Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. - Janis Joplin,"Me and Bobby McGee"
Martha Stewart can't be beat when it comes to holiday decorating, but I think some of my neighbors come pretty close. Above is a photo of our friends house all decked out for the 4th. I adore the chinese lanterns & old-time flag swags...
Fireworks here are legal, and so are neighborhood block parties with bands playing in the streets. Sometimes they get a little out-of-control... Two years ago one of our favorite local eccentrics had placed an old dishwasher in the middle of the street, filled it with live fire-crackers and closed the door. Sparks were flying out the sides and then.... ONE. BIG. BANG! And the door flew open. Scary. If his antics weren't interesting enough, couple that with his wardrobe. His signature piece is a boler hat and his beard is so long that he looks like a long lost member of ZZ top. Now you have a visual, I'm sure!
Wed. 5 March "7:08 p.m. Am Assured, receptive, responsive woman of substance. My sense of self comes not from other people but...from...myself? That can't be right." ~ Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones the edge of reason.
Tuesday was quite surreal, as the streets crowded with locals to watch the moving of this historic bungalow down a few blocks to it's new home. Amazingly, this house sold for only $1.00, moved for $35,000, and the lot of land supposedly already owned. To watch the old bones of this house come drifting down my street in the middle of the night, was such an enchanting sight. It was like a boat drifting into a harbor. The sides of the house skimmed the tree branches, and electrical wires were taken down ever so skillfully, so it could succeed in it's maiden voyage.
To make & to covet:
I've fallen in love with these spicey -Amy Butler fabrics. (particularly this one) Mmmm. It's in the same color palette as my living/dining room. Something is bound to get re-covered this summer. It would be fun to take contrasting patterns of fabrics from this grouping in similar colors to recover my dining tables chairs. A different fabric for every chair?!
Last week I found this shirt while surfing the web. How could one possibly resist Lloyd Dobbler's charms?!
posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 11:17 AM
6.11.2004
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.~ Oskar Wilde
An outdoor vignette.
I had never thought of treating my garden as outdoor installation pieces until just recently. Yesterday I ran across the weird gardens site via art for housewives blog . I like how she infused bottle bottoms into the cement in her front garden. Recently, I saw a similar idea in the newest issue of ReadyMade magazine. They had a "mini-garden" challenge (utilizing particularly small garden spaces).
In one of the gardens they had collected some 100 green bottles ( to do this is a piece of cake if you follow their advice and throw a raging party), then buried them into the soil so only the bottoms faced up. I just think it's a lovely effect. I also posted a photo of this idea just last month, here in this blog. (You can see it again, here. Look under the glass conservatory.)
My own backyard is such a blank canvas. It would be so interesting to create something like this eventually instead of the usual concrete patio. So now I'm thinking, who can I convince to save their wine bottles?! Let me see, I'll only need a few hundred....
One of my fellow art collegues, once used colored glass bottles (the kind you can buy in sets of three at places like pier one imports or Cost Plus World Market) hand-wired them together with beads then dangled them upside down from the trees in the art quadrant at Cal State Long Beach. It really was beautiful, they looked like glistening jewels in the sunlight, trickling down from the branches to the grass. I always followed her work, since it was very much in the same vein as my own. For her Masters project in Fiber Arts, she created a series of dolls composed with everything from scrap cloths to copper scouring pads. They became mermaids, and fairies, and other fantastical beings. She had such a way of spinning mundane materials into extroardinary things. Like alchemy.
posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 11:04 AM
6.05.2004
Creativity is a drug I cannot live without. ~ Cecil B. DeMille (1881 - 1959)
I'm feeling a bit inspired tonight, thanks in part to a very lazy Saturday. I even napped. Which is something I normally wouldn't do.
This afternoon I sifted through the colorful pages of Tracey Porter's Home Style book. I hadn't realized how wonderful her little make & create online archive was until tonight. So many project ideas. Her decorating style is keen on DIY embellishments, like these drawer pulls. Even her dog is treated like a princess.
I've had it in my head lately, that I need to buy this Mexican celebration banner and oil cloth tablecloth that I saw in a recent issue of Lucky magazine. I love the colors, they're so festive.
While I was there, I couldn't help but meander around the plum party website for awhile....they have such an odd assortment of themed party goods: i love this "message in a bottle" idea as a party invitation, and the havana nights 80's shades are pretty hot too. (They kinda remind me of this Strawberry Switchblade photo. I sometimes miss the 80's.)
