I think whoever Eunice and Gardner Barber were, they had very good taste...and I adore any kind of vintage or antique bird image. The calligraphy is printed, which means that someone had to carve an intricate block for each letter in the name so that it could be printed....imagine the work that went in to making calling cards so long ago. And how about the name Gardner? Seems like such an unusual name.
I am so happy to share my fondness (obsession?) for all things paper, here with you.
Beautiful clear organically shaped glass beads are paired with vintage chain to create a simple and elegant backdrop for the secret behind the star...the secret being the song that is in your heart, the dream you want to share, a favorite poem that gives you strength, a photograph that warms your heart...or your intentions, typed or written in tiny hand, to keep close to your heart. This secret locket with its aged charm, is perfect to hold those things. It has seen many years locked away and now it is time to shine...the same is true for you. It is your time to shine.....
Today I am celebrating the official release of the summer issue of Somerset Life, and the article I wrote to be included with my artwork...
It had been awhile since I've written for publication, and I was hesitant about the work I had to offer, but I decided to take a chance. These words came to mind, "What would you do if you knew you wouldn't fail?" and so I asked the editor, dear Christen, if she would be interested..and she said YES! I never thought my humble decorated vintage oil can photograph displays would ever make it "out there", and I am so grateful to her for giving me the opportunity to be published.
I have always loved the idea of functional art. The oil can idea came to me last year as I was thinking of Christmas presents to give to my sister Kelly Rae and her husband and the old oil cans I had on the shelves in my studio came to mind. I was so excited about my new idea that I had to pull my car over to record it into my phone and make a little sketch...
I've been busy making more Sentinels and Oil Can Photograph holders for my shop, Sacred Cake, but I've only one set posted so far. You can see them here. Look for more coming very very soon!
I try not to be a self absorbed blogger...but my attempt to connect; to relate with you, the reader, also helps me to connect with myself...and something about "putting it out there" in space and time seems to make it more real. How much better it is to go to a play or a show with someone else, so you can turn to them and say, "Wasn't that amazing?" "Aren't you glad we came?"
I guess that is what I need. To feel that connection with humanity, to satiate the hunger that I have for goodness....for the knowledge that there is inherent good in a world filled with the constant bombardment of sex and rage and the push to be more than all you can possibly be.
Here I am. And this song of myself, is also a celebration of you.
I celebrate my eyes and for all they have seen.
They have seen births and deaths;
tears wiped away in frustration and anger,
in sadness and with immense joy...
because they see you.
I celebrate my ears,
because I hear you.
My aging earlobes pulled south now, ever so
slightly, by earrings created with my wrinkled hands...
hands that have felt the smoothness of a child's skin
and felt the emptiness and the wonder of death.
Hands that have joined in prayer for you,
not ever knowing if you feel it.
But still, I pray.
and I celebrate my mouth and the song
that wafts from my throat
though you may never hear it,
I sing for you, and for the missing
of those I can no longer see
ever again or maybe just for a time.
I am grateful for the voice and the song that appears
from the corners of the creases and the scars
and the age of my lips.
and I could go on, and on
but I am so tired today.
The essence is this
I'm so glad you're here.
I'm so glad that I'm here, so that I
can see you.
Yesterday, during an incredible thunderstorm, I was thinking about one of my favorite poems. Maybe because of the references to water...
My husband and I often read aloud to one another on long trips or sometimes before we drift off to sleep. Yesterday, I opened the curtains and we lay in bed together to watch the play of the wind in the trees and listen to the thunder. He listened attentively as I read aloud the many pages of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock...
"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."
And, with gentle humor, during the rare moments that I look closely at my aging face in the mirror, I have been known to quote Eliot's words:
"I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
and then, the end; is my most favorite part:
"I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
Make yourself a cup of tea...you might like to read the whole thing here.
Do you have a favorite poem? I'd love to know what it is....
My work was featured in this amazing treasury today, curated by LUCIUSjewelry. I am always amazed at the selflessness that goes into making treasuries of work by other folks, and not one with your own work in it...and Christy at LUCIUSjewelry needs to be noticed for her incredibly beautiful creations. I have already found favorites.
