Back to the Garden

As I was working on a series of Valentine’s cards and hiding the crab card I was making for my cancer sign husband’s birthday, I said, “I’m just making these while I wait for an idea for my next piece.” A few days later, an idea did pop into my head – the Woodstock poster, which was perfect because I still have a lot of the vintage red thread I bought at the Ukranian National Museum.

I googled images of the poster and did a little research about it, too. It was designed by Arnold Skolnick, and according to his New York Times obituary, he only had a few days to work on it after the original psychedelic design by David Edward Byrd was rejected because it featured a nude woman. Arnold Skolnick, who did free lance advertising work, was inspired not by typical concert posters but by a Matisse paper cut outs exhibition he had recently seen. In interviews with various publications over the years, he had mentioned that he started out with a blue background and a flute and that the white bird is not a dove but was actually inspired by the catbirds he saw outside his window. He had also said that he didn’t mean for the bird’s beak to be red but neglected to mention it should be black to the printer. A “happy accident,” I think!

I originally thought of embroidering the poster with the lyrics to Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock to the right of it as I had done with the “Angel from Montgomery” one, but the piece of linen I had was too small for that and I liked the idea of just embroidering the image after I found the movie poster on the right above.

I chose the last chorus of the song because I certainly think we are “caught in the Devil’s bargain” these days. I toyed with gifting it to my friend who actually went to Woodstock but realized it needed to live near the “Angel from Montgomery” piece, although it looks a bit different because the vintage embroidery thread is four strands and I usually use three. Now that I see them together, I think that the Hank Williams portrait with the lyrics to “I Saw the Light”  by T.S. Green might have inspired both of my pieces.

Although speaking of inspiration, as I was stitching, I wondered where the idea to stitch the Woodstock poster had come from. The answer came a few days later when Fitzgerald’s nightclub reposted an advertisement for an upcoming show on Instagram.

Now I wonder where my next idea will come from!