A Fresh Coat of Paint

With new paint comes a new outlook. It really helped to bring out all the features of the apartment, as well as the furnishings and artwork. Check out these peeps.

The toy collection has also caught a breath of fresh air!

I chose the colors with care from a swatch book, arriving at the final four: a matte white for the ceiling, a sticky oil-based gloss white for the trim, a neutral yellow for the walls, and finally, a durable finish for the floor. I took into consideration everything, with particular attention to the mantle, still, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it came together. All the disparate elements fit, as I put my home back together within a harmonious setting and backdrop—a place for everything, and everything in its place.

 

As I worked my way from room to room, I realized one final component would determine the true success of my selections. Flaws tend to be more marked in the harsh light of day. How would it all stand up? I opened a few of the shutters to let the sun pour in....

...and found my apartment beaming back at me. Enjoy the day, wherever you are :)

Everyday Art

One of the many boons of living in a creative place like Park Slope is seeing art and design everywhere, made out of anything. When there's a lot of raw material like snow, the kids have fun with it. Here's a sampling from some of my walks around the way. Hope they bring a smile to your face as they did to mine.

A Nor'easter hits Brooklyn, New York

We had another fierce winter storm in the tri-state area. With whipping winds and an overnight snowfall, those of us who live here woke up to a winter wonderland, full of heavy tree branches and sparkling snow. With this amount of snowfall, many chose to walk down the middle of the street, as the path of least resistance. I caught a piece of happy sunshine on the fire escape, a bit of bright color in a monochromatic landscape.

The New Year Visits Apartment #6

It officially feels like 2011 to me now. This week, my beloved 101 year old apartment gets a sorely needed paint job, from floor-to-ceiling, top to bottom. As my landlord and I discussed the details for the new work to be done, I took a series of shots to email him, showing spots with wear-and-tear. Naturally, I started taking other pictures to enliven the chore.


















As I look back on the them, they feel less like a dry recording of the "bloom off a rose". They've captured the airy essence of this space. An extraordinary amount of light pours through its' tall windows, bouncing off the high ceilings and walls. As I watch the place transform, it becomes an apt metaphor, made solid and real, for "out with the old, in the new". I can't wait to take more snaps after the work is done. This place deserves a new coat for winter. It's worked hard to give me somewhere to call "home".

Winter Morning

The Joys of Winter (The Comforts of Home)

As I scanned Facebook last week, perusing posts on the Nor'easter blizzard, I was struck by two things: 1) the weary resignation of New Yorkers used to the delays and hassles of a large snowfall and 2) the aghast responses of people not native to this area. Winter can elicit that kind of reaction by those unaccustomed to the viciousness of our seasons. It's even built into our sayings—"March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb"—or the even more dramatically Shakespearean "Beware the ides of March". We take pride in this fierceness of our weather, a sign of our enduring nature in even the harshest of conditions.

But there is another side of winter, at least there always has been one for me. Large snowfalls bring on memories of school closings heard on the radio and greeted with an amount of joy that was in direct proportion to the grim set of my mother's mouth. Pancakes were made and eaten quickly, followed by a digging out of hats, mittens, snow pants, ice skates, and sleds. At the end of our expeditions there was always hot chocolate, preceded by the stripping off of wet clothes into the warmth of dry ones. These comforts were our proof we had beaten the environment to overcome the icy grip of winter.

I also remember a paper route my brother and I had. It was a ridiculous undertaking because it was in an area which was really too far away for us to service properly, but since we always had to earn our keep in some way in our household, we bravely soldiered on against the odds. I'll never forget waking up one morning to realize we had to somehow strap down a Sunday's load of papers onto our bikes and cart them almost a mile, some of it downhill. We laughed at the absurdity of this mission, slipping and sliding, our bikes tipping over every ten feet, losing papers along the way, as we came to the realization that our latest venture would have to be abandoned, as it became abundantly clear we would never make good money this way.

And yet, in the middle of this neighborhood I'd never been, tucked away on a street I must have passed by a hundred times on my walk to junior high, I relished the quiet of a peaceful Sunday morning, listening to the gentle whoosh of snow falling. It is so so subtle, the sounds of snow. Have you ever held out your tongue to capture snowflakes? That's what this morning felt like, like my brother and I were the only people on earth to witness this beauty. How gorgeous this house looked, as my brother told a story of how it was built to look like an old plantation house, and where all the servants quarters were, or at least where we imagined them to be, as each shuttered balcony housed its own private pile of snow on its railings, and the chimneys blew out a scent of woodsmoke into the air. The smell of burning fireplaces will always be the smell of winter to me, a welcome herald to the changing of the seasons, as is the clear crispness of cold air, inhaled deeply into ones' lungs. After the swampy heat of summer, physical exertion outdoors takes on a pleasurable aspect once again, as layers of clothes get removed as ones' body heat adjusts.

