Architectural Artifacts, Chicago and Painting Like Hemingway

When plein air is too cold in Chicago...

A couple Sundays back, I spent more than an hour wandering around Architectural Artifacts, an antiques warehouse on Chicago's north-side Ravenswood area (right by the El), where five-foot cheese burgers go to rest... on top of merry-go-round horses or counter from a jewelry store. Seriously, every few feet, I found myself reminded of grade school or the time we..... There are all kinds of items I said, what the hell? In one room, there were several high top tables standing at different heights - waste, neck sternum-tall with a round stainless surface on top of an industrial-sized slinky. You could press on it and it would go up or down - no hydraulics. They must have been used in some kind of manufacturing that a workman needed to maneuver from bottom to top on a big piece of something. If I only had room for one! (Gratefully, I don't.)

It took a lot of hunting to find a place where I could sit, lay out my brushes and paints where it would be convenient to me and out of the way of anyone else, and with a view I wanted to paint. Ok, that last point is moot - the place overwhelmed with possibility. What surprised me was the finding that once I sat still and narrowed my view, what I intended to paint went out of focus. Instead, saw angels - literally, angels on the bank work stand. Each of the four legs of the table held a different metal sculpture with opulent detail. I wonder how many people really saw them? I didn't until I sat nearly eye to eye with them, but they were at a stand up table. I wish I knew the thinking behind them... the interior designers consideration for telling the inner story of a bank... Here at the altar of commerce, I commend my money. The angel I looked at directly spread it's arms and wings, the one in the distance with flowing robes nearly took flight. The other two were behind lout of sight behind other furniture and artifacts.

To paint this, I sat on a black metal bench that had ridges creating a serpentine of Ss down the middle to outline where butts (small ones, by the way) should rest in a Brazilian ice cream parlor. Every two sections for seating, the designer placed a twelve-inch round on a pole to serve as a table. On one of those, I placed my watercolors and cup of water, and on my lap my Arches watercolor board.  (You know how every interest and hobby has it's efficiencies? For watercolor, Arches paper  company stacks high quality paper bound to a heavy hard cardboard - a rip-off note-pad of watercolor paper. The rubber binding in this case goes around all but an inch of the entire stack. No matter how much water one puts on the paper in the process of painting, the next page of the stack doesn't get wet. A miracle innovation! I carry a mini-Swiss army knife to gingerly remove a page from the deck to begin a new piece.)

You, as a reader, may already notice that I have trouble editing. I try to include too many thoughts, and too many words. This is a personality flaw and not confined to writing. My painting is the same. I wish I could include every hair, freckle, crack and dust-mite. I wish I could, but I also don't have the patience. There is way too much to say or paint. I want to paint like Hemingway's complete six-word story... "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn."  Bam! What a word picture. Right?

Unfortunately, I've also learned from writing that the brilliance isn't in the words you first lay down, it's about the editing. This painting is hugely edited. There were many more things on the walls, hanging from the ceiling and on the table tops in view between the angels and me. 

My guess is that when I go back again, the items will be sold or moved and I won't be able to attempt the same view again,  though I'd like to do so. I will remind myself, no matter what I find, to narrow my focus to see more.

BTW, Architectural Artifacts is also an event space where I want to be invited... maybe throw a party. There's info to the event planner at the link above. 

Restless Vacation - Antique Stores and Finding My Way

With serendipity, I ended up  in an antique store in Lowell, MI where the circles of my life (a la Harry Chapin) started spinning around with a fury. I was supposed to be in Maine, but my watercolor plein air class was cancelled and I decided to create a sta-cation and paint in locations around my home in Chicago... that lasted three days. I was restless.

By Wednesday afternoon, I agreed to meet a high school friend who lives in Ann Arbor for lunch in Kalamazoo halfway between us... By his map. I threw my toothbrush and contact lens supplies in a bag and took off confidently thinking I could find somewhere to paint in Michigan and maybe stay overnight. I called friends (obviously good ones) in Lansing and found a place to catch up, drink some wine, watch the last Jon Stewart and crash. They were leaving early the next morning so I could too. By then, I'd decided to take back roads toward Ionia to check in on my parents, both resting in a sunny spot at Mt Olivet with their parents, grand parents and the village that raised them.

