monday thoughts: mondrian flowers

Piet Mondrian was known for his precision, in his severe, disciplined grid paintings that echoed the New York City street layout. But apparently he also loved to dance (hence this title). And his flower paintings, many of which weren't seen publicly until after his death, are striking for their sketchy delicacy. Their pastels and brights also deviate from his usual primary/black/white palette. 

monday thoughts: holiday cards

We're not so big on the holidays around here. (Hanukah, sure, but it was so early this and we keep it really low-key anyway.) But there is one holiday tradition we observe: I've been sending out holiday cards ever since Charlie was born. I guess it's really just a form of look-how-cute-my-kids-are. But it's also a nice opportunity to touch base with faraway friends. (Yes, I'm on Facebook now, but I'm not *on* Facebook, you know?) I've loved Minted in the past, but this year something about Paper Culture seemed a little more us. It's got a great selection of designs that are fairly minimalist but not blah—and a tree is planted for every order, so you can feel a little less guilty about all the trees that went into your paper.

monday thoughts (on a thursday): homeward bound

I'm reading Homeward Bound by Emily Matchar. It's a study—researched and annotated, but with a conversational, anecdotal tone—of, according to its subtitle, "why women are embracing the new domesticity." Matchar talks about her own ambivalence toward all things homey and retro, and she explores the cultural forces that led so many women to try a different path from our career-minded elders. Matchar knows this shift isn't only for women; men too are making artisanal pickles and tending backyard chicken coops. Progressive, blue-state hipsters and conservative home schoolers alike are part of this movement. And they all seem to read mommy blogs. (She also makes the case that the "new domesticity" isn't necessarily working; artists and craftspeople who truly support themselves with their work are extremely rare. And the blogs can present an unrealistically rosy and unattainable picture of home life. Is "domesticity" just another way for women to feel bad about themselves?)

I've thought about this cultural movement myself, if you'll forgive the term, and I relate to it: I'm a mother who left work to be with her kids, and now I'm an art consultant who embraces the accessibility and affordability of Etsy. I like supporting (and buying directly from) independent, small-scale artists. So the book (and responses to it, on Etsy and Amazon) is definitely making me think: about mass production versus handmade work, and the merits of each; about the overlap between environmentalism and traditionalism; about nothing less than women's life choices, including my own.

monday thoughts: i am worn out

blues fom my Pinterest

Radio silence lately, more or less: The fall has been one thing after another, boom boom boom, school starting, Tessa's birthday, Halloween, various family events and milestones—not to mention various work projects and appointments. I'm so happy to be busy and challenged. But I neglected this space last week. I promise more art inspiration here on a regular basis. And I promise to show up more on Pinterest and Facebook.

monday thoughts: the idea of beauty

I love Fresh Air. Terry Gross interviewed the sublime David Sedaris last week, and their conversation was charming and sweet; they reminisced about a shared meal back when Sedaris was still drinking. (He ordered nothing, preferring to drink on an empty stomach. "You ordered an omelet and a baked potato," he reminded Gross.) One thing really struck me: Gross asked Sedaris what he does with his time, now that he doesn't have a day job, and he said he picks up trash on the road near his house in England. (Apparently the British are big litterers?) He does this, he explained, because the tiny one-lane road to his house is "my idea of beauty." And of course it's ruined by all the litter. So he picks up the trash, sometimes on foot, sometimes on his bike, sometimes with a crew from the local government. He listens to language instruction on an iPad to keep himself from getting annoyed by the whole process.

I absolutely love the image of David Sedaris with his council-issued jumpsuit and grabber, pausing to pick up rubbish on a country lane. And I love that phrase, "my idea of beauty." He used it twice to describe the place, as if he's thought about the words and their importance to him. I think he means to say that it might not be *everyone's* idea of beauty: someone might prefer a tropical beach, or stately skyscrapers, or the wide sky of the American west. But this is his, and he wishes to preserve it.

monday thoughts: pet peeves

Forgive me: I'm veering off course from the general tone of positivity I try to set around here. I'm also veering away from the general subject of art, but that's nothing new. The other day I made a list—I love making lists—of my pet peeves. Most are completely subjective and, I admit, ridiculous; some have to do with inconsideration and arrogance. Some are just my own quirks, like #1 (see, I'm easing you gently into my grouchiness):

1. Not being dressed for weather. Or for the occasion. Boots on a muggy day? Jeans at the gym? Short sleeves when it's suddenly freezing? I'm instantly cranky.
2. Sock feet. Is there anything less sexy? Or am I alone in this one?
3. Ugly art in an otherwise well-decorated house. (Hence this whole Blue Locket endeavor.)
4. People who pretend not to have met you when they have in fact met you several times.
5. Egregious conspicuous consumption. Also: Egregious name dropping. Oh, and its subset, place dropping. My brother used to have a friend who never failed to brag about his latest trip, often pronounced as if he was a native, except he'd mess it up. "Mi-Laaaaan," he'd say, sounding nothing like an Italian.

