the road flares you can see glowing red in this photo.  The fancy-pants electronics were saved for the finale, when there were too many fireworks flying at once to be launched safely by hand.

Later in the afternoon — after the kids all exhausted themselves making bubbles — Chelsea’s 175th festivities continued with a car show at Chelsea Lanes.

(Full gallery.)

This year — which, if you’ve been Rip Van Winkling it, is 2009 — marks the 175th year of Chelsea’s existence.  (Chelsea, of course, was founded back in 1824 by extraordinary visionaries who knew the city one day would be the home of both Jiffy Mixes and a second-round NFL draft pick, and you won’t ever convince me otherwise.)  The first Sounds & Sights of the year launched the weekend of festivities to mark the city’s birthday, and the party continued on Friday with a variety of activities for kids.

Hey, nobody ever said a photojournalist couldn’t photograph his own relatives while he’s working.

(Full gallery.)

Last week, Chelsea kicked off its popular weekly summer feature, Sounds & Sights on Thursday Nights.  The opening night of S&S was threatened briefly by a storm that passed through the area (and knocked out power to some), but much to the relief of the organizers, the storm moved on before the festivities began.

One of the highlights of the evening was a beard contest run by Gary Reed of Reed Barbering.  The contest featured a number of different categories, including best mustache, best goatee, best beard, most Santa Claus-like beard, and whitest beard.  I just sort of happened to compete in the goatee category, and somehow I managed to win the award for best goatee over a man sporting a red goatee very much like mine, except his was a bit shorter and a bit neater.

Sadly, Gary doesn’t dress this way for work every day.

This distinguished gentleman won the award for most Santa Claus-like beard.

Cute children are an important part of a small-town newspaper photographer’s job.

Like I said…