Late Stage Found Object Love Disorder

I love the grunge on old things, the film of dust on a mirror, the crust of rusty oxidation where the paint has chipped away from painted tin, the random, uncontrived marks of time that has passed over things that have survived its ravages.

I love things that are not easily identifiable, that provoke deep curiosity, that force us to notice them in the abstract, without context.  They write their own poetry in the imagination.

So here's a couple of shots of the most recent things I have acquired, the ones I turn around in my mind's eye as I drift off to sleep, hoping to find what they must be when they reincarnate as art.



A loop of worn ornamental cord and River Thames
pottery shards  from Fagin's Daughter, in Australia;

Animal chewed walnut husks and fossil oyster shells,  from Treasurehider, found kayaking in Chesapeake bay;

Hand carved African Mokolwane Palm Nut beads from Isle Brevelle Botanica and the veve included in packaging;

A crusty, chipped, broken folding ruler from I-can't-remember-where.

Rustic clay beads of unknown origin from BJ Supplies.

All found poking around on Etsy; check the links!

What? No Woolies? A Guinea Pig Will Do

I was worried when I got Abbie that she would show a prey drive toward my beloved guinea pigs.

But I noticed that the piggies had become more outgoing and less fearful when I approached their corral.  I thought it could be something to do with Abbie, but still I was uncertain.  The day came for the ultimate test --

But Abbie is a good stock dog -- first introduction, Abbie looks away, politely, to show she has no hostile intentions.

Then she and Sparrow settle down for a harmonious encounter -- they may be discussing how much they both like carrots.

Little bits of harmony in our world are so precious.  Let's celebrate them!

Bottle Baby Goes Home!

 I am happy to send one of my doll assemblage works to a new home.

The cranky baby is detachable, with a wool jersey body and hand sculpted original head, hands and feet.  His dismal baptismal dress is a ragged antique lace hankie.

The lining of the shadow box is the ghost of a silk ball gown, with a “halo” of antique child’s tart pan and tatted doily.  The ribbon and details along sides and bottom were salvaged from a tintype case.

The box is, I think, a school project, made from fragrant cedar, gessoed and faux gilded.  I found it on one of my hunting and gathering forays at St. Vinnie’s.

I was inspired by memories of mothers in my childhood neighborhood chatting over morning coffee comparing their baby-raising techniques – “he’s a bottle baby,” meant he was either weaned from the breast or raised on infant formula from birth.  If he was a bottle baby, I could make a couple of quarters minding him while his momma got some R&R.  It didn’t mean he wasn’t fussy – we lived in Atlanta, and the summers were hot enough to make a baby sweat, and they did get fussy, what with those little wrinkles of sweat  around their pudgy necks where the red clay dust would get stuck and make smudgy rings.

This piece was in the ”Show and Tell” feature of Art Doll Quarterly last year, and is one of my first miniature baby dolls.  It was a lot of fun reproducing the traditional style of antique cloth body babies and adding my own two cents’ worth.

Ahh, memories!

And now, the po’ cranky lil’ thang goes home to Gail’s house, in Pennsylvania, and I am grateful to have shared a memory that has been persistent, for some mysterious reason.  I can still see those smudgy, sweaty red clay rings -- maybe they were itchy!

What the Tide Brought In, II

Fragments of fossil corals, bits of flotsam and jetsam, et voila! a tribal bangle set.

What the Tide Brought In

 Last month Puget Sound experienced two, count 'em two, King Tides, and we've just had a windstorm and lots of rain, so that calls for a bit of beachcombing.  And I'm inspired:  reading Flotsametrics and the Floating World, How One Man's Obsession With Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano.  What's more, they laid the foundations of their exploration of ocean frontiers here in Puget Sound.

It was a fine day for it, and Abbie and I slowly strolled along the tide line, noses down, expecting treasure.  If you think about it, and you keep your mind open, you will always find treasure.

It seems what comes up on the beach, regardless of how amazing it might be (I once found a dried lotus pod, with seeds, that had to have drifted in from the Far East), is predictable, even as to time of arrival.  The contours of shore and sea bed, rivers, winds, the sun, the moon, the spin of our planet, all combine in a complex interaction to create gyres, like the great Humboldt Current, and slabs of specific salinity that can deliver Japanese net floats to the Pacific Northwest shoreline, or South American tropical seeds to Galveston Bay.  One could even traverse all the great oceans, adrift, in 71 years.

We found the sole of a vintage shoe, very narrow heeled, and once stitched.  Sometimes really old things do show up; even today, First Nations canoes can drift in remote inlets and be discovered.  As with this sole, though, I believe in leaving them as found so someone else can also experience the curiosity and unwinding mystery of ocean currents.

It's inspiring, and it calls to mind so many of the great works of poets and writers, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, for instance, and especially one of the longest sentences in modern fiction, from Ernest Hemingway -- please follow the link for a fine treat for your hungry mind and heart.

So there'll be even more sea-inspired works at my bench, too, like the bangle set I just finished, and plan to list on Etsy soon.  It's in the tribal style -- and considering the subject of tribes, we can let go of that idea of a time tribes were untouched by European culture until we landed -- they were beachcombers, too, and especially happy to find iron washed up in shipwrecks, long before Columbus planted his flag on their shores.

“That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student’s exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; all this well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing—the stream.”

Abby (Abbie) is Sweet and Clean

After a walk in the melting piles of gritty gray snow, if you're low-slung, you come back icky, which makes it not so good for a winter snuggle up -- the remedy is a , oh bow-wow, grr, -- bath.  Worse, there's getting dry again, from the, woof, grr, bow-wow, ruff -- hair dryer.  It's enough to exhaust even the relentless, tough, Pembroke Welsh Corgi.  But you get treats afterward, and you can run all through the house searching for your lost smell.  The humans seem to like it when this has happened, but they have absolutely no sense of smell and less good taste about it!

Abby Comes Home

When there's a dog-sized hole in your heart, you eventually have to fill it, and I hope you'll be as lucky as me. I applied to Seattle Purebred Rescue for a Corgi and heard right away from Mary Day, in Lacy who helps Corgis find new homes.  Wonder of wonders, this lovely little girl needed a new home after her good people decided she needed to be separated from an aggressive half brother.  They had given her training, love, exercise, all the right attention, and I know it broke their hearts.  But it's almost as though they had created this special companion for my retirement, who already is getting me out and walking around the neighborhood, and briskly.  She is so bright and jolly and adaptable -- it's like we had been together for years, and she even respects the guinea pigs although she wishes they needed some herding.  My biggest concern was whether she would settle down while I spend a few hours in my studio, making things.  Well, as you can see above, noooooo probbie!  And just in case you think that little size means you have a foo-foo on your hands, read the story of Ole, who survived an avalanche and came home by himself.  You may think that Nordic name is not so appropriate for a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, but they are descended from the Swedish Vallhund, brought to Wales by Vikings long ago.  I plan to test that lineage soon -- we are going to celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King by going snowshoeing.  That dog-sized hole in my heart has been custom fit!