art and wedding dresses

many of you know of mav's show us your art week this week. i haven't participated because i've shown most of the art i own on this blog or on my site already. was going to go through and link to them all here, but that's too time consuming! anyway, here are a couple pieces that i haven't ever shown.


(click photo to see larger)
"initiation" is by elizabeth williams who was in my printmaking class at ucsc. i bought this at a ucsc printmaking sale. in class the artist talked about how she would make her drawings on paper bags. i think that's why she chose a paper bagish-colored paper for this print. i like that and i love this little slightly frightened beast.


this is a very bad photo of a portrait of my mom drawn by my great uncle torsten bergmark. i wrote about him here.

on a completely different topic. i'm loving some of the nontraditional wedding dresses i'm seeing out there. despite the fact that i have misgivings about marriage as an institution, i do like ceremonies and celebrations and wedding dresses! look at these two beautiful ones.
jolayne's (check out the drawings at the bottom!) and
kristina's tulips!

it must be the colors

here's the plan for next week. each day focus on one color when taking photos. show one photo, several or a collage. mav suggested we decide on a color a day, which is a fun idea. here it is:

monday-yellows
tuesday-blues, turquoises
wednesday-greens
thursday-whites or browns or blacks
friday-oranges
saturday-reds or purples or pinks

diverge from this as much as you wish of course - skip a day, add a color, whatever.

soundtrack to this post is stina nordenstam's "memories of a color":
I'm searching for a colour
Don't think it's got a name
It's something between pink and brown
Just like when the sun sets
Sometimes when it rains

and cat power's "colors and the kids":
It must be the colors
and the kids
that keep me alive

not quite black and white

these leaves aren't really moving

SPT: favorite dress

(just making up my own spt theme this week) had this dress since college. got it for cheap at a thrift store. i rarely wear dresses these days, but this is one i feel comfy in when i do...and with the boots i can still feel a little tough anyway.

so for the color focus theme thing, maybe let's start next monday so we can rally up some others? seems mav, stephanie and mary might be in now. i was thinking one color for the whole week, with maybe one of those flickr collages (which i have yet to make!) at the end of the week? what do you think? or maybe more ambitious folks could focus on one color a day for a week of color....mav suggested we decide on a color a day. what say you? i'm flexible!

sandwish

you can make a sandwish here



(color in focus photos may come all at once at the end of the week depending on what photos i find this week)

one sunny day

look at those rabbit ears! too cute vegas the dog.


embracing branches

have to savor this one since it's supposed to be gloomy for a while now.

tomorrow starts the focus on one color! mav might join in...anyone else? i wonder what color it will be...

friday fun

rainy red steps

mecozy etsy shop: so i'm finally posting some cards on etsy. i got some back from the valentine show i participated in, so a few of those are on there. i will post some other cards too this weekend.

i saw a wonderful movie last night, everything is illuminated. it's sad, funny, and beautiful. wonderful colors, scenery, characters and story. i HIGHLY recommend it!

i finally started a my favorites thing on flickr. these two are my current favorites within my favorites.

a swedish design blog - fransson kane - neato

i'm thinking about doing a couple weeks or maybe more of taking photos focused on one color. maybe one color a week....the red-orange steps inspired me.

hm, just pictures lately.
(this is a poster of the swedish hilma af klint's art. it hangs in my bedroom.)

SPT: time

different hours of the day, different days of last week, different qualities of light


7:15 am (not so bright eyed and bushytailed)


10:00 am


6:00 pm


10:00 pm (need to wash mirror)

other SPT folks

fat friday

remnants of the peach brioche bread pudding from tartine. wow, so scrumptious and rich. my friend armani noticed the ceiling fan twirling in the spoon, so i took this pic of it. looks like a starfish.

thank you readers for your sweet comments on my last post. your words are so touching.

last night

Last night there was something about my room that reminded me of staying at my grandparents’. It was the strangest thing. I hadn’t been thinking about them before I went to bed. Then all the sudden my room felt different. The light, the air, the weight of my covers. The upstairs and/or downstairs neighbors’ lights were on, casting a dim light in my dark room. Something about the dim light was so peaceful. The way the meeting of the wall and the ceiling was unclear. Everything soft and gradual. And the rain falling down. And strangely, my sheets and covers even felt like Swedish ones. Sheets and covers always feel a specific way to me in Sweden. It’s like they’re all some uniform weight and texture there, that they are not here. My body feels different under them. I had shaved my legs recently and the smoothness felt different. I felt a bit like a child. Protected and calm, the way I felt at my grandparents’.

