I’ve been contemplating space in relationship to the artist. Is that what really what I’ve been doing all this time? Yes. Well. Yes. I suppose it has a something to do with not having a designated space to work for the past two years. I tend to float when this happens. This is a choice that I made. It isn’t that I feel deprived of a proper studio. ‘ve been sort of willingly and pleasantly adrift in a sea of ideas and inspiration with no particular place to manifest. I realized just recently that I had not deconstructed and vacated The Crow’s Nest as well as I could have and that I have unfinished business there. I’m not sure where to begin connecting the dots so I’ll go back to one relevant point in time, eleven years ago.

The photographs in this article are from an installation by artist Fumio Tachibana. The photographer is Yasuhide Kuge. This exhibition was the first time I had consciously experienced the artist, his inspiration, materials, work, and working space as inseparable. Tachibana is someone who has mastered the art of evocation. The re-purposing and re-imagining of “fragments” woven or arranged into a new whole is a important concept in my own work.

His subject is Clara, a fashion institute for western style dressmaking in Japan, founded and run by Motoko and Shiro Koike in 1923. They also published a fashion magazine called Yosai Shunju. The building was demolished and the magazine banned during World War 2 in 1944. I’ll take a wild guess that anything to do with western culture was not at all popular in Japan during that time. Motoko revived the institute as a classroom studio in the 1950s. When the studio was dismantled, Fumio Tachibana collected and reorganized the fragments of Motoko’s work and materials (drawings, sketches, dressmaking patterns, postwar Japanese handbills, wrapping paper, silk thread, and printing equipment) into a large scale installation of new artworks and arrangements in their own space so that the classroom itself was part of the work. There is something powerful going on here in that Motoko’s presence is strongly felt in the photographs.

Source: Communion W, 2001 Curator: Can Wong

The handwritten pages of a notebook on geography and surveying, kept by Joshua Tevis in 1804.

Much better pictures of the new abode. There are a few glimpses of the house. It is buried into a hillside and camouflaged in greenery.

We inherited a peach tree that is awesome so we planted a fruit trees all around it to make a small orchard. Peaches, cherries, pears, blueberries, and fig.

Refugees from the old beach road. They are all planted now.

So I guess it’s obvious why I haven’t been around.

The entire contents of my studio and library, old book pages, works in progress, and art supplies, are still in boxes and bins waiting to be moved and reorganized. I’ll have to content myself with garden photographs, beginning with the ridiculous amount of allotment pictures from a recent trip to Boston. The light, the sky, the weather, and the scarcity of other wandering bodies made it a perfect day for taking photographs. There are a few more in my previous post and a full set on Flickr.

A collection of well tended allotments is a magical place. Although I would never again wish to live in a city, I have a fascination with small urban gardens and allotments. There is such an abundance of charm in small gardens with their clever use of structures and strategic plantings. The victory gardens on the Fenway create an oasis in the midst of crowds, cars, and chaos.

I love the rusty nails and thorny branches all over the posts and gates. I know they are there to discourage vandals and thieves but I find them so beautiful and sculptural in this context.

I did not rest on my birthday after all but I did take a much needed break from renovations and moving. I wore myself out walking across Boston from one end to the other and back again and was rewarded with inspirations aplenty. C.P. McDill and I made a rare visit to the city for gallery hopping and window shopping. We strolled from the Commons through the Public Garden and down the full length of Newbury Street, stopping to admire the hand carved cabinets of Jenna Goldberg and the incomparable paintings of Goxwa at Axelle. We wandered through the exhaustive maze of allotments at Fenway Victory Gardens working up an appetite for the amazing Thai cuisine we had for dinner. We ended the evening by winding up the main street, returning to the Commons in time for sunset on the pond and a carousel ride. It was a perfectly lovely day capped off by reading many generous blessings and good wishes for which I am thankful.

Photographs, of course, do not do Goxwa’s work justice. There is so much light in these paintings. I recommend that anyone near Boston visit her solo show at Axelle Gallery on Newbury Street. These are just details taken with a digital. The full compositions have more impact.

I have a thing for birdhouses. I like this one made with scrap wood and a nail for a perch.

These are much more expensive birdhouses in a shop display on the main street. Tin roofs! I like these but I prefer the scrappy DIY version.

Sunset and a white rabbit ride.

While researching book bindings for a project, I’ve been coming across these gorgeous embroidered book covers and bindings from the 16th and 17th century. Thought I’d make a blog post out of these exquisite works of art.. The original scans for the books are scattered throughout The British Library Database of Bookbindings. I’ve just selected, cropped, and optimized them. The larger size originals are in a flickr set so that all the amazing details can be seen and are worth clicking through and taking a good look at.

