Posts Tagged ‘arts and crafts’
Cindy on January 28th, 2010
Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table.” — Jane Hirshfield, “The Poet”
The place in which we work — an art studio, a home office, a spare bedroom, or the corner booth at the local diner — is essential to our creative lives.
I often hear would-be writers and artists complain that they can’t practice their craft because they don’t have a studio or a home office. But if we really want to write or paint, sculpt or sew, we’ll find a way to make a space for it. My friend Debbie, for instance, makes no apologies for keeping her sewing machine set up in the living room while she’s working on her projects. And nobody thinks she’s messing up the place. Her visitors are inspired by the cool things she’s creating.
An evocative portrait of an unknown poet’s writing room, this sweet poem, below, always tugs at my heart. It’s a universal image — the writing desk with a single lamp — but Jane Hirshfield makes it intensely personal. She also reminds us that the support of family and loved ones is just as essential as having a room of one’s own. -- CL
The Poet
By Jane Hirshfield
She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb’s
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not, she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair –
Let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.
—Reprinted from The Lives of the Heart, by Jane Hirshfield; HarperPerennial; 1997
This post is part of a new weekly series of poetry appreciation. To read more, please click on “Poems to inspire” in the CATEGORIES column at right. As always, I welcome your recommendations, too.
–Top photo “My Desk Chair” (copyrighted) by Cindy La Ferle–
Cindy on October 21st, 2009
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.”
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Like the perfect pumpkin waiting for a master carver, Halloween never fails to stir the imagination. Not surprisingly, it’s a favorite holiday among the creative souls in my family. Early in October, Doug and I start raiding attics and local thrift shops for the most outlandish outfits we can jumble together. And every year in September, we start work on a project or two to enter in the Anton Art Center‘s annual Halloween art exhibition.
Running now through November 7, this year’s juried group exhibition is aptly titled MASKED. Both of us have two pieces in this show. Mine play on the theme of Victorian autumn carnivals — a theme that has haunted me ever since I first read Ray Bradbury’s atmospheric novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Since I’ve worked as a writer for more than 25 years, it’s probably no surprise that books and writing-related themes have a hand in my artwork. Here’s a preview of my pieces in MASKED:
“Damn everything but the circus!” was inspired by an e.e. cummings poem of the same title. I’ve always loved the circus — yet find it a little scary, too. This altered children’s board book is embellished with antique circus ephemera, vintage costume jewelry, carnival tickets, stars, scraps, and feathers. While working on this piece, I recalled the time I interviewed a lion tamer from a traveling circus act — one of my first and favorite stories for a local newspaper.
“Victoria Fortune’s Magic Box” (top photo) is a mixed media assemblage crafted entirely of found objects, starting with a large jewelry box from a local thrift shop. I painted the box and trimmed it with old lace and notions, then added the vintage souvenirs I’d been collecting for several months. The idea for this project was sparked by an old (non-copyrighted) photo of a sinister-looking group of Victorian sisters. I was intrigued by the mysterious ambiance of the photo, and imagined that the women were part of an autumn carnival act called “The Sisters of Fortune.” I created a story — and the box — around them. The woman wearing the black leather gloves in the center, Victoria Fortune, was a medium with a gift for prophesy. Her box contains items used for her magic acts and tarot readings at the carnival.
For a look at some of my other art pieces, you can link to my Facebook gallery: Altered Art: Found Objects and Curious Things. – CL
Cindy on May 4th, 2009
“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” — Henry Ward Beecher
With Mother’s Day approaching, I’ve been thinking about how my mother shaped my views on career, homemaking, and motherhood.
Like most children in the 1950s and ’60s, I took for granted that Mom would be waiting at home each afternoon when I returned from school. In those days, day-care providers were called baby-sitters, and their employment was limited to occasional Saturday evenings. The “average housewife” role, now a remnant of that mythical past, was as indigenous to middle-class suburbia as The Donna Reed Show.
Combining what she often dubbed âthe best of both worlds,â my mother earned a respectable paycheck while working at home. She didn’t realize it at the time, but she paved the way for the free-lance writing career I would begin years later after my son was born.
Trained as a commercial artist, Mom applied transparent oil tints to photographic portraits of brides and high school graduates. (This was long before portraiture was changed by the introduction of direct-color film and, ultimately, digital photography.) I remember coming home from school to find Mom working in her portable “studio,” which was a table pulled next to a window overlooking our backyard. Perched next to her in a small chair, I watched as she squeezed oil paints onto a glass palette and applied delicate washes of color to each sepia-toned portrait.
I chattered while she painted, occasionally cleaning her brushes in spirits of turpentine. With an ear tilted toward our conversation, Mom would follow my rambling grade-school chitchat — a daily litany of kids who had misbehaved on the playground, or the impossible words I’d misspelled on a test. During these intimate girl talks, problems were solved, opinions formed, hurts consoled.
