Laundry Day and Cows

Buying art for a living space that isn’t even built yet might sound like I’m putting the cart before the horse---especially given the fact that I have a lot of signed and numbered prints to sell before I move. And given the current state of our country could even cause my plans to move to fall through all together. Too many what ifs are motion right now. What if the stock market doesn’t come back or the housing market is dead when I need to sell? What if I can’t get downsized in time? The what ifs are endless. But I’ve always been a long range, detail planner so under ordinary times anyone who knows me well would not be surprised that I just ordered a couple of canvas stretched, mass market prints for my future home. But these are not ordinary times and common sense tells me I shouldn't have bought them.

What send me off shopping for art? Two things, 1) I needed something positive to focus on, and 2) looking at the floor plan and schematics of a new unit I’m buying I couldn’t get past the empty space above my kitchen sink that will be all white subway tile and it’s the first thing most people will see when they entry my unit. I’ve never not had a window above a sink and that’s a space I couldn’t let stand naked in my mind. I have a vintage window frame that would be the perfect size to go there and at first I played around with putting a print behind the window panes of something like a lake shore or boats off in the distance, but then I worried that hanging something as heavy as a an old wooden window frame would pull the subway tiles off the wall, even an ordinary art frame with glass would keep me up at night worrying about those tiles falling off the wall. Then I played around with the idea of using a stretched canvas of Salvador Dali Girl by the Window. The idea of having a print of a window with a view tickles my funny bone, but after a whole lot of hand wringing I couldn’t live with a vertical print in a space that calls for something horizontal.

Thus I did a search by shape at AllPosters.com and came up with two themes that speak to me in the right shape, in the right colors. The cows’ print is called Country Drive Cows II and the other one is called Laundry Day. Back and forth I went for several days and finally I decided that the cows would read better from the distance of my doorway as people come into the unit. And it speaks to my soul in a different way than the other print because it reminds me of the cottage where I spent all the summers of my youth. There was (and still is) a large dairy farm on the corner where we turned onto the road leading to the cottage, and since the whole theme of my unit is going to be “summer cottages” the cows will whisper in my ears and they’ll be saying, “You’re here, you're at the lake! Let the fun begin.”

 

Everyone hates cookies when websites use them but I found out that if you keep going back to look at two prints at AllPosters.com they'll offer you a one day only sale of 60% off. The $150 price tag for each stretch canvas print was dropped so much I couldn’t resist buying them both---the cows for over the sink and the Laundry Day I ordered in a smaller size to hang on a wall near a signed and numbered print I already own of a bird on a clothesline. That bird-on-the-quilt print will be above my restored oak ice box---what old cottage didn't have one of those. And I paid the same thing for the two new canvas wrapped prints that I would have paid for one if it weren’t for cookies. 

I used to have a collection of 100 clothespins---all different. The collection is stuck at the local auction house in a lot of other vintage laundry room stuff. But I kept eight of them, handmade pins known as gypsy pins. I’m so excited that I finally know what I’m going to do with them in my new place. I have two matching shadow frames and one will hold that Laundry Day print and the other will hold the gypsy clothespins. There’s the perfect wall near the ice box where I can stack-hang the two frames (one over the other). I’ve been hemming and hawing about sending those frames off to the auction house. Now, they contain prints of gas pump faces that were a gift from the artist who used my husband’s antique gas pumps to inspire a line of prints that he still sells today. The frames would cost a small fortune to replace and I’ve been looking for a way to re-purpose them. 

 And that’s the reason why putting the cart before the horse makes perfect sense when downsizing for a move---at least under ordinary times. Doubts disappear and decisions of what to keep and what to let go turn into exciting marching orders. That old window frame that I haven’t wanted to let go of? I’m turning the panes into mirrors and hanging it right next to the door so I can check myself out before answering the door or going out, and maybe it bring some sunlight down to that end of the unit space. Wall art has always been important to me and what I’m living with now was mostly selected by joint decision with my husband when we were on various vacations out West. I still love our James Bama, Paul Collins, Bev Doolittle, J. Snidow, Charles Eurings and Wayne Cooper paintings and signed and numbered prints but I’m leaving all western memorabilia behind and in the next chapter of life I want to feel like I’m Grandma Moses renting a cottage near the beach. If all works out according to plan... ©