More work for the Third Thursday Art Walk in Glens Falls at the Orange Cat Cafe in May…

Beginnings of the next quilt.

The Wild Rose Inn in Woodstock NY is truly wild.  I felt like I was in one of those cowboy movies from the 70′s.   The time period is the late 1800′s, but everything is filtered through the style and fashion of the 1970′s.  It’s not authentic, it’s idiosyncratic. 

That’s the Wild Rose.   The house is Victorian, the antiques 1930′s and the rest of the furniture looks like it came from Roma Furniture.   The decor ranges from  from brothel to 1960′s Italian suburban.  Unusual and quirky and great fun to draw from.  I fell in love with the bedside lamps and only regret that I didn’t have time to do more drawings.

I”ll be showing these at the Orange Cat Cafe  on Elm Street in Glens Falls NY during the month of May.  Check out my Events and Appearances page for more detail.

As we drove through Vermont this morning I saw six different clothes lines hung with drying clothes.  I thought they all must do their wash on Saturday and are thrilled  to hang their clothes out after the long winter.

I’ve always found something pleasurable about hanging clothes on a line.  Even when I was a kid and would hang out the families laundry,  I would pay attention to the colors and shapes when deciding what to hang where. Every once in a while in the winter, the clothes would freeze on the line.    I would stand them on the ground like parts of people and they would bend instead of fold.

A friend, who had one of those clothes lines on a pole, told me she would always hang her underwear on the inside lines so the neighbors couldn’t see them.

I went to Cambridge NY today to visit Jack Metzger in his Antique Shop and Art Gallery, Out Back Jacks, on Main Street.      Jack is one of the artists in  From the Everyday to Art, the first show in the Pig Barn Gallery  this June.  I was going to take a video of Jack talking about his work, but my flip wasn’t working and my ipod was out of juice, so we just visited  instead.

I don’t know exactly how long Jack has been collecting and selling antiques, but his shop is one of those places you can spend hours in just looking at everything.  Everything is intentionally placed as if it were an art installation.

Then there is his found object sculptures and photographs, which are in the front of his shop.  His work is   made of all the lost and broken artifacts that no longer have a place or purpose.  Jack puts them together, sometimes adding his own elements which he designs and fabricates.    He spent months polishing a bed key with an old potholder, not knowing why, just loving the wood.  Then one day he know what he wanted to do and created a sculpture using the bedkey, clay marbles, copper shavings and three different metals layered on top of each other to create a base.

Jack and his bedkey sculpture

I’ve heard that witches will leave a broom in by the front door to keep evil away.  I’m not sure if Jack knew that when he created this photo but the autumn leaves, worn brooms and old door speak  of domestic magic to me.  It’s one of my favorites.

But Jack talks about his work better than I do.  Every piece has a story, and every piece of every piece has a story.  I’ll be going back to his shop next week, this time I’ll make sure my flip is working.

I started working on potholders for the Third Thursday show in Glens Falls at the Orange Cat Cafe in May.  These are all from the Wild Rose Inn in Woodstock.   I couldn’t resist the Lamp Series.

I’ve always been intrigued by the thoughts that go through the mind when one is engaged in the repetitive, mundane tasks of life and if those words affect the outcome.

Spring came today.  I put on a tee shirt (with a couple of layers on top that I was able to peel off by late morning.)  I took the plastic off my window in the studio and opened it  up to hear the peepers!  I pulled up the dead sunflower from last year and took out the leaves and planted pansies in the tiny garden next to my studio door.  It was overcast, but warm and windy.    More snow melted on the north sides of the barns.   When it finally rained the drops were big and heavy and the air smelled warm and moist like a summer rain.  I’m sure tomorrow will not be as warm as it was today, but the pansies can handle it.

I’m going to use this drawing for my next quilt.  I’ll probably make some changes and maybe I’ll have more than one stitch sketch in the quilt.  I think the table needs a book or two and the lamp needs to be plugged into an outlet and turned on.     I’ll be showing it at the Third Thursday Art Walk in Glens Falls at the Orange Cat Cafe in May.

Jon is the Keynote speaker at the Woodstock Writers Festival so were staying at the Wild Rose Inn, which is a bit wild. At least the lamps in the room are, I can’t get enough of them.  They look like they’re wearing witches hats and  I can’t decide if they are 70′s brothel, or belong in my grandmother’s house. 

Sometimes, when an artist is working, (and I’ve only heard this term in regard to artists)  a “happy accident” can occur.  This is when the artist has a plan for how something is going to look and it doesn’t work out, but something else happens instead and it’s even better than what they had thought of.  One of the things I learned as an artist is that we only have so much control.  And the translation between what goes on in the mind and what actually happens in the physical world are often two different things.

In this video Diane Swanson explains  her Fusion Art, the work she will be showing and selling in “From the Everyday to Art” at the Pig Barn Gallery in June and describes a “Happy Accident”

Circuitous Tapestry by Diane Swanson