That's all for today (but I could go on). Any additions? Now that that's done, let's begin a nice happy week. (Coming soon: a fun little collaboration.)




 

monday thoughts: here's to perspective

A friend just gave me a card with a sweet inscription: "We raise our girls to reach for the sky...but sometimes it's still just about the dress." Now, this friend is an incredibly sweet, funny, wise person who gives honest and thoughtful advice about matters both large (family, friendship) and small ("the dress"). And her card, which commemorated no particular occasion, couldn't have come at a better time. I needed someone to think of me unexpectedly; I needed a little reminder, ego boost, virtual hug—whatever you want to call it. I also needed to get over myself and have a little laugh and gain some perspective. Sometimes it's about the dress, indeed. You see, I've been obsessing about an imagined slight from a family member; I've been worrying about my kids' emotions at the beginning of the school year; I've been stressing (months in advance!) about holiday plans. But it all fades, at least momentarily, when I rest my eyes on a lovely print, or yellow mums for the planters on the front steps, or something new and fabulous to wear. In other words, sometimes all you need to feel better is a great dress.

It's been a long month, to tell you the truth; I've been feeling sort of bored and creatively depleted and in need of momentum or surprise or...something. And there it was. Perspective is always a good thing.

monday thoughts: back to work

I spotted this sign in Monteriggioni,
one of the ancient fortress towns near where we stayed in Tuscany.

So I'm actually going to be writing about our summer trip someplace else. I'd sort of resigned myself to not being a "writer" any more, but a writing job pretty much fell into my lap, with a fun family-oriented online magazine—so that'll be happening soon. For now, I'll just say that Italy was amazing and beautiful and worthwhile in all the ways you want a vacation to be. Lots of sun, gorgeous landscapes, great food, relaxation, and time to think and read. (I know I'm way late on that book, but what a good one; better late than never.) And now my children are at school (fifth grade! first grade!) and I have got to get cracking over here. Art to recommend, after all.

monday thoughts: it's been so long

We're back from Italy, and there's (much much) more to come after I finish the laundry and catch up to east coast time: more thoughts on the meaning of vacation, the beauty of stepping outside your life, of seeing a place you've loved through your kids' eyes. For now a few photos: of one of our views, of the pool, of breakfast.

monday thoughts: summer slow-down

It's about to get all sporadic up in here. Tessa is grooving along at her day camp, but Charlie just finished his second adventurous stint of the summer and is about to slow things down with some afternoon-only art camp. So that means it's all me all morning; I see lots of hikes and pool visits—and a lot fewer blog posts—in my future.

monday thoughts: black and white

Robert Motherwell was a major American painter. Huge scale, bold shapes, gutsy movement, provocative titles: his work is stunning, full stop. He was a member of the New York School and is often classified as an abstract expressionist, but he was also his own thing—more than a single label or school, I mean. He studied at to Harvard to please his father, became friends with Jackson Pollock, taught with Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg, and married Helen Frankenthaler. (And he was unusually articulate when talking about his work; his writing is definitely worth a look.) I grew up looking at and admiring one of his Elegy to the Spanish Republic series. The stark but complicated black and white scheme is inspiring me all over the place right now. (My Pinterest boards are full of color, but if I'm being honest my real life is mostly black, navy, and gray.) I would add some self-deprecating line about how silly it is that an icon of modern American art is affecting what shirt I wear. But art is where you find it, and so is inspiration.

Alternative apparel raglan

Emerson Fry top

Seahorse print

Old Boston terrier

Detail from a sketch

Frame with an owl

I hadn't worn these since college.

monday thoughts: rethinking

Christopher Bucklow

Erin of Design for Mankind just wrote a really interesting post about the place of design in a thoughtful life. How, she asks, do we justify our desire for new and cool and beautiful things? Why do we always crave art or clothing or great food or travel or stuff for our houses? How can she reconcile her career as a stylist and successful design blogger—and recommender of expensive items—with her distaste for all the consumerism she participates in?

Ross Bleckner

That was some wordy prose I just threw at you, and I don't have any answers. As much as I crave what's new and pretty, I get grossed out by my own cravings. I get sick of the sameness of all the fashion blogs (especially when I realize I've copied them unconsciously) but I'm compelled to check them anyway. It's really difficult not to get caught up in it. I tell myself that my goal for Blue Locket is making art affordable and attainable, which is admirable and useful. But it's still just stuff.

From this gorgeous book

Then again, I always say that stuff (or money) can't make you happy, but it can help. I really do believe in taking the time to appreciate beauty and to surround yourself with as much of it as possible. And corny as it sounds, that can take many forms—from admiring a flower in your backyard or the way the light slants across a city street at dusk, to a new pair of shoes or a pretty print for your wall. 

monday thoughts: paul klee

Flora on Sand

Paul Klee isn't super trendy these days. You don't see him on Pinterest or on all the blogs about beautiful stuff. But he's always been a favorite artist of mine, and it's ridiculous to talk about artists in terms of trendiness anyway. He worked in a lot of different styles—and mastered them all. Read about the Swiss artist's life here, and rest your eyes on some pieces of his work.

