Ornamented Dashboard
My friend Tracy loves all things sparkly. Her car's dashboard is a wonder to behold. Saints and hula girls wiggle and wobble amidst a garden of beads, jewels, glittery stickers and teeny tiny "yard art" figurines. Being an artist is a 24-hour thing. The creative drive includes the need to organize and alter one's environment. Most people spend a large part of each day in their cars, a cage of boring black plastic, chrome and vinyl. The impulse to decorate, to ornament, to arrange bits of glass and plastic in colorful patterns makes perfect sense to me. It's the car of an artist and a true Art Car.
Dress Forms With A View
It's time for the annual Quilt Surface Design Symposium. Last year, for the first time, it was held at the Columbus College of Art and Design. This dredged up memories of my own college days. At my university, the Fashion Design department was the stepchild of the arts, relegated to soul-stifling windowless rooms in the engineering building. At CCAD, light pours through tall windows in a beautiful classroom full of sewing machines. Late each afternoon, I would creep down to visit the dress forms standing near the windows. Gathered in threes and fours, the tableau reminded me of some silent, frozen cocktail party, one at which no one could decide what to wear. No heads, no arms, no legs, but I am quite sure they enjoy the view.
Haarlem Scissors
While searching for last week's train station photo, I remembered this. Are those really scissors? Who knows? What they are doing set into the street outside the big church near the Market Square, I haven't a clue. But surely I was not the first fiber artist to be surprised and delighted to come round a corner and discover them. Okay, now wait a minute. If you approach from the opposite direction, the scissors become...what? Two giant wands for waving in the air and making giant bubbles. Why is this here and what is it really supposed to be? It's a happy mystery.
Haarlem Train Station
Sometimes an image rises back up into your mind for no obvious reason. This week, for me, it was the elegant 1908 train station in Haarlem, not far from Amsterdam. Although I often think about the colorful tiles that ornament the station, this daydream found me back on the platform looking out beyond the repeating arches, so lacy and yet so strong. I shot this photo in both color and in black and white. They are very similar, but today, at least, the black and white one more accurately captures my momentary reverie.
Phone Call With Graffiti
You never know what may be around the next corner. Waiting to cross a street, I spied this girl in her big-city-black ensemble, standing in a graffiti-covered doorway. It looked as beautiful as the most carefully planned fashion shoot. I have mixed feelings about graffiti. In the grittier sections of a city, it strikes me as more ornamental than vandalistic, adding color and pattern to a grim, gray world. What can possibly be wrong with that?
Rookwood Tiles, Carew Tower
As a small child, I looked forward to any downtown shopping trip that included a walk through the arcade of the Carew Tower, Cincinnati's Art Deco landmark. It was a chance to gawk at the tall panels of Rookwood tiles that rise up and over each end of the arcade. I knew nothing about design history and had never heard the term Art Deco. But the colorful geometric magnificence of the ceramic flowers and leaves held me in their thrall. Those hexagonal blooms and chevron-sectioned leaves still crop up in my artwork. The seeds of early design influences may be sown long before we are aware of them. If we are lucky, they will continue to inspire us for a lifetime.
Really Bright Tulips
If you take your cues from the shops that sell greeting cards, home decor and craft supplies, spring is a season of pastels. I like yellows mint greens and lavenders as much as the next person, but the truth is that they don't really satisfy my pent-up hunger for color in the garden. That's why this bed of tulips thrills me. The color scheme may seem too shocking for a neighborhood garden, but it is based on sound color theory. It's a split complementary combination. On the color wheel, reddish-orange and magenta lie on either side of red. Red's complement is green, conveniently represented by the spring foliage. Color theory in action. Who says you’ll never use that stuff that you learn in school?
