The allure of the telegram

I was wandering around an antique shop housed in a former granary in Northwestern Michigan earlier this week and spotted these three unused holiday telegrams from 1950. They were 50 cents each, so I had to have them. They are such a vestige of the world BI (before internet).

I received just one telegram in my life but never forgot it. I was in 3rd grade and my beloved teacher, Mrs. Suplee, had been hospitalized most of the school year. I was beside myself with concern. So, I saved allowance money for months - as well as other money I earned - in order to send flowers to her hospital room.

Her response came via Western Union. First, there was a phone call; that was followed by the delivery of the paper telegram. It was exciting beyond words! To me, telegrams were the stuff of presidents, movie stars and other VIPs. Next time I am home, I am going to see if my dad still has that telegram stashed some place. I am betting he does.

Comfort food

I've been jumping back and forth on pieces for various exhibits, and finally returned to the food memory series. Not sure yet when the show will happen but I'm so deep into it that I figured I might was well continue the series. This piece evolved from the comfort found in coming home every night and knowing that dinner will be on the table. The scalloped red edges are from a cooking feature in a 1939 issue of McCall's magazine. The woman was snipped from the cover of a Christmas issue of Ladies Home Journal. She was making cookie press cookies with her daughter in the original illustration. I'm still working on toning down the background layer of dinner menus and on perfecting the steam coming from the enormous pot pie - an illustration from a 1930s children's book.

Nesting

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Eugenie's Friends Felt It Was Time for An Intervention, my first 3D/box collage. It's one of two pieces I've been working on for Encore, a one-night only exhibition Oct. 13 at Memorial Hall that's part of the first Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts. The exhibit riffs on that evening's concert - "Classic Gems and Contemporary Miniatures" - by featuring miniature works of art.

Beyond the requirement that each work be no larger than 6" there was another one: each work also had to be displayed on a pedestal. The latter made me think twice about participating. A collage in a frame or on a stand seemed boring. Then, I hit on the idea of box collages, which would be more, well, sculptural. By the time I finished Eugenie, which is butterfly themed, I knew that the second box would be about birds.

It's a work in progress, but I'm sharing it, because I'm beside myself with excitement about a great find on a walk last week: a perfect, little bird's nest made of a fascinating array of materials from plastic to human hair to twigs. I cradled in my palms for 2.5 miles until the end of the walk, then, dashed to the studio with it. Voila. The nest fit into the box as if it were made for it. I allowed it to air dry for a few days, sprayed it with acrylic sealer, let that dry, then, painted on acrylic varnish to preserve it. That's it drying in the background. We'll see where the piece goes from here ...

Cincinnati Dreams Italy

The Grand Tour 13: "The Group Halted In Germany
But Emily's Heart  Leapt Ahead to Venice."©
 Mixed-media collage on antique book cover. 

As mentioned in a post a few days ago, you can see how area artists view Italy next month in "Cincinnati Dreams Italy," a special exhibition downtown. It's the brainchild of Kathy Holwadel. She was asked by the Taft to plan a series of Italian-themed events to complement "George Inness In Italy," the museum's big fall exhibition.

Well, to say she got carried away is an understatement. The expansive local artists' exhibit - up to three dozen artists and counting - is spread out in four historic buildings near the Taft and is just one part of the line-up. There also are tastings, a bocce tournament and a communal dinner. The Taft has posted this page on its website with some of the details and there are even more on the School Amici website (that's the local Italian language school owned by Kathy's husband, Michele) and regular updates on the school's Facebook page.

I'll be showing in Park Place at Lytle at 400 Pike St. - right next door to the Taft - along with Kay Hurley, Oliver Debikey, Michael Wilson, Karen Heyl, Mark Patsfall, the Thunder-Sky group and Kevin Muente. As at each site, it's a great mix of mediums from painting and sculpture to glass and photography. Dates are Oct. 8-9, 15-16, 22-23. Admission is free and 30% of the proceeds from art sales will go to the Taft.

The Grand Tour 18: Mama Encouraged the Girls toContinue Sightseeing While She Put Up Her Feet

It's probably no surprise that since I collect all kinds of paper, some of it is from my travels. We've made a number of trips to Italy and while I find it hard to depart with my own mementoes, I did end up using a few in this piece: the lira coin, the ticket from the naval museum in Venice (I still have another one) and the oversized postcards of Rome that I found in a shop (they came from a marvelous book of sepia-toned postcards that unfolds to be about 5 feet long).  7.5" x 9.5" on archival mat board