More from the Met

I did an illustration for enRoute's website a little while ago and this was made accidentally from a scanned page of pencil scratches that I used somewhere along the line for texture. I don't even remember why I wanted the negative, but I sort of like how it looks. Makes me think of cold, cold, clear winter nights in Winnipeg.

Yesterday at the Met

I had a couple hours to kill after a meeting uptown yesterday, so I headed to the Met. With the McQueen show closed, it was pleasantly calm; plenty of elbow room and opportunity to hang out and wander around. I decided to explore less familiar galleries. In the Arts of Oceania section I saw a "dance wand" that looked like a very elaborately dressed, very worried-looking wooden spoon.

Practice for a project I'm working on, slowly. It's an excuse to draw more dancers. That's a good enough excuse as any for personal work.

Calder's place

Images via OneEightNine

I don't usually like to re-blog stuff, but I just stumbled on these amazing pictures of Alexander Calder's house from the book Calder at Home: The Joyous Environment of Alexander Calder. And since I'm already on the theme of cluttered, cozy, lived-in spaces...

Little House

As much as I loved The Art Barge, and the D'Amico's home and studio, what I went really nuts over (which means suddenly forgetting to breath, and thinking "whaaaaaaaat?!") was the couple's guest cottage, the Little House. It's so lived-in, so cozy (this will never be a bad word for me) and comfortable and interesting, so happy and so personal, that I can't imagine it was actually reserved for visitors. Or if it was, they must have felt they'd arrived somewhere as familiar as their own home.

I just moved into a new apartment, and while I felt an impulse to whittle and purge, cut my stuff by half, live in a space with white walls and bare floors, just a bed, a chair, a lamp and a some books, looking at these pictures again reminded me that I'm really a Little House kind of person.