Driving down Ionia's Main Street I stopped for over an hour and sketched my mother's family home, a once gorgeous Victorian with a porch that wraps two sides. My grandpa saw patients in the parlor there after hours.

Directly across the street, I spent many Free Fair weeks with my paternal grandmother in her tiny one bedroom apartment, sleeping on the scratchy horse-hair couch that she made up for me each night. She probably thought the highlight for those "vacations" was the Free Fair midway with the rides and games. It wasn't. It was her tiny white Jiffy mix muffins with a swipe of white butter frosting and the hours I got to play canasta with, as May Sarton said, the "girls" with the grandmother faces, her friends.

Remembering, feeling nostalgic, I continued on Main till I recognized the steep hill to the left and followed it to the crunchy dirt and gravel drive into the cemetery.

My dad visited my mother's grave, then in Florida, every Friday until he couldn't drive. For me, a cemetery is not where or when I remember those who've passed on. Yet, I found something comforting in a reminder of the inevitability of life. That cemetery holds the people that were mythological in my growing up. The owner of the drug store. A much revered great-uncle who helped my dad. The Fred who owned a furniture factory near where when my grandpa laid dying and turned off the noon whistle to not cause him pain. Another Fred along with my grandpa Fred, and the factory owner, Fred (They were known about town as "the three Freds") who started the Free Fair (Both my dad and brother have the middle name of Frederick, AND coincidentally, I married a man whose last name is Frederick. A seventh grade teacher dubbed our son, Alex as “Fred”... a nickname which remains.) Within feet of grandpa's monument there are (at least) three stones of relatives holding my name, Mary E. Longe... another reminder of life here and gone.

I stopped to remember and sketched the scene.

I let the paints dry while I took a swig on a bottle of water and decided the rest of the day.  I  meandered up and down a few streets, but even the plethora of yard sales didn't tempt me to stop. While waiting for traffic to clear on Lincoln, I saw that the road also had a road number, M21. I turned lef, west onto it, figuring my GPS would eventually figure out, a way home. I wasn't ready for the expressway. The trees and grass were too green, the flowers in gardens too vibrant, the sun too bright to not take it in at a slower pace. I needed time to process the day so far.  M21 led me to Lowell.

Maybe as a child with my parents I was in Lowell, but not in any conscious way. I drove into town, decided I was hungry and would pick one once I could see the options.  I drove three or four blocks of downtown, crossed the river, where the antique stores near the west end caught my eye. I circled around, parked, went into one, and promptly bought a new camp chair, still in its original bag, that the owner explained was left in the store when they took over. It appeared perfect for sketching with its back and a little hideaway compartment for, in my case, a sketch book, pens and  paint. Cool find. I walked next door into Glass House Designs and walked out with Christmas presents made by Michigan artists. Cool finds. Walked into Dovetail Antiques. it was the first shop where I wasn't the only customer. There were voices and activity in the back.

None of them heard me yelp. Over in a corner holding dried flowers or something inside it sat a greyed and slightly bowed wood crate with black block lettering, FRIARS ALE, Grand Valley Brewing Company, Ionia Mich… My father was the brewmaster there before I was born from just after prohibition until 1948. Prior to this, the only item from that part of his life that had been passed to me was a small promotional sign, probably made for a bar. The aforementioned Alex/Fred, a craft home-brewer himself, owns the best memorabilia from my brother's collection … Dad's little black leather-bound book, with his notes from brew school (in  Chicago) and the recipes from that brewery.

I left Lowell, after a fantastic lunch a few feet from an old paddle boat that looks like it belongs in New Orleans, by the water at Flat River Grill,. I felt better than elated… content, maybe. Coincidence? I think not. I can’t help but connect dots of having spent time with friends who knew my grandmother and parents,  of visiting the cemetery where I saw the names of the three Freds and “the girls” who taught me card games and my own name on gravestones and, of finding the Friars Ale crate, something my father may have seen stacked in shipping or loaded on a truck. I was ready to come home feeling connected with those who came before. I felt good for having sketched - my present, and a peace about what is to come. I have an unfamiliar sense of being in the right place in my life… not restless.