Incorporated!

The first time we went to Columbia, Missouri for a music festival we stopped at a store called Artlandish and admired the paintings and prints by Lisa Bartlett. I realized that if either of us been there alone we’d probably have bought a piece for the other one. We went to Artlandish a few more times after our niece moved to Columbia but we were always together so we never left with a piece. But this year after my sister bought a house in Columbia, I went to visit her by myself and I was determined to buy a piece for my husband as a Christmas present.  I bought a print of Little Walter and when it came time to hang it, it didn’t work in either of the places I had been thinking of. We ended up taking down the photographs of our daughters and the embroidered piece my mother had made and hanging it where those had been.

Since Little Walter couldn’t hang there all by himself, we pulled out another print I had gotten at a Poconos Blues Festival but never hung. The portrait of Buddy Guy is by Robert Jr Whitall a videographer, photographer, and publisher of Big City Rhythm and Blues magazine who became an artist during his extended hospital stays in the last decade of his life. I think hanging the pair here connects the prints above one CD case with the paintings by the Easthampton artist Denise Beaudet above the other.

The china cabinet got an addition too – the small tray with the blue flower was in my stocking!

I had said I wasn’t going to overload the living room bathroom with birds but Rushmer Christmas resulted in some additions. When I saw an art vending machine at the Birmingham Art Museum gift shop I knew I had to get some tokens to see which print I would get.

I got the Northern Flicker bird which turns out to be Alabama’s state bird. The next day at Rushmer Christmas we got these little place name holders crafted by my Birmingham niece with artwork by her daughter.

She informed us that all the birds were indigenous to Alabama and I knew I needed to create an Alabama souvenir with all our new birds.

And that yellow bird didn’t really work where it was after we reaaranged some of the art above the cd case (incorporating can mean rearranging too) so he came to the bathroom as well.

My sister gave me a needle felted tapestry kit by Neysa Russo. The Scandinavian Deer reminded me of the deer on the sheets she had given me the year before so when I finished the piece, I turned it into a pillow that will go on our bed when we are using those sheets.

It’s so fun to incorporate new things!