Tag: memories

Button Sunday

I think the first time I became aware of Gustav Klimt’s art was when I saw a print of his well-known work “The Kiss” in my friend Amy’s apartment in the early 1990s. Last night, my blogging friend Shawn posted a photo of her favorite Klimt painting, “The Virgins” (also called “The Virgin” and “The Maiden”) on Facebook. I like it so much that I decided to find a button of it. Klimt’s colors and mosaics in his paintings fascinate me; shadowboxes and collages I made in the 1990s incorporated little elements of those.

I recently acquired a work by Austin artist Cynthia Fedor. It’s a 4×4-inch canvas (tiny! part of its appeal to me). Her work is sparer but does remind me a little of some of Klimt’s paintings, and I’m completely infatuated with her theme and how she’s expressed it here.

framed:

It’s keeping me good company in my office.

Hump Day Happy in honor of Marika’s birthday

Possibly the silliest purchase I’ve ever made on eBay arrived today. I blame David Puterbaugh and his rousing endorsement of Toy Story 3. While Jim was here, we watched the first two Toy Story movies on DVD, then Jim, Tim, Tom, and I saw the new one in the theater. And YES, David, I DID need the Kleenex I took with me at your suggestion, and I wasn’t the only one. One of the themes of the movie is what happens to toys when their children grow up.

For years, I’ve mourned the disappearance of my wooden push puppet lion. He was one of my favorite toys, and if our toys remember us, he knows I didn’t lose him, discard him, or give him away. I’m sure he was stolen, and I know who the probable culprit was. I’ve never been able to find another resembling his craftsmanship and appearance, and I’ll never settle for anything less.

Along with my lion, other toys vanished along the way. I probably don’t remember most of them, but I do remember my Dolls of the World.

Dolls of the World were sold for 99 cents each with the purchase of Arco gasoline. There were twelve in all, and my mother collected six of them for me. They weren’t really to play with; they were for display. Even at that, not a whole lot of skill and craft went into them. They were basic plastic dolls–the kind often used for crafting–with hair too fine to brush, only movable at the arms and neck, and their clothes were cheaply made and not removable. Still, I liked the six I had. I learned about the countries they were from and took good care of them. Once they even helped me when I started in a new school. I took them for show and tell, and they were such a hit that my teacher took me to all the other classes in my grade so I could share them, a bizarre experience for a shy girl who normally did everything she could to avoid attention.

I know the dolls were on my bookshelves when I went away to college, but I suppose at some point, I was persuaded to let them go. After seeing Toy Story, I dreamed about them, which caused me to look them up online and on eBay. Not all of the dolls I found look like the ones I had, so maybe there were different versions for different years or regions. But I found England’s and Spain’s dolls that were identical to mine, and they were practically free, so I bought them.

In honor of Marika’s birthday, and the child who remains within us no matter how many birthdays we have, I decided to resurrect Hump Day Happy for this week. (Marika is the only one who ever expressed regret that it vanished as surely as my push puppet lion.) Anyone who wants to give me a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, can get an item from the happiness book to celebrate Marika’s special day with her. (I don’t advise picking 8/11, because I think Marika’s chosen it a couple of times, and it never changes.) Meanwhile, Marika, let’s pretend that whatever number you pick, it includes dancing naked men.

Getting in touch with your young inner artist

When I was ten, we lived in South Carolina. Someone or some organization decided to put together an art exhibit in an empty house at or near the college where my father taught. Anyone could submit works, and I decided to paint something while watching my father go through his paintings to pick out one or more to show. I don’t remember if anyone else in my family contributed anything.

I always loved it when my father painted. Oil was his favorite medium, although he also used watercolors, inks, and pencil. I liked the wooden box that held his supplies and his wooden palette. I liked the smell of the oil paints, turpentine, linseed oil, and mineral spirits. During the time I was making my “work of art,” he was painting on these pressed wood panels salvaged from the back of a bookcase:

Easy to see whose technique influenced what I paint today, although I judge his work far superior to mine for many reasons. And at ten, I was much more literal. Here’s my painting that hung in the show (my mother, bless her, kept it framed and packed away all those years or I wouldn’t even remember it):

Please click here for work of staggering genius.

Button Sunday

I have absolutely no reason whatsoever for making this today’s button. Some things in life are just random and we have to accept that. Although if I were older than 35, I might remember a Christmas when I got Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads when they were still just things you stuck in actual vegetables and not inserted into plastic potatoes. Apparently those newfangled ones were safer. But could they smell like a rotting vegetable or piece of fruit that would make your older siblings gag? I think not.

In fact, if I were older than 35, there might even be photographic evidence.

In other matters, I greatly appreciate your comments to my previous post. I will try to fulfill all your requests over time. Thanks for giving me ideas for LJ material!

A soft goodbye

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market—
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanches
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response to your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That’s it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren’t the same.

Saturday’s memorial service for Don introduced me to this poem by John Updike.