Happy daylight savings time! It was a magnificent spring like day in Brooklyn. I spent a lot of it taking last minute photos for tonight’s sale. I’m featuring mostly textiles this weekend ( next weekend is paper) and here are a couple more previews of what will be available at the surplus sale tonight at 9PM (EST).
week 10 in my “this is where i am from” year long project:
I’m working on the depression era dump painting, it took some frustration and some hours for me to figure out I was going to have to take my time with this. The place is such a rich and vivid memory for me I want to express it as fully as I’m able. It’s slow work that I’m very happy doing.
I indulged in my favorite paints – lascaux – and a cradled gessoed board. I haven’t invested in good painting supplies in a long time and it’s such a pleasure – I love the texture and flatness of the lascaux.
I’ll share this little detail with you today – the leafy forest floor and some lovely old junk poking through – and I’ll probably post a little bit of progress on instagram later this week.
I’m spending a little bit of each day photographing things for my surplus shop sale and a little bit of each night editing and writing descriptions. I plan to have weekly updates (until I run out of stuff) beginning this Sunday ( 3/10) evening – it’s my favorite day of the year- the beginning of daylight savings time, sunset at 6:45 PM ! I don’t even mind losing the hour of sleep.
All the photos above are of tattered antique dress parts – you can see all the preview photos I’ve taken so far here. This afternoon I’m going to sort through this box of bits and pieces – vintage millinery mostly.
I’ve been photographing more things for the upcoming studio sale – a virtual stoop sale of some of my treasures, experiments and supplies. After considiering lots of options I’ve decided to host this sale on etsy. I’ll give you more info as I figure things out but I’ll begin listing things for sale at the end of next week and will be posting more previews here this week and next. As always you can join my mailing list updates.
I’m beginning with textiles – lace and gowns mostly. It hurts to let them go but I’ve used what I can use. They are undone, tattered beauties- sometimes in pieces.
I’m also sorting through tangles of lace and dress parts and creating little collections – there’s some interesting stuff.
week 9 in my “this is where i am from” year long project:
I’m working on a painting of the little depression era dump next to Ginger’s barn. The sketch below is of one of the treasures you might find in that spot – an accidental terrarium – a jar or bottle or even just a piece of glass that has become a mini greenhouse – a winter home to growing things – foggy and misty and otherworldly inside.
It is a magical thing to come upon on a cold brown winter forest floor. You can see some examples of accidental terrariums here , here and here and if you have found one I’d love to see. I’ve almost finished the charcoal sketch on the board I’m going to paint on. Besides the little terrariums there is lots of marvelous old timey junk, the stone wall that went impossibly on and on and the dancing sumac trees with their strange velvety red bobs, leaves gone for winter.
A rat! In silver and grey Fortuny fabric, with a little antique lace ascot and a condescending manner.
he considers you briefly, offers a perfunctory farewell
And is off to his castle
I’m working on a new shape, a new creature. For me this is all about persistence: lots of drafts, prototypes , experiments, failures and adjustments. So many failures and adjustments – these are just some:
Over the weekend I felt close enough to the shape I was looking for to cleanup the pattern and try one in good fabric. After a few more pattern refinements and adjustments I finished a little fellow made from beautiful silvery grey Fortuny fabric tonight and I’m going to photograph him in the morning – here’s a little shadow preview of him on an evening stroll through the toadstools.
This is the beginning of a map of the territory of my childhood. I’ve begun pretty much in the middle – our little red house with the barns behind, The house across the street and the house next door. The hill behind the house across the street was a forest of huge red pines. The dried amber pine needles carpeted the west facing slope and it glowed in the afternoon. The house next door had a grove of sumac trees behind ( upper right of this map) and past those trees, next to Ginger’s barn, was a depression era dump – a little one. Bottles and jugs, buckets, upholstery springs, ancient roller-skates, piggybanks and broken china – everyday things from a long time ago all rusty and ruined, waiting to be excavated by curious children. It was my childhood deadhorse bay and one of my favorite places – I’m going to zoom in on that spot for next week.
I’m working on 3 little owls made from antique swim bloomers. The label from the Myer’s Manufacturing Company (Los Angeles) is sewn into one owl’s posterior.
I started this little group last September and then abandoned them – I think they’ll finally be finished tomorrow.
This week I’m sharing a couple pages from my sketch book for this project – backyard flowers:
This silver grey Fortuny owl and some other creatures found their way into the beautiful new window display outside the showroom in the D and D building here in New York. There are some great photos of the window on the Fortuny blog.
he storms off
new winter jacket – watercolor and colored pencil
A lot of my memories are in square format and slightly overexposed. My mother took pictures with a Yashica – A manual camera. There was a shoe box full of photos I loved looking through over and over. I loved seeing my world rendered (instagram style apparently!) and I loved seeing the world that preceded me. I’m intentionally not working directly from photos but I have vivid memories of some of them. She had a particular spot she liked to plant us in for pictures so I see myself and my siblings there- in Halloween costumes and new winter coats and white first communion dresses. There is one I remember particularly well – in a brand new winter jacket, fresh snow on the ground and the paths to the little barns and clothesline neatly cleared. I must have been 10 or 11 – approaching the height of my geekdom.