I've been meaning to tell you all about Stephanie Lee for months. The incredible metal and plaster book she gifted me sits quietly on my dresser..well, more like an alter of sorts I guess, in my bedroom on a stack of my collection of jewelry boxes I spoke of many months ago. I pass by it each day and I remember her words to me, the only ones I remember by heart, "Now that the sweetness of your jewelry is in the world..." and I think to myself, who could give such a gift....a gift created with so many hours of work and given so freely. I cried when I opened it, I remember....
because I knew about the hours, the smell of the solder, the hand stitching, the carefully smoothed plaster pages...I knew of the self that goes into an artists work, and each time I pass it by, I smile to myself in disbelief that it is actually mine.
So many times, I've caressed it and admired it and brailled my fingers over the smooth cool plaster....thinking to myself, whatever goes into this book has to be, must be as amazing as the treasure itself...as beautiful as the one who created it...
...and It finally happened...only yesterday; and want to keep this tiny memory for the rest of my days, and retrieve it when I begin to wonder if I've really made a difference in this world...as I do sometimes....as I think maybe we all do.
We have five children. Our oldest girl, now 19, is on her way to her own life. She still lives at home, working and going to college and saving little by little. She is becoming her own woman now, yet I see the little girl in her emerge now and again. The little girl who sleeps with kittens...
and brings me feathers....yes, she knows of my adoration of feathers and birds and natural things and somehow she carries that inside her everywhere...a seed that I planted so long ago, when I would take her for strolls and present her with gifts of colored leaves and feathers and dandelions to blow and make wishes on. Before her memories began.
Yesterday, she brought me the tiniest, most perfect feather. Not just any feather, but one she found and carefully carried all the way home from her walk from work...and presented to me as if she knew how much it would mean; like she knew she was giving me everything she had, as she smiled to herself with the light of wonder in her eyes.
A first tiny entry into "Many Beautiful Things". Not a favorite poem or a love letter or a concert ticket or a pressed blossom or leaf, but an ordinary yet extraordinary feather and the memory of that smile and a mindfulness; a single profound thoughtfulness from one so understandably caught up in the swirls of her 19th year.
Later, I will write a line or two on light paper and "marry" it to the beautiful plaster page, as Stephanie so eloquently says to do. and I shall find a tiny vellum envelope for my tiny grey feather...my gift of love that will reside within a gift of such love.
There are better photographs of her and me, but this one, with its less than perfect color and all of its faults, is by far my favorite. Maybe because it is at a time when my memories of her really began to take root....I don't ever remember my mother being pregnant, but I do clearly remember the first time I saw her there in her Jenny Lind cradle in her pretty pale green room...and every year I tell her the same stories and every year she kindly listens to me go on about her pale green room and of slinging around her sock monkey by its tail and how I loved to hear her baby laughter as I did. She listens to the same stories as I tell her of how I loved to finish her baby food deserts and the sound of the tiny bubbles in her plastic bottle at night as she drifted off to sleep next to me...but this year, it seems so different, so much more intense; so much more special...because this year, she'll have a little one of her own. My baby sister, my only sibling, is having a baby now. A little nephew, who I'm sure will look much like the cheeky little face above, and who I know will completely steal my heart at first sight...he really already has.
Kelly Rae, I am in complete awe of you. I have so loved watching you become the incredibly talented (in so many ways!) and soulful and spirited woman you are. You bring such joy and such clarity to me and for that I am so deeply appreciative. You have been one of my greatest teachers and a healer when no one elses voice could calm my tearful ranting. You have brought me back to me so many times, and inspired me to dream bigger than I ever imagined. For all of my selfish, selfish reasons; I am so grateful you were born on this June day in 1975. I hold your memories inside of me like sacred points of light. Know that you live in my mind and in my heart each and every single day. My sister, you make life so faceted and so lovely. Thank you for your grace.
Happy, Happy Birthday my sister, my friend!