Then I started worrying about forgetting all the ways my granparents’ house(s) felt. All the objects and rooms where they lived (in Vallsta, pa Kungsholmen in Stockholm and at Edsatra). And them. Started crying and crying worrying about forgetting. Mormor’s death felt real for the first time really since it happened in December. I guess it’s normal that it can take a while to feel the absence. In between the crying, the peaceful feeling in my room remained.

So many of my likes and dislikes are formed by my childhood experiences of my grandparents’ houses. The strangest things. Old scissors. I remember my grandparents had all these old timey metal scissors at Vallsta. They hung by the old timey stove on pegs. And the scissors followed them in their move to Stockholm and followed my mormor in her move to Edsatra. Other kitchen items I have a fondness for - a carrot peeler, a bread crumb maker, dishes. My favorite fruits are berries. I’m sure this is related to the raspberry, blueberry and wild strawberry picking we did at Vallsta. I love whipped cream, which I’m sure is related to the whipped cream my mormor made. Sure these are all good things and I’d probably like them anyway*, but there’s a certain way in which tasting, seeing these things gives a momentary feeling of wholeness to me or something. It’s not just being sentimental (though I can’t deny I’m terribly sentimental), but it’s related to how I was formed??

I think back to my friends’ houses when I was little and even friends’ houses now. They all have such a specific feel to them. It's neat how everyone's space has its own feeling. And it’s not that I would choose to furnish my house the way my grandparents did. But I still loved the feeling of their house because it felt like them. It was filled with them. I’m sure sights, smells etc. will remind me of them and the feeling in their house, like the way my room reminded me last night. But it’s sad to think I’ll never be able to physically enter their house again, be among only their things, with them.

*I do also like Emser tabletter, which are not very popular among young people. They are considered old lady candies/throat lozenges, but I like them. I remember mormor having them on her nightstand at Vallsta and letting me share her Emser tabletter. Some of my cousins like them too and I bet that’s related to our memories.

SPT and pinky demands cheek rubs

this doesn't really follow this month's self portrait tuesday theme of time passing....except for the fact that these are taken in front of my computer screen, where i spend too much time!
other spt folks




here is little pinky leon getting peeved that i am not paying enough attention to him. he is batting me. doesn't he look slightly guilty while also mischievous in the last one? i haven't posted cat pics in a long time!

i think it's dark and it looks like rain you said

(click to see larger)
last night on the back steps, shortly before it started hailing.
i am tired of being cold in my house now. i wish it would get warmer. there is no insulation in this house and the windows are drafty and the heater only heats one room.
but the sky is pretty, no?

favorites

planning to load some cards onto an etsy shop very soon!

inspired by mav's week of favorites, here are some of my answers to her questions:

favorite color to work creatively with lately: hard to choose just one, but one that i've been into for some time now is this light turquoise-melon color you can see in the above cards. i noticed kath painted her floor this color. nice!

favorite music to work by right now: it's been a very male centered music week for me, which is a bit unusual. not sure why this was the case this week. but it's been cake, the decemberists, devendra banhart, etienne de rocher and low.

favorite breakfast food: again hard to choose. normally the ideal would be to share a savory and a sweet, like a scrambled eggs and hash browns along with a crepe with berries, chocolate and whipped cream. samosas are nice too. this morning however i boiled two tiny tiny brown eggs (they were very cute) and made a deviled eggs of sorts, pictured below on one of my favorite little plates.


yum!

a swedish breakfast i miss is fil. fil is sort of like yogurt, but not really. hur skulle ni beskriva fil svenskar?

saturday walk in the mission

saw this cute dog around the corner from my house. i've been seeing a lot of these lately. anyone know what kind they are? their faces are so funny.


here's a closeup.




and here's an overpriced furniture store that i frequent on valencia st. i like the floors as well as the furniture.

some new cards & friday links

comissioned by a coworker
flickr card set

friday links:

sweetnellie's adorable creatures
alex noriega's sketch blog
Kristina Karkov Therkildsen's blog
red felt flower blog
anna torborg's blog