There is also sadness, too, as I remember the night I realized my grandmother was dying because she was too sick to come home with us, and I was maybe 7, or 8. It had started to snow after nightfall and we had been at the hospital all day. To this day, I can see myself as a child looking back at the hospital, listening to my parents speak to one another, as I tried to make out which lit window was my grandmother's. I'll never forget the way the snow looked as it fell, passing through the glow of a streetlight in that parking lot, as I turned upward to let the snow fall gently onto my face and felt its chill. It was my first encounter with death, and I associate the passing of life with winter, too.

When I wake up to snow, I think of all these things in the bright light of morning, and a feeling of safety comes over me as I drink my coffee and look through the frozen panes of glass. It is harsh, but it is also bearable, and quite beautiful. Stay warm :)

Snow Day

Winter Solstice

The Queen of Clean

One of the more challenging aspects of being a working artist for me has always been promoting myself. On the one hand, we are taught through our training to be self-critical and to auto correct any perceived errors in our creations.

On the other hand, we have to constantly keep ourselves out there and present in the cultural mindset, especially in this age of almost constant marketing at every turn. Truly, midtown Manhattan has become almost Blade Runner in its' visual volume. Our fair city has almost become this futuristic vision in the most trafficked and touristy spots.


Instead of adding to all this visual clutter, I sought to create a page of "quiet" in an effort to cut through all the clutter. A new piece for a new year :)

Halloween Parade

The Annual Halloween Parade of Park Slope, Brooklyn, on the evening of October 31st, 2010. Such a beautiful night for it, too. A bit of chill in the air and very dark, so it was atmospheric. I set the camera to a bunch of settings, but preferred the shots with jittery streaky lights, due to a long exposure from the night setting. It seemed to match the magical mood best.

Hope everyone out there had as great and safe a Halloween as I did. See you soon!

This Is Halloween

My fascination with Halloween has not abated one bit with adulthood. I am still attracted to all sorts of costumes and Day of the Dead festivals, candles, graveyards, ancestors, and many of the imagery associated with feasts which honor the spirits. In my travels, I've seemed to always find the one shop which sells masks catering to these rituals. Maybe because I am multi-ethnic, it's like a beacon; my soul seeks out those things from which my ancestors believed in, and to which I respond. A scientist would take the genetic explanation, that our preferences are passed on through our DNA, and I do agree with that. But when it comes to the supernatural, I've never really needed a long explanation and experiments; I take it on faith. And as an artist, the visual feast these holidays provide is more than mere eye candy, felt long after the sugar tooth ache from candy corns.

In Italy, my first experience was in a narrow cobble-stone street in Venice. On my mother's side, I am Italian through my grandmother, and I was on fire all throughout my Italian trip. It's as beautiful as you can imagine. So, I was in a heightened state of awareness—the art, the architecture, the food, the climate, my senses were reeling from it all. I was married then, and on my honeymoon during the month of September. We were wandering around at night, trying to get lost, far away from the more crowded vias around St. Mark's Square. Mists had come off the water, creating an atmosphere more intense than some movie smoke-machine could dream to. It seemed like the fabric of time between past and present was became thinner, creating a portal, but it's hard to describe. It was like time became elastic, thin, like the air around us, shimmering, alive, and I felt as people had felt for years, at this time, in this place, on this street, at this very moment and every moment before and after.

We heard footsteps, and became concerned, because there was nowhere to go, and we didn't know if we had come upon a dead end. Out of the fog, a man appeared, dressed all in black, like The Plague from Poe's The Masque of Red Death. He had on a cape, a winged hat, black boots, and a black half mask. We were stunned and immobile. I was no longer apprehensive, but completely and utterly captivated because I felt like I wasn't in this time period. I remember I couldn't even see my feet as I looked down, with the mists swirled around my feet. 

We looked after the figure until he disappeared. As we followed his path down the alleyway we found...nothing. It was the end of the street. We rationalized he must have gone into a doorway to some pre-season Carnevale party, but I will never forget that feeling; like anything was possible, and that the limitations of our perceptions can sometimes be chains to the greater elements that exist beyond the terrestrial, beyond the banality day-to-day concerns.

The next day, I made it part of my mission to seek out and acquire the masks of Carnevale, which had so marked my time in Italy. I found two which spoke to me; the infinite jester, and an autumnal version of the Green Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man), both hand-crafted from leather.

My next experience with this particular aspect of the supernatural occurred, naturally, in New Orleans, another city I have responded to deeply. I was living in Colorado, and my boyfriend at the time (I was now divorced) decided to take me there to celebrate my birthday in December. My connection started as soon as I landed in the airport. I can't remember who I handed my license to, perhaps a porter to get my luggage, but he took one look at it, looked me right in the eye, smiled, and said "Welcome home, Miss Doucette" saying my name in its' correct pronunciation.

