Halloween

Yesterday was Halloween. While I was busy getting myself excited, carving Jack-o-Lanterns, making pumpkin seeds, putting my halloween hat on I couldn't help but remember when my brother and sister and I were young and we would go trick or treating with our dad. It was the best thing ever. We'd go out in the cold, fill up our pillowcase and make a stop home where our mom would have hot coco and pot pies waiting.

This Halloween wasn't like that. With the halloween music playing, candles lit I waited. A few kids at a time would come and claim their candy, but it still didn't feel the same. When I drove home to my house the caravans from Detroit where dropping off their loads of kids still. Maybe I will stay at my own house next year and it will feel much more like Halloween with dozens of kids shouting Trick-or-Treat before they run back to their safe vans and cars or maybe once again I'll travel to the suburbs of Michigan where trick or treating is ruined by the countless dark porches and Trunk - or- Treats that are hosted by schools and churches nights before the real thing even happens. These are times when I wish I could go back in time, just to relive my childhood again in bits and pieces.

Words from Marygrove Gallery Director, Nicole Parker

Miss April: The work of April Segedi interacts with Billy O'Bryans work as they comment on imagery and narratives of beauty and the myth of beauty. April says in her artist statement "Yet even in lands of beauty and glitter,evil things creep about in false glamours". One cannot overlook the use of such image by O'Bryan. In a slightly different context, Miss April touches on fairy tales and myth, the disenchantment of one's expectations post fairy tale excitement, and Elizabethan or Victorian sensibilities by the aesthetics of the journal, skeleton keys, lace doily and vintage photographs of Rosebud and her Secrets. Miss April's images are slightly haunting or "beautifully grotesque", the nouveau gothic. In love with these creatures, many artists around the globe are working in similar context, using little girls, fairy tales and anthropomorphic figures. Filling fantastical landscapes and critiquing political or social ideals of a nation.

~Nicole Parker.

Kate McDowell...

These works are from the artist Kate McDowell. Her work is just striking to me. The absence of color or the subtle use of yellow, or dusty pinks just creates this innocence in her works that have such a strong story behind them. They are just amazing

My newest work

For the Spirit of Place exhibition I wanted to evoke the viewer to make up their own story about the work they saw. With Rosebud and Her Secrets the viewer gets a small glimpse of what she is trying to hide under her pillows, a journal, skeleton keys and photos. I like the Victorian idea of taxidermy and the act of collecting and preserving just about everything. The Flower and Insect collages are perfect examples of this idea.

My creatures come out of the secret fantasy world that exists in my head. Through the creation process they come to life in our reality. They are a mash up of novels I have read, movies I have seen and the secret world that I live in when I am alone.

I don't expect people to understand or get it, it's kind of a personal story and If I can cause some sort of reaction with the viewer, positive or negative, I believe I have succeeded. To see more imagery please visit my Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/feltbunny313/

My new little sugar muffin

My New Inspiration......Obsession

The work of Marina Bychkova has me obsessed.I stumbled onto her site a week ago and I still find myself looking at it any time I can.
She designs all the wigs, costumes & sculpts the accessories and shoes. Amazing...

Peace, I hate the word because I hate Hell and all Montagues...

ROMEO

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO

O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

JULIET

Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO

Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

JULIET

You kiss by the book.

Vincent

Go and love some more...

Disney's Girls

"There were never more charming assembly-line cogs than inkers and painters, in their rayon print dresses, pearls, and heels, or the high-waisted, flared pants and slip-ons that Katharine Hepburn had made fashionable. Their makeup was perfect, too—drawing a fine line around their eyes and lips was easy compared with refining the taper in Pluto’s tail."

This was a very interesting article from Vanity Fair.

Can I know you?

Dakota Fanning...

Photoshoot with Tom Munro. Digging the fingerless glovelette's and the bubble skirt with the major ruffle!!

I also looooove her as Jane in the Twilight films

Devil Fae

Let me dance to the music you play.

Boxed Water

On a recent business meeting I got to visit a local & independently owned coffee house, Bean & Leaf. The Chocolate Freeze I ordered was awesome. It was perfect for the hot and humid days that have been plaguing Metro Detroit this summer. What also caught my eye was the boxed water they were selling. I thought it was an interesting spin on the bottled water. It tastes the same as bottled water but on the box it explains to you why the box is better than the bottle. Recyclable,smaller footprint, 10% of their profits go to world water relief foundations, and another 10% of their profits go to reforestation foundations. All good things. Bean & Leaf may break me of my Starbucks habit.

Prosciutto Brittle & Candied Bacon

During a trip recent trip to NYC, my boyfriend and I had a great experience at a little italian restaurant on the Upper West Side. You walk into a cozy tiny restaurant that also acts as a meat counter. Hanging from the ceiling and lovingly placed in the counter is an array of cured, salted and smoked meats. Had we just walked into heaven?

After sampling an array of small plates, the time came to order dessert. We settled on the concoction that included, Prosciutto Brittle. We were nervous and excited but once we took the first spoonful we knew we had made the right decision. The creamy vanilla nougat flavored ice cream, topped with crispy, chewy, salty prosciutto was complimented with small cubes of cantaloupe. We ate it in record time and all but licked the plate clean. We left wishing we could take home a bag of that brittle.

Probably daydreaming of that dish my boyfriend stumbled upon this little shop. While it doesn't feature prosciutto brittle, it does have CANDIED BACON! The Sticky Pig online shop. I may have to order some of these treats...:)

Creepy

Laudanum, Arsenic and the Victorians

"Laudanum was a wildly popular drug during the Victorian era. It was an opium-based painkiller prescribed for everything from headaches to tuberculosis. Victorian nursemaids even spoon fed the drug to infants, often leading to the untimely deaths of their charges. Originally, Laudanum was thought of as a drug of the working class. As it was cheaper than gin it was not uncommon for blue-collar men and woman to binge on laudanum after a hard week's work. Use of the drug spread rapidly. Doctors of the time prescribed it for almost every aliment. Many upper-class women developed habits.

The outbreak of tuberculosis may have been another factor in the drug's rising popularity. For a short period of time the tuberculosis "look" (very pale skin and frequent fainting spells) was quite in vogue. Victorian women went to great lengths to emulate the look, often taking arsenic to pale the skin (slowly poisoning themselves to death)"

This little excerpt from an online article really strikes me. What really sticks in my mind is this image of a nursemaid spoon feeding a baby laudanum. It's inspired a brainstorm in my mind....