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March 2013
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May 2013

Tours Trips and Staying Home

 

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Spring is the time for wandering. For some, too, the time to stay home and dig out from the accumulated detritus of winter:

  • That's where that magazine went!
  • When did I order all these spring sandals??
  • Why do we have so many winter coats and boots?
  • Could we have more unread newspapers in this house?
  • Stop shedding right now! Woof!
  • There isn't as much dirt in the world as there as on the screen porch.
  • Why can't I zipper any of these capris?
  • Why did I ever think I could wear capris?
  • My favorite: The realization that you have used the last PG Tips Decaf and you don't need to re-order until the first brisk winds of autumn.

 

 

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The Pomegranates have been whipping to and fro on the weekends. First, to the cottage to try to line up some people to do work on various things like the tree that came down in the last nor'easter,  a fence for the dogs so we can bring them up there without walking them seventy million times a day, and the possiblity of turning the garage into a family room/art studio. Many, many people have come over with clipboards in hand. Many, many plans discussed. Excitement! Enthusiasm! And then....nothing. Either they never send an estimate, never return a call, or just disappear into the ether. I suppose they are all watching the herrings run. And who can blame them?

 

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Last weekend it was time to visit Micalangela and in the true spirit of her parents, she knew where to get the bet seafood at the cutest seaside town. We toured the military academy at Annapolis and read the names of all the Captains lettered on the front steps of the officers' housing. We swooned over the Chesapeak at the foot of Main Street, the Victorian B &B's, and, of course, those sailors in their dress uniforms. Nothing beats a broad-shouldered man in a double-breasted military jacket with one of those flat white hats a la Top Gun. 

 

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Just to put the icing on the cake, all my love of the South came flooding back when we hiked up the hill to see the Maryland State House, which was the capital of the United States for two years in the late 1700's. Cobblestoned streets, ancient trees, cottagey houses next to pillared mansions, and tiny shops filled with old chairs, chinoiserie, and pink and green  dear bibelots.  I fear I would abandon the Cape if I could inherit the AMAZING little bookstore we stumbled into in the historic part of Annapolis.

 

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But home is where the heart is. There's plenty to see around these parts. Had a wonderful trip into Manhattan a few weeks ago with the Traveling Painter Sisters. It was a cold, rainy gloomy morning and then this:

 

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The Sisters of the Traveling Paint Caravan (we change the name with each writing), took off for Soho for the opening of a new store that the fearless and chic Betti Zucker knew all about: Gudrun Sjödén Concept Store, 50 Greene Street.

Never has there been a store as bright, fresh, creative, and whimsical and it was just the antidote for the long, lingering late winter miasma.

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Here is the beautiful Gudrun hereself, posing with our own colorful, chic character, BZ, who is wearing one of the beautiful outfits created by Gudrun.  Doesn't Gudrun just emanate joy and peace? 

 

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Get our your watercolors, pastels, and colored pencils and dream up some of your own textile designs. We can all be Swedish for the day!

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If you are not one to wear hand-printed textiles and layers of color, there are gorgeous home furnishings to brighten your life. 

 

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Look at the darling entertainment! I am so sorry that I did not get the name of this duo, but I am sure they will be at Terminal 5 in a few years. Can you imagine walking into a store of shoppers on a busy afternoon and just....singing? They were wonderful and wanted to take them home.

 

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We left loaded down with goodies in the fabulous cloth shopping bags that are a feature of the store. Gudrun believes in making all her products as green as possible. Her lovely bags make perfect journal bags, beach bags, or even with a quick seam, a beautiful pillow case. 

A photographer was employed to take photos of the customers as we left the store. Some of us had to be dragged in front of the lens. Others? Well, let's just say  that "presence" is their middle name.

Great fun!


Reveal

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My emotions in the past year have tilted as wildly as a thirteen year-old getting her period for the first time. I have slid from extreme happiness to the depths of grief and rollercoasted up and down this trail enough times to qualify for the black diamond ski runs.  When I look in the mirror, I fully expect to see a face full of pimples, so much do I feel like a teen ager thrust into a grown up world.

A very, very old teen ager.

It is a little late for me to have middle aged crisis. Perhaps a late-middled aged crisis?

I've been cleaning out my old art room, which had turned into the box room, filled with all the odds and ends of my house and my mother's. I couldn't face unpacking her effects, so I had allowed it to pile up until the room resembled an episode of "Hoarders".

Hand put to the fire this week due to the moving of her furniture to our various houses, I began sorting through the muddle. As difficult as it was to unpack her personal belongings, I had the pleasure of rediscovering some artwork I had long forgotten about. Stored behind an armoire was a large carboard portfiolio that contained many pieces I had made for Cloth, Paper, Scissors. The one that caught my attention the most was this oversized mixed media self portrait published in Mixed Media Self Portraits.