Though I am not catholic, I collect antique prayer cards. I am just smitten with iconography and religious symbolism and churches and cathedrals, stained glass and statues... and each delicate or gaudy gold nimbus and the soft stares from Mary and from Saints and the Christ child. These are all at least 100 years old. Lovingly preserved in ancient bibles; pressed into desperate hands. Prayed on fervently; gazed upon with hope and adoration...just a few of the reasons I love them so.
Today I said something that I thought I'd never hear myself say. "Life is too short not to trespass." But the temptation was just too much on this hot day...and the 100 year old (or older?) Weeping Willow was beckoning us ever so gently to visit and stay awhile in its glorious breezy shade. We had just gone through the drive through at McDonald's for cold drinks and we were on our way to our favorite antique mall when we spied the enormous tree in a vacant lot next door.
I drove our minivan right through the mowed lot and right up next to the tree...so close that the breeze blew the tips of its wispy arms right into my window.
It was quiet except for the low hum of traffic on the freeway and the soft rustle of the leaves as the branches swayed in the breath of the sky. The air was so wondrously cool there in the comfort of it...I felt as if it was whispering to me about simply being in that moment...and that life would slow down a little if I took the time to let it, instead of trying to fit work into each and every spare moment I am given.
I've been utterly and completely overwhelmed lately... the challenge of parenting our three teenagers in their varying stages of teenhood, and being mommy to our 5 year old too...coping (or attempting to cope) with the unrelenting pain of neuropathy and arthritis in my spine, running my online business and trying find more ways that I can "get myself out there" so that I can be a better provider, writing and creating for publications and businesses, and trying not to loose myself (and my mind) in the process. None of this is really new, but I think I am just feeling more fragile these days.
Today, time stood still for a little while, and I wasn't thinking of any of the things I just spoke of....it was just us and the Willow and the breeze. My husband, our little guy, me, and that ancient tree whispering to me about time and how much it has already seen and how if I would just take a moment to be....just be, that time would slow down a little so that I could catch my breath.
I happened to have my camera today. I wanted to share a little of that moment under the Willow with you...and I'd like to thank you for being here, in this moment. I feel so blessed that you are out there in the world and spending this time to read what I have to say.
..
This morning, the light was filtering through the sheer curtains and the gauzy white Victorian dumpster-rescued dresses hanging in the bedroom windows, and I turned to find my little son staring back at me from the folds of his favorite blanket. We lay together in a sea of crisp white sheets and squishy feather pillows trimmed with antique lace. I wanted time to stay still. I wanted to always remember that moment....
I feel so fortunate today to live in the midst of things that I love, things that speak to me in a positive way...things that tell the story of the years they were abandoned, unused and forgotten and then found again to be celebrated and cherished. I have been a firm believer in celebrating and elevating the ordinary for many years now. My journey began in 1995 when a dear friend gave me a copy of Simple Abundance, by Sarah BanBreathnach. It was a book that deeply changed my life. It rescued me from despair about my living circumstances, and as I worked my way through her book that year, I was profoundly changed.
My most cherished things have been rescued from dumpsters or found for a "song" at tag sale.
I'd love to hear about a belonging treasure and the story behind it. Did you find it in a dumpster? In the deep recesses of an old antique shop? On the side of the road perhaps? What story does it tell?
Of the things in my life I remember most, I don’t know, maybe it’s strange….but I remember hands. Hands say so much about a person, I think, and when I remember those I love and of those I have loved so much and lost, it is their hands I recall first.
I remember how my mother quietly painted her nails at night when I was a girl, and how I loved the smooth colors and the paleness and the fragility of her fingers as she waved them in front of her mouth to blow them dry. Sometimes I close my eyes and I can hear the click-click-click of the little ball inside the polish bottle as she shook it up, and I am there again in the quiet of the night with her and the missing of her softens enough to finally succumb to sleep.
