This is the last of the What We Live With series. Above is the living room wall of open shelves by the stairwell. Very little changes here. But some close ups of some of the things.
Bird cage with a palm woven bird from Bali. The cage came from Common Ground in Asheville. Always a good place to find things that need to come home.
Below the cage is only a part of the oil can collection.
Bamboo pieces from Japan and an Indonesian healing gourd figure.
Baskets from a friend in Australia, an assemblage from a man who ran a restaurant in an old stone church in Tasmania, a voodoo basket from Africa, and a clay bottle a student made at Arrowmont.
A boat I made about memory recollections, three lovely baskets by an Australian artist and a piece of wood with metal weaving and beads made by me in the early nineties in a class on metal patinas. You can pick it up and shake it because copper things are behind the woven mesh that closes over a hollow in the wood. It feels good in the hand.
Coming into the open room of kitchen, dining and living room hangs these two small pieces. A lovely photograph Phil Diehn took of some of my oil cans and a fun piece of folk art from the show in Atlanta. It is simply masking tape over sticks…then painted. An irresistible cow on my side of the fence.
In the den are egg tempera paintings I made about the loss of farming/farmers in western North Carolina and just part of a wall filled with New Zealand flax baskets that I make every time I go to Australia.
Behind the door in the guest bathroom hangs a very large woodblock print by Gwen Diehn and a small nest of mine. It was my first wood engraving.
Also in that same bathroom hang among other things, a large print by Walter Anderson bought on a trip to New Orleans, a long scrolled journal painting that Helen Sanderson of Australia gave me from her trip to Antarctica. And three hand printed illustrations that were from a children’s book on Jamaica made by Philip Kuznicki, who rented a house from us at one time. There are many more prints in this small room but these I could photograph without getting too much reflection.
In our bathroom hang the Inner Navigations Series minus one that sold. They are around my corner tub with a Nantucket basket I made in the eighties.
Over my dresser hangs several smaller pieces. More egg temperas I did of my water garden and an oil can. Plus a collage piece by Philip Kuznicki.
Another egg tempera painting on board that I did depicting a story told through three generations of men.
The beginning of a series I painted of man’s encroachment on the earth hangs with those egg temperas to one side.
Pictures of our cat, Spooky, no longer with us on another side. Photographed by Phil Diehn.
And long gone Sara on a small wall.
The last thing I gaze at before dropping off to sleep is the last of the encroachment series. Man now has it all…
So that is the finish of the things we live with. No need to open kitchen drawers or cupboards. No need to photograph books on shelves. These are things that have stories. These are the things that remind me I went some place, I did something, and it mattered.
As for the dementia shawl, I am filling it with stitches.
Art Group meets here in a couple of days. Hopefully I will be getting back to printmaking.
Til next week.