Embroidered satin book with floral motif. The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London, 1639)

Embroidered velvet book with scroll and floral pattern. Orationis Dominic: explicatio (Geneva, 1583)

17th century embroidered satin book with pictorial angel and trees. The Whole Booke of Davids Psalmes (London, 1634)

Embroidered Canvas book, pictorial angel and floral motif with two red ribbons. The Booke of Common Prayer (London, 1611)

17th century embroidered velvet book cover. A Comfortable Treatise, for the reliefe of such as are afflicted in Conscience: revised the third time, … interlaced, and enlarged in many places. (London, 1620)

Front and back covers of an embroidered satin book with two sets of metal clasps. The Whole Booke of Davids Psalmes (Edinburgh, 1644)

Embroidered satin book cover with silver threads. Good Newes from Heaven. (London, 1631)

Embroidered book cover with sequins. The Holy Bible (London, 1642)

Satin embroidered book cover with threads of coloured silk ‘woven’ across upper and lower covers. The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London, 1627)

“We now come to a beautiful and loquacious race of animals, that embellish our forests, amuse our walks, and exclude solitude from our most shady retirements. From there man has nothing to fear, their pleasures, their desires, and even their animosities, only serve to enliven the general picture of Nature, and give harmony to meditation.”

Yet another lovely and very old book I recently added to my collection is the third volume of Oliver Goldsmith’s An History of the Earth and Animated Nature which although available online through the much appreciated resources of the Internet Archive has unique and unmatched appeal as an actual object aside from reading, at least in my opinion, always being much more enjoyable from the page than it is from the screen.

The copy in my hands was published and bound in 1795. It has a badly deteriorated binding and cracked spine with it’s pages intact although a few are loose. On the opposite page of all illustration plates, there is an intriguing left impression of ghost images which have faded to a pleasing sepia tone and are really quite beautiful in their own right. I’ve always loved the language in which natural history book of this period are written and that this author refers to various species of animal as “their kind.” Various kinds of bird and amphibious creature are covered in the present volume.

Here is a passage on the Dodo. The author writes as though this species is still around at the time of publication. Whether that is true or not, his description gives some indication as to the reason for the poor bird’s past or future extinction. I’ve included photographs of the text. Larger more readable versions of all pictures are viewed by clicking through to my flickr account.

Tropical birds of the Oriole species and their manner of building nests.

In describing the inhabitants of the water, a class of animals occur, that mankind, from their place of residence, have been content to call fish; but that naturalists, from their formation, have justly agreed to be unworthy of the name. Indeed, the affinity many of these kind bear to the insect tribe, may very well plead for the historian who ranks them rather as insects. However, the common language of a country must not be slightly invaded; the names of things may remain, if the philosopher be careful to give precision to our ideas of them.

I found this Victorian Era copy of Undine by Friedrich de La Motte Fouque in the toss away bin on one of my recent book hunts. This copy, published in 1897, is illustrated by Rosie M. M. Pitman. The cover and binding are water damaged but the pages and pictures are in pretty good shape. It appears to be unread since it still has uncut pages. One of my favorite stories about a water nymph who falls in love with a mortal and is gifted with a soul. It’s rather an epic fairy tale which someone aptly described as fairy tale noir. A lovely book with a well rounded and sympathetic heroine. Mischievous and somewhat unseelie water sprite steal a few scenes. There is a later version with Arthur Rackham illustrations. I’ve scanned a few of these less well known interpretations. The detail on the Frontispiece (pictured above) depicts the water sprites who mock Undine for falling in love with a human.

“The roses and the withered oak leaves which lie upon the world represent the love and advanced age of the poor couple; the leaves burn up into a flame, the energy from heat producing a new creation in the form of a child, while the angel brings the spirit that will never die.”

“Undine, generous hearted and full of love, flies down as a dove and saves her enemy, Bertalda, and the Knight, her husband.”

“Symbolical of the Knight carried along by the impulse of his emotions, at first with his eyes open – afterward giving himself up to the destiny he has shaped for himself with his emotions.”

Now that I’ve shared a few teasers and highlights, I think I’ll curl up by the fire and revisit the world of Undine.

I first ran into this weird little doll about four years ago, close to when we moved here from Boston. He lived in a glass case in one of the local antique markets. I’m not really a doll person per se. I don’t collect them and I didn’t often play with them when I was little. I was always more interested in books, then and now. I have a few of Kerry Kate‘s lovely odd hand painted dolls, who now keep company with the formerly lonely vintage Palestinian rag doll. I think I had a Blythe doll once upon a time but I wasn’t attached enough to her to swear that she existed.

