Grey Days

Been working my butt off to get ready for the Brooklyn Flea next week. Stumbled into Michael's Craft supply store.... and bought a woodburning kit. Perhaps pyrography is in my future now.

Another weekend of work, little time for art and no hiking again. And another grey March day..... I posted this image this weekend I guess it suited my mood.

The Gowanus Lounge: Brooklyn Flea is Big & Cool & It's Coming

The Gowanus Lounge: Brooklyn Flea is Big & Cool & It's Coming

The Brooklyn Flea is Fast Approaching

I am really excited about the press I am hearing concerning the Brooklyn Flea... which will take place in my hood.... Fort Greene Brooklyn on April 6th. I am helping my friend Futopia Co. who has a booth. I will be selling some vintage and plaques. Here is some more info and their website.

www.brownstoner.com/brooklynflea/

I also linked them and Futopia

The last issue of New York magazine had an article about it.

It will be at Bishop Loughlin High School, corner of Lafayette Ave. and Vanderbilt and runs from

10 am - 5pm. So far they are saying it will be the biggest Flea Market in New York City.

I have been thinking of starting a street team for Etsy vendors who will be there. 

And another photo to add. Non-flea related but will be for purchase at the Flea and Etsy.

Woke Up....

I woke up this morning... at 4:30 am in a bit of a panic. Money issues revolving in my head. I think I was dreaming of Leona Helmsley for some reason. I don't want to be greedy and selfish, but this starving artist routine is getting tired and stressing me out. It's like part of my mind is not able to function.. the creative part is in flight mode because that survival part has taken over.

So I think about a more peaceful existence. Like fleeing to the woods. This fall I was invited to attend an artist's residency in the Catskills for a week. I will be living in a rustic cabin on 200 acres of land and be able to devout all my time to art. I wonder if it will be a bit like Walden?  I think there is at least electricity.

Taxes and Hell and Stools

So I just returned from my CPA, a wonderful woman who has been supportive of all my hardwork, but concerned about little return for it. Every year I make a vow to concentrate on seeking out ways to make money, market myself and not sell my soul. It just doesn't come naturally to me... I think some people have the experience of being given that kind of road map while growing up but I grew up in a metaphorical jungle with no easily recognizable trails. But my CPA told me the stool story, that every business (and art is a business too !!!) is like a three legged stool. The first leg is production or making the art... most people get very caught up on this one, especially in the beginning. The third is office stuff, finances, record keeping etc. You eventually learn the value of this soon and hopefully keep up your tedious paperwork. But the third leg is marketing and promotion (and thus selling). This is the leg that gets the least attention sometimes, as artist get caught up in the first leg. So what happens is you have a shaky, unstable stool that could collapse. You need to learn to make all the legs equal length, and balance out your business. She told me that you need to devout at least 20% of your working time to marketing and selling. At this point I couldn't agree more. On the subject of green, I love this photo... I took it last year while camping. But I keep thinking I might end up living in a trailer back in Ohio someday.

La Luna

I decided to add a moon photograph  every full moon.... I have plenty already and of course can photograph more... here in Brooklyn there is a big beautiful moon out right now. I just don't have the inclination to go out in the night in NYC alone. But the moon is as much mine as anyone else who thinks the night is theirs..... take back the night for all those feminist out there.

So here is the one I choose for this evening. It was taken at the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. I belonged to the Gowanus Dredgers for a year. It is a great canoe club located in Brooklyn dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the Gowanus Canal. As you can see there is much that is rustic and natural left even in Brooklyn.

Vintage Spring Smells

Spring is here officially and it is also close to full moon and it is also Good Friday.....

make of it what you will. I am trying to see this as a positive. Right now my home is filled with the smell of hyacinth... I bought a plant at Home Depot last week and it is in full bloom. There are some smells that are very "old fashioned" or vintage to me. When it comes to certain perfumes that I remember my Grandmother having, I think of spring flowers such as hyacinth, lilacs, and my favorite Lily of the Valley. I think they are not so popular now because they seem so "feminine" but I have certain fondness for these smells and look forward to having them around each spring. I will have to wait till May for the lilac and steal some off my neighbors bush.

St. Patricks Day

I felt compelled to add a green item today for St. Patricks Day... it's more olive but what the hell. It you are interested visit www.undestination.etsy.com

Vintage Part Three

Another thought on the Blade Runner connection... many of the fashions for the movie were vintage in feel...  The dresses and coats Rachel wore were inspired by the 1940 and early 1950's.... very formal, skirts and suits with padded shoulders, form fitted and square toed shoes. The huge fur coat she wears in the street scene is reminiscent of the late 1940's .... I am thinking of Joan Crawford with a slightly Big Foot rustic feel.

Vintage Part Two

It's getting late for me and my mind is a bit fuzzy from a frustrating day. But I was re-reading my above post and I was thinking again about vintage..... One more element that antique and vintage has is history and how history adds a "personality" to an object. It been through something and it now sits comfortably in our emotional response to that past.... even if it was before our time.  In Blade Runner in order to control the newer model replicants,  they were given implants of past memories to "cushion" their emotional lives and make them even more like us. Perhaps we see antiques and vintage in a similar way... we feel they have history and thus they have more human like qualities we can romanticize. In these moments we feel an affinity with the dress, or pot holder, or rocking chair. We can possess it's past by possessing it. And it let's us.

Welcome to Undestination

Welcome to my new blog for my vintage and rustic sensibility.... I have been thinking about vintage lately now that I started my shop at Etsy so I looked up vintage on Wikipedia out of curiosity: 

So anything before 1920 is antique... between 1920-1975 is vintage and 1975-1990 or so is retro. I have notice that plenty of people are calling items from the 1980's vintage  on Etsy and elsewhere. I have some emotional response to this because if I wore it new in Middle School it is hard to think of that item as "old or vintage". It makes me wonder if I am retro or vintage yet... are the wrinkles I see in my vintage clothing reminders of the upcoming wrinkles on my face... the worn out fabric in places the sagging stretch marks on my skin... do I have a funky thrift store smell yet of mold? But with age comes character they say and I think that is partly what attracts me to vintage. That these items have a past and history, sometimes you can dig and find that history out and other times you never know. That added element to something like clothing or objects creates a nostalgic quality that seems irresistible to the artistic personality. Last summer I was at a stoop sale and bought for $5 a Graflex Speed Flex camera from the 1950's. It was the camera that Weegee used to photograph NYC at the time and I was quite excited. The woman told me that it was used by the Rye, NY police dept in the 1950's to record crime scenes ! Suddenly this item had this history and purpose that now I was part of. Only antiques and vintage can do that.