 

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I struggled with this submission. My level of skill is never commensurate with my vision. More critically, the vision of my "self" was extremely difficult to render. Before I could even put pencil to sketch pad, I had to winnow down all the mirror views of self, crack the nutshell, and retrieve the nugget of "me" that was my essential, sacred core.

 

 

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I don't really work from a finished project backwards, though. My creative process is never a straight line from here to there. I accumulate, ponder, take a nip and a stitch, glue a few things, staple another, fold, pleat, paint, and add and subtract to a stable (hopefully) substrate.

 

 

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I cannot think of a time when I sat down with idea in mind and rendered it in one fell swoop into a finished piece.  Sketchbook open, I will fill pages with words, doodles, quotes, cites, tear outs, postcards, color samples, and any fodder that sparks the imagination.

 

 

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Gradually, quietly, loudly, with much fits and starts and ripping out and painting over, "I" began to appear. My young self, a grammar school portrait of that girl who suddenly discovered that reading could save her  life. A tiara made of pages from Little Women topped my head, my homage to a book that gave me the first glimpse of who I could be.

 

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A paper apron fashioned from a yellow, lined legal pad that bears the names of the most important books in my life is tied around my mid section, protecting and nurturing the womb that will nurture my most sacred creations, my children.

 

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Behind me flows a lace mantilla, a Communion veil, a filmy, floating rendition of my faith, and on my hands, the  white gloves a connection to ritual, ceremony, and family, a recognition of my conservative, Italian American, traditional family solid substrate.

 

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The portrait is modeled after the classic First Communion pose, inspired by the many black and white and grainy color family photographs capturing  five daughters stiffly standing  in their communion finery   in front of the azaleas and squinting into the sun. However, I hold neither a Missal nor a rosary but the book that became my bible as I weathered the 25 years of life,  The Golden Notebook. The novel quieted the confusion I carried through the first quarter century by validating that I can contain all my different "selves" by merging them  through writing and art:  the good Italian daughter; the hippie writer; the conservative law student; the intellectual; the crafter; the wanderer; the bride. 

 

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Here I am now, a few years later than when I made  this portrait, but I feel no need to redo my image. instead, I look at what I have painted to remind myself of what I chose to represent myself.  In times of great stress and emotion, I remind myself to return to the core values that define my life:  I love to read; I love to write; I love to paint. I love  my husband and I love being married; I love my children and love being "in family" with all of us together; I love my sisters and I love living near them; I love my friends and love the treat of spending time with them. I have a job that allows me to do all these things.

And I need now to find add to the self that will grace this last chunk of life. Whatever years lay ahead, I need, now, right now, to carve out one more journal that holds the  self that will gird me to weather this aging, this time of loss and grief, this time of family growth and excitement, this time of digging deeper into the roots of marriage and redefining being a couple beyond child-rearing. This is the most important journal, the one that is left, the one that will map out of me the ability to finally, finally, finally to accomplish  those things that I have carried in my heart all my life, or continue to battle depression and anxiety at every turn.

 

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I am very protective of my little girl. I can't hang her up. She damages a large room, a vista from which to take her in. I am too protective of her to allow her to be judged by detached eyes. Perhaps that is the next step in my portraiture, not a revision, but a reveal.


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Coming home from work yesterday, I saw one, lone, brave, proud crocus in the middle of my lawn. I don't know where his friends are and I'm pretty sure his sudden appearance in the middle of the grass is the result of a forgetful squirrel that hid him last fall. I am happy that he has survived the hungry ravages of  that  huge black squirrel that has adopted our yard. He is quit fat and brzen. His coat is silky shiny what with all the bulbs he has filched from the neighborhood. He likes to sit on the gate to the back yard by the kitchen window. He drives the dogs nuts and I have to put the kitchen garbage can right under the window to prevent the dogs from hurtling head first through the window when we are not home. I suppose I could consider him a dog exerciser as I suspect they spend a great deal of time barking at it. Thankfully, no one lives near us on that side of the house!
I'm coming home and painting spring into my journal. Each day the outside world is starting to catch up with my journal imaginings, but I am impatient at this slow turning towards the sun. I painted the  outrageously buxom and fragrant hyacinths that I plopped into a favorite jardiniere a week ago. Their hollow stems are no match for their heavy heads and I've tied them together with some kitchen string after finding them prostrate on the coffee table. My sister Maria had the brilliant idea to cut her's and put them in a narrow vase. They last as long as they do in the soil.
Do whatever you have to do to get through your own day. Enjoy the Easter week and Passover week. It is my favorite holiday time of year!