For some reason I became obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with the above pictured odd little antique bisque doll from (I think) the late 1800s. He has no eyes, no hair, messed up ghoulish little teeth, and wears a threadbare roughed up outfit comprised of a jacket that is clearly too small and big pants – voluminous felted wool pants – with Dutch wooden shoes instead of feet. I would go and stare at that doll every time we went to the antique markets hunting for books and talk myself out of buying him. He was expensive for an unfinished bisque doll and I’m not a collector of things. I don’t collect objects other than books related to my work.

I think I drove C.P. McDill crazy over that doll, fussing about the doll, obsessing about the doll, informing him repeatedly that I wanted the doll. I have no idea why I wanted it and I’m sure he was completely baffled. This went on for a few years. That’s right. Years! When Erzebet came along on one of our trips to the market (when was that?) and was shown the object of my obsession, she said “Hah!” out loud “You just want that doll for the BIG pants!” I just lost it laughing and could not stop. From then on the doll was known as the BIG pants doll. Shortly after her visit, I decided I should stop obsessing and just buy the doll. So off I went to collect my doll.

Of course, he was gone.

Gone!

I searched the entire market. I grilled every dealer. No one remembered the doll or knew where it went. I thought that strange. No one noticed it except me. I was crushed and I felt completely ridiculous for feeling so crushed over a doll. This happened years ago, whenever it was that Erzebet last visited. For these past few years I have wistfully examined the glass cases every time I visit the market, hoping to see the BIG pants doll not staring at me through its naked eye sockets and baring its nasty little teeth at me. Hah! I missed that homely little incomplete face. I know it seems so weird but there was just something about it that grabbed me. Obsessions. Attachments. These happenings are such a mystery.

Then on Friday, just a few days ago, we went to the markets and I did my usual thorough plunder and pillage of every interesting affordable dusty deteriorating old book I could find. When I was at the entrance, almost done with my wheeling and dealing, about to take home my pile of crumbling papers and boards, C.P. casually walked up to me and said “Your doll is back.” I said “What?! What doll?” He said “The doll with the BIG pants, the doll you liked.” I thought “What?! The doll I liked? Liked? Are you kidding me?” The man is a master of understatement.

I had not looked in the glass cases. I ran over and looked in them all. I didn’t see the doll. I thought C.P. was messing with me but there it was on a low shelf way in the corner on a stand that said “For Display Only” Oh no! I asked if the doll had been there all along and the consensus was that it had just shown up after being on tour with the dealer who owned it. She had used it for a display and never sold it. Usually, when I fuss about whether or not to buy something, and I lose the chance, it ends up being a momentary disappointment and ultimately (as my friend Lisa pointed out when I told her this story) it is a relief. This was different. I just knew. I always had a feeling that doll would be mine and now it is. I am happy to have the doll. However, I still have no idea why I wanted it in the first place.

While sorting through the old books at the Horticultural Center, I picked up a musty old tome which I thought was a history of gardening. It turned out to be a book about alchemy and the construction of various types of stills. Most chapters focus on use of plants by the Puritans of New England for herbal medicines and tonics. However, it does occasionally veer off into herbal lore and “the chemical art” of the early alchemists. The book was in rough shape, water damaged and falling apart so the scans are not so nice. Of course, I had to offer up a few bits of it, since this blog threads together the subjects of my fascination – art, old books, gardening, and alchemy. Included among these tattered pages, is a hand drawn map from the 1600s of the area where I now live and work. Sadly, it was too faded and ink smeared to scan well.

“The fifth chapter deals with the sum total of background knowledge applied by the settlers to their task of growing, distilling, and preserving all they would need for both meate and medicine. The sixth deals with ‘the meate’ and the seventh with ‘the medicine’ for which they felt sure so many plants were intended”. – Anne Leighton

“A satirical portrait of the vain Englishman of the time, Henry VIII, so keen on being in the latest style that he strides along with a length of woolen cloth over his arm, unable to decide what rayment to wear”.

In William Lawson’s ‘New Orchard and Garden’ the "falling gardens" are shown below 2 large squares devoted to fruit trees, one for an elaborate design of garden knots, and two for the kitchen gardens.

The fiery flowers of pineapple sage, young radishes in a driftwood bed, one last rose before winter, the sun shed at sunset, and an alchemical androgyne.

The Divine Hermaphrodite

Three favorite photographs of artists’ gardens from a book that I am parting with. I have this long standing practice that for every object I bring into this house, I must part with an equivalent object, usually a book for a book, a clothing item for a similar clothing item, etc.

John Ruskin

Edward Augustus Bowles

Derek Jarman