My grandmother has the palest wrists and hands. When I was a girl, she always wore the same gold watch and gold bangles and charm bracelets that would jingle together as she patted my left shoulder…It was Afternoon Delight on the radio and there I was, sandwiched between two of the greatest loves of my life in the front seat of that big ‘ole maroon Lincoln. I remember her hands and the shape of them against my smooth tan young summer skin. Even now, at 41, I still crave them. And now, as I face the tougher things in my life, in my selfishness, I still need them to jingle and pat some of this pain away from me….even as she struggles against the things that 80 years of living and loving brings. I am in need of her and her healing hands.
I also think of Jerry’s hands…tan and lanky and strong and his own. I secretly adored him and his hands as he showed me his newfangled digital watch, But those hands were mine too. I coveted his hands because they belonged to the angel that came to my mother and my sister and I when despair had hung its hat by our door once again. No, I will never forget his hands…how they healed us, or the joy and the laughter he brought to us. They are the hands I so sorely miss. Even after more than 27 years has gone by, sometimes it feels like yesterday he waved goodbye to me in the morning light.
And my father’s hands, they were so large and so calloused and rough…they enveloped mine twofold, but I knew in my heart it wouldn't last. I’d say the story of his life was written on his hands. He lived under the hoods of cars and trucks doing only what he knew he could do best. His hands were his life and they were large enough and strong enough to carry a hunk of greasy machinery, but not large enough or capable enough to hold on to me. And he and I were not something his roughness could fix. And that’s ok.
But these…these are the hands that now hold my heart. These are the hands that guard me and hold me and offer to me, the world within them. The hands of my dear one, who walks this life with me. The one who can so melt me with the mere touch of them. The one who can hold time in his hands and so often repairs the brokenness found in the world and in the silver and gold roundness of long forgotten antique time. He has even healed some of the brokenness in me.
There are stories there, in your hands………there are stories there.
I rescued more than 10 antique dresses and Christening gowns from a dumpster last year...and I couldn't bear to leave them put away, so I employ them and enjoy them as valances in my windows. I love the way the patterns look against the sky...I have always loved antique lace and linens.
...and it is a such good thing for me that my husband enjoys antiquities just as much as I do...even little the white dresses hanging all over our house.....
"If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the sound of a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away." -Henry David Thoreau
This is a cause so near to my heart...please take a moment to read what this mission team is all about. You won't ever EVER look at free flowing, readily available tap water the same way again.
I am honored to be included in the Merry Month of May World Wide Collective Blogging Event sponsored by Roxanne of Illuminated Perfume. Though the flower of which I write today is not necessarily a May flower, and is sometimes referred to as a weed, it is a flower nonetheless and therefore, here it will be celebrated:
Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ed would take me there in the summer all those years ago. To the building with insides as blue as an empty old swimming pool, and with walls that were damp and cool to the touch. I remember the thick metal blinds hovering over the windows and the twittering sparrows in the eaves just beyond them. I remember the welcoming smiles from those mobile enough to roam the cool August hallways. I remember how my artwork looked on the walls of her room from the summer before; so curled and faded from the exposure of the previous year, but most of all I remember her laying there waiting for me in her laced up black shoes and too tan knee highs, and the dense forest of Queen Anne’s Lace that grew around the place that sheltered her paleness from the summer sun.
I would arrive with an armful of my latest creations, lovingly made at the picnic table under the army green tarp at my grandparents’ house on Oak Street. I was patient in my youngsters’ skin on the long ride there because I knew that I would see her and the sparrows and the only Queen Anne’s Lace that I had ever, in my shallow memory seen, and it grew as tall as I.
I don’t think my artwork ever meant as much to anyone then, or since, and I wonder how many countless hours that it rested there on the walls under her proud and wistful gaze as she thought of the countless years and of baby me and of my smile and how I looked so much like my mother when she was my age. I can still hear her voice as she pointed out my new creations to the nurse that brought her afternoon medication and quickly left with a nod and a smile.