Fish Magic

Hammamet With Its Mosque

Senecio

Fugue in Red

Pastorale

monday thoughts: just a collection

Pink Anemones by Jenny Vorwaller

As you can guess from my absence last week, I've been having a hard time getting inspired over here. But rather than bore you with another post about changing habits and challenging oneself blah blah blah, I'm just going to throw about a bunch of things that *are* fun and/or beautiful, cool, interesting, (dare I say) inspiring. (PS: new Blue Locket quiz tomorrow.)


Some new(ish) songs for some spring dancing.

Now this *is* inspiring.
Idaho artist Jenny Vorwaller has a studio sale of her sweet original watercolors going on right now.

This American Life recently had a great episode about images, their meaning, and their value.

This dress might be too little-girl...but it might not.

monday thoughts: keeping it interesting

Jennifer Ament, Mask (from Serena and Lily)

I was recently talking to a friend from college who has known me well for a really long time. She writes about art for a living—and thinks deeply about art (and many things)—and she's always great to talk to about art, style, family, feminism, and life in general. She lives across the country, but we manage to see each other for big life events (weddings, babies), and we check in on the phone every couple of months. And the other night as we were catching each other up, she said something about her own situation that really struck me. In her words: Life is good. The challenge is to keep it interesting.

Tom Moglu collage

Her life is a little different from mine (she works full time and has one toddler), but she summed up exactly how I feel. Life is good, and the challenge is to keep it interesting. My life is indeed very good; I feel so grateful and lucky that I don't have to worry about all the basic stuff. I should take more time to be grateful, in fact. And as for the keeping-it-interesting part: I don't know what adjective I'm reaching for, but I have a sense of time passing, of needing to remember moments, of "this" being "it." Charlie riding his bike ahead of me down our hill at dusk, past rabbits crouching in the grass and the sweetest honeysuckle bushes all around. Tessa riding a horse on the hottest afternoon of the year so far. My kids joke-fighting in the back seat of the car as we wait out a thunderstorm in the grocery-store parking lot. This lemonade-stand sign, and the sight of my kids pouring from a sticky pitcher and counting quarters:

Just as I don't want to take things for granted, I don't want to let life be boring, either. (The flip side of appreciation is being satisfied with too little.) And I don't want to let myself be nothing more than a mom overly identified with her kids. So the challenge is the balance: gratitude and appreciation, coupled with newness and change and...keeping it interesting.

Serena Mitnik-Miller

What does this mean in concrete terms? Should I reach out to someone from my past? Should I take a class, or a trip alone? I'm always looking for ways to make this blog relevant—to myself and to my readers (few as they may be).

monday thoughts (on a tuesday): art and memory

I was recently asked about art and inspiration by Elyse Harrison of Studio Neptune. For her series, Elyse asks artists and creative businesspeople this question:

Think back to your childhood, somewhere between the ages of 5-10 years old. Is there a memory you would describe as an early creative spark?

Here's my answer:

I was seven years old. My father, an art historian, had taken my second-grade class on a field trip to the Albright-Knox, a small, great Buffalo art museum with an excellent collection of abstract expressionism. We all stood in front of Jackson Pollock's Convergence, and my dad told us a secret: There's a match, an actual matchstick, somewhere in the lower right, half covered in Pollock's drips of paint. I'd been to the Albright-Knox many times before, and I'd looked at that painting before, but on this day I was so proud to be there with my father leading my class; he was in his professor mode, more extroverted than usual, and he seemed fun and cool and a little unfamiliar. I loved his message, or at least what I think his message was: Anything can be art; it's art if you say it is. (That was a big lesson at the Albright-Knox; Warhol's Soup Cans were in the next room.) Also, anyone can make art, or at least be creative, or know about creative things. This was my dad talking, after all; my semi-embarrassing circa-1980 dad, who used a push lawn mower and grilled in the backyard and rode a bike around town. Yet he knew secrets about paintings and could charm the wild second-grade boys.

Most of all, I loved knowing about that tiny hidden matchstick. Did Pollock put it there on purpose? Did he drop it in the throes of an action-painting frenzy? I still look for it every time I go back to visit.

monday thoughts: richard diebenkorn

Saying too much about Richard Diebenkorn would be wrong. His paintings are so peaceful, so cool, so California. They're controlled but emotional. They remind me of a brief time in my life when I lived there. How the air smells. How you always sense the ocean even when it's not nearby. How the neighborhood plants are so different from the east coast. How the sky is bigger. I see it here.

monday thoughts: pretty vintage (on etsy)

Striped bowls

Not my usual top-of-the-week musings, but I couldn't resist. I'm not much of a vintage shopper, so I'm far from an expert—but the pieces from Junk House on Etsy look perfect, so clean and colorful. 

Enamel bowl

Fish figurine

Enamel flower dish