I was always proud of her — proud to say, “My mom is an artist.” But until I started my own family, I never fully realized how hard she worked, or how much sleep she lost in order to meet her deadlines while keeping a home. Around the clock she painted her portraits and delivered them in bright yellow Kodak boxes to local photography studios, made meals for my father and me, decorated our home, volunteered at my school, and even found time to help lead a Girl Scout troop.
Somehow — from my childish perspective — she created the illusion that her time stretched infinitely and that she was always accessible. Like a good portrait, my relationship with her was never rushed, but rendered lovingly over time, layer upon layer.
Watching my mother today, I’ve learned that the art of living well has a lot to do with improvisation. You must continually find new ways to use the materials and circumstances at hand — and the process is rarely simple.
Shortly after my father’s sudden death 17 years ago, Mom had to sell our family home and move to a smaller place. Adjusting to her new identity as a widow was difficult, and I know she missed the home she and my dad had built together. Everyone we knew grieved the changes in our small family.
But surprisingly, even to me, Mom began transforming the new, blank walls of her condominium into a welcoming place of warmth and beauty. Once again, I saw the artist filling her rooms with silk flowers, family antiques, and photographs of favorite people. Working alone, she reinvented “home” for herself. Art critic John Ruskin once wrote, “When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.” Reading this maxim, I always think of my mother. — Cindy La Ferle
– A slightly different version of this piece originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor; it is reprinted in my essay collection, Writing Home. Both paintings are by Mary Cassatt –
Writing Home is currently featured in Urbane Life’s “10 Last-minute Gifts for Mother’s Day.” Click here to read the full review and article on Urbane Life.
Cindy on April 1st, 2009
“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.” — Henry David Thoreau
While I’m taking a break this week, I wanted to share a small piece of good news with you…. Earlier this month, I was honored to learn that one of my altered books, “Nature,” was chosen for inclusion in the annual Michigan Fine Arts Competition at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center.
For me, there has always been a mystical connection between writing and art — just as there is a connection between my gardening and cooking. Like many of my altered art and mixed media projects, “Nature” was inspired by a favorite work of literature — in this case, Thoreau’s Walden. It was crafted from an old children’s board book and rebound with the cover of a turn-of-the-century leather insurance ledger from a thrift shop. The cardboard pages in the book are collaged and embellished with ephemera, nature quotes, and found objects collected from flea-market visits and, of course, nature walks. The exhibit runs through April 17. For more information, click here. — CL
Cindy on March 22nd, 2009
I’ve learned over the years that there is beauty not only in perfection but also in erosion, possession, and remembrance.”
— Barbara Hodgson, Trading in Memories
Rummaging through boxes at garage sales and thrift shops is one of my favorite addictions. But I don’t stop there. Neighbors often spot me gathering found objects for my artwork — everything from feathers to bottle caps — along the curbs and sidewalks. Undoubtedly, some folks think I’ve lost my wits, but who cares? I’m intrigued by the glory of broken, discarded things. And the more faded, frayed, rusted or ragged they are, the better.
While scouting a local flea market this weekend, I recalled a favorite book, Second Hand, by Detroit author Michael Zadoorian. The novel charmed me when I first read it several years ago, partly because it centers around a young junk shop owner with a passion for cool castoffs.
“I do believe that we can gain a kind of illumination from junk,” Zadoorian’s protagonist explains in the opening chapter. “We just have to be open to it. Unfortunately, most people live their lives without the wisdom junk can give them.”
Along the same lines, Looking for Mary, a memoir by Beverly Donofrio, is another great read with an uncommon twist on collecting. When Donofrio (a lapsed Catholic) turned 40, she was overwhelmed by a sudden preoccupation with the Virgin Mary. To her own surprise, she found herself buying Blessed Virgin items from yard sales and thrift shops. What began as a whimsical collection of kitsch ultimately turned into a conversion experience that changed Donofrio’s life and healed her strained relationship with her son. I was hooked after the first chapter. Donofrio’s sweet memoir inspired me to stalk garage sales for holy cards and dashboard saints — a few of which ended up in a shrine and an altered book (shown above) that I crafted in Mary’s honor.
If your passion for stories about collecting still isn’t satisfied, you won’t want to miss Barbara Hodgson’s Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger’s Favorite Places. Beautifully illustrated with finds from the author’s collection of ephemera, this gathering of essays is your armchair ticket to a world tour of exotic bazaars and markets, antique shops, dusty bookstores, and other romantic haunts where trinkets and treasures await. – Cindy La Ferle
The place in which we work — an art studio, a home office, a spare bedroom, or the corner booth at the local diner — is essential to our creative lives.