For you readers who don't know me personally, my last name is an old family name handed down on my fathers' side, and no, it is not French. Rather, I am descended from the original French who settled in Canada, then after their expulsion, founded the colony of New Orleans. During the time of the expulsion, I believe someone tried to anglicize the name from Doucet by adding the extra "te" to the end, but this ruse probably held up little in the face of such an attempt to obliterate people of French Canadian Catholic heritage. But these stories of my heritage are for another post. For now, perhaps they can explain my pull to this place.

In honor of my name, my boyfriend had booked us a balconied room in the French Quarter at the Hotel Ste. Marie. It was old, grand, a bit run down, with tall ceilings and high shutters, ornate wallpaper and antique wood furnishings, right in the heart of the oldest part of French New Orleans. It was, in a word, perfect for me.

We had many adventures on this trip and others to New Orleans, pre-flood: a visit to the graveyard which housed Madame Laveaus' remains, the shop at the House of Voodoo, the requisite morning visits to the Café du Monde for beignets, but always, always this searching the streets and wandering, looking at everything. Some objets drew me, others were tacky tourist souvenirs. I bought a poster from the House of Voodoo, but of course the glass has since cracked. I think we all know what that symbolizes, yes? It is no longer displayed in my home.

As a traveller, I do not like crowded tourist hot spots, because I can't read the city as well, or pick up what it has to tell me, feel the vibrations which mark the character of unique and special cities, so I was glad we avoided the Mardi Gras season, the Catholic pre-Lenten feast. Still, my attractions being what they are, I knew I would find something which would hearkened to that festival, but what?

I'm sure you've already guessed from the pictures, haven't you? Two hand-made Mardi Gras masks. They live on my bedroom wall, along with those from Venice. It was only until I wrote this piece and took pictures of them that I made this realization; the two masks from Italy are for men, and the two from Mardi Gras are for women. There they now co-exist peaceably on my wall, creating a harmonious visual balance between the male and female, my soul souvenirs of the feasts which celebrate the sometimes thin line between our world and the next.

Happy Halloween.

(from Wikipedia) Halloween (or Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday observed on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular celebration...The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes^[2] regarded as the "Celtic New Year".^[3]..The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family's ancestors were honoured and invited home while harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. In Scotland the spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces.^[4]...The souling practice of commemorating the soulspurgatory with candle lanterns carved from turnips, became adapted into the making of jack-o'-lanterns.^[11] In traditional Celtic Halloween festivals, large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces, and placed in windows to ward off evil spirits.^[5]...Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain,^[19] although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.^[20]Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas."^[21] The custom of wearing costumes and masks at Halloween goes back to Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them, in Scotland for instance where the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white.^[22][23] 

Bela Lugosi's Dead

One of the first things new friends learn about me is that my favorite holiday is Halloween, for many reasons. It signals the arrival of my favorite season, Autumn. I love the fall in the northeast and it's crisp, cool weather, with the scent of leaves as they pile up, the colors of changing trees, and a hint of woodsmoke in the air as fireplaces get lit for the first time in the cooler evenings. It makes me feel alive again, after the somnolence and heat of summer. And it's great hiking weather, another passion of mine which all my friends and family know about me.

Aside from the change in weather, I love Halloween for the costumes. And the decorations. And Trick or Treating. Memories of Gate Night pranks. Creepy night-time visits to cemeteries. I adore haunting about old graveyards to look at the sculptures and the tombstones. This year, I plan on finally taking the Greenwood Cemetery tour in Brooklyn. It's one of the most famous graveyards in New York.

I've always had an interest in Gothic art and the religious symbolism of my born faith of Catholicism, along with the darker aspects of human nature. One cannot have a preference and appreciation for the ligher side of life without cultivating an interest in the darker side. As a trained children's book artist, I naturally tend towards themes which scare children universally: death, darkness, gloom, fear, the unknown, change. It marks so much of our childhood experiences, just as much (if not more) than the happy memories we have: traumatic schoolyard experiences, bullies, classroom gaffs, feeling like an outsider, first crushes and broken hearts, being on the cusp of knowledge—children are the original gloomy Goths. Add dressing up in costumes and the quest for candy, and you have concocted the perfect kid's holiday.

We loved every aspect of it in my home: garnishing the banisters with cobwebs, planning (and sometimes making) our costumes, marking out territories for maximum candy intake, competing for the best routes, roaming at dusk with a group of friends and a rush of feeling free as the sugar kicks in, glow sticks, getting scared and scaring ourselves along with the neighborhood kids.

Nothing quite primed the imagination of a budding would-be artist like myself than reading creepy books. I adored (naturally) Edgar Allen Poe, and The Raven. And Stephen Kings' character Pennywise the Clown—an evil, alien clown that preys on children. Yep, that sounded just about terrifying enough to me. Shakