Modern art - Leicestershire style



Ravenstone - A Bird in the Hand

  Saturday August 21st 2010

Up until the age of 11 Mr Shiltonpig loved all things art and then the cruel teacher that he met at senior school smashed all hopes that he had of becoming the next Picasso. It wasn't until several years later when he visited the Uffizi art gallery in Florence that it changed. The tour guide was able to capture art in a way team Shiltonpig had never seen before....and so on this fine August day it was a chance to experience the modern art of the local area. Now many of you doubting Thomas's out there, might be wondering what kind of modern art might actually


Ellistown compass

 be out there in Leicestershire, but as the series of caches I will introduce you to today, shows you that art is alive and well. Sadly I haven't put a photo of the first piece of art we visited on the blog, but this was a time capsule in Ibstock. A time capsule is where you put a few items in a container, fasten it and bury it for a number of years. For some strange reason the local residents of Ibstock decided to bury it for 23 years, which is a bit weird as the world won't have changed that much in that short period of time. But the cache was easily found, but sadly we will have to wait until 2020 before we can

Give the tree a hand!

see the outcome of the time capsule! Next up if the nearby village of Ravenstone, we were early and the local villagers were getting ready for some kind of village fete....there was even a fortune teller. Thankfully we didn't need their help in locating the cache, it was easily found. Next up was the village of Ellistown where we found the compass nearby, whet we liked about this one was all the bricks had input from the local school children, I'm not sure whether you can see it in the photo, but it makes for a very clever little piece of art. The cache was a little nano, but that too was easily found. Off next was to the village of Hugglescote. For a bit more of the artist that made this big old bear click on this linky poo. Now to be fair we didn't see any bears today, but we did see some kind of grizzly...this was more of the traffic warden variety. Typically Mr Shiltonpig had stayed in the car with Josh while Mrs Shiltonpig went to find the cache, he was also parked on double yellow lines, just as the warden approached he decided it was a wise idea to drive around the block until he had

Hugglescote - Traffic Warden

gone! But he just stood there watching....perhaps we should have shown him our geocaching permit badge!!!!Next up was Mr Shiltonpigs favourite modern art cache, the phoenix bridge cache right in the centre of Coalville. Next to the shopping centre of the Co-op and Iceland is the brightest coloured bridge I have ever seen. Granted it isn't up to the standard of this one or even this one, but it felt like a little bit of brightly coloured Mexico right next to Coalville.  Further up the road near the Snibston museum lies another modern art sculpture. At the other end of a huge car park we drove to a secluded part and started the climb up the small hill to the metal deers. It was secluded or

Mexico or Coalville? You decide!

so we thought as no sooner had we got out the car but a whole kind of fitness fanatics came running out the hedge (no really, they did). They were all wearing the same t-shirts and the leader was making the rest of the group run up and down the hill. One of the older men in the group looked as if he was going to collapse, we were tempted to point out there are more fun ways of exercise....(geocaching for example) but thought better of it. We haven't been able to cover all the sculptures but hoepfully we have given you a taste, thankfully for you dear reader we haven't taken up art ourselves, instead we will continue to provide you with the hard hitting serious journalism that is Team Shiltonpigs blog!


Buckin Bronco Shiltonpigs!