Queen Anne’s Lace always reminds me of Great Grandma Dorothy, which reminds me of that visit to her tidy apartment years before when she asked if I wore a brassiere and not knowing what a brassiere was. It reminds me of the very beginnings of my artful life and the times I went to see her with an armload of my latest “work”, knowing that no matter what I created, it would be loved and gazed upon fondly and accepted with tears of joy and wonder at how differently it looked from the summer before that one. Queen Anne’s lace reminds me of the journey and the way each soft plume felt under my fingertips as I brushed by it along the longest driveway we walked to her…and the love in her eyes when I stood in her doorway and she saw me again after an entire year away. Surely it was an eternity as she lay there in the coolness with the old swimming pool colored walls, looking back on her life and tracing in her mind, all the little faces and hands she washed after dinner. One face and set of little hands belonging to tiny Jennifer me.
Queen Anne’s lace reminds me of my youth and of Dorothy’s smile and the birth of possibility as I sat for hours creating at the shaded picnic table summer after summer after summer. The rough wooden surface burgeoning with Paint by Numbers and construction paper and glue; cross stitch pot holders and dolls made from Styrofoam and sequins and pins. It reminds me of how our lives are all so intertwined and yet our experiences so singular; each of us a tiny pinpoint of whiteness like little stars, so much more beautiful when clustered together in oneness under the gaze of the sky.
I like the way that small town life is reflected by the window of my van over my face in the photo above...this place has become a part of who I am. There is a sweetness here...an earnestness and an ease...sidewalks shaded by Tulip trees and Maples...the stillness of a Sunday morning...The familiarity of it all is comforting to me these days and I am grateful for the precious people who remember who I am every where I go...hearing my name said out loud makes me feel more real somehow...more whole. It is as if they are really saying,
"I see you Jennifer, and you're going to be ok."
...acquired this amazing cement Paw Paw Leaf from Anne at Everlasting Leaves recently...it is now one of my favorite things...it rests with its pale gray roughness against the smooth lines and handles and subtle shades of other favorite belongings, on the little white china hutch my husbandbought for me for mother's day this year.
It has been such a busy week for me, that I haven't had a moment to post any of my thoughts. I think I am in need of time management skills. I am taking Kelly Rae's E-course soon and I know it will include time management ideas and strategies. I am very excited to be a part of it! So, here are the lovlies for the week, taking from a vintage book on exotic flowers. Enjoy!
This evening, I was working on a locket with my favorite “shabby” pearls and I pulled the usual plastic box out from under my equally shabby and well loved work table. With the opened box on my lap, I noticed something…I noticed the tangle of various white colored strings and the various stages of decay of the pearls…the different sizes and shades and shapes…and the history that was there in this little cosmos of luminescent orbs.
I imagined the dinner parties, the funerals, the birthday and retirement parties…strands and strands of pearls lost and then found again with relish…sighs of disbelief as broken strands poured from pale necks and bounced all over tile and marble floors. Pearls broken in tumbles of passion and in fits of rage….strands pulled gently, glowing by candlelight, from suitcases all the way from the shores of Europe and World War, to surprised eyes…and the ones bought with money dumped from piggy banks, saved from allowances and countless lawn mowings, from WoolWorths on a Sunday afternoon in May….
And finally, I ran my hands through the smooth tangles and mounds, and brought a large handful of pearls to my nose, it was the aroma of them that beckoned my pseudo memory…the scent of night musk and the sweetness of jasmine and White Shoulders and Chanel Number Five…and then the names of the wearers came to mind. Names like Mabel and Pearl and Ida and Rose, Sarah and Adelaide and Joy came to mind; filling my mind with phantom faces of the women that wore them and I wonder whose company they keep now and what their stories were and if their journey was memorable and full of song and hope and passionate living. I wondered if they were remembered with love, and how somehow, by chance, how it came to be that my life has been touched by their presence long after they were no longer a part of this world.
That is what I want my life to be….like a strand of pearls, broken all over the floor of the world…touching lives in ways I never knew I did, and regarded, by those that knew me, with love…memories of me wafting from minds and mouths like the incredible scent rising from this box of pearls in my lap…thoughts of me, smooth and lasting and glowing in the candlelight of love after the journey of my life comes to an end. Filled with laughter and the tangles of stories told again and again.
I think that is all anyone can truly hope for. Because, it is my understanding, that is really all there is…the pearls of ourselves we leave behind, and found later in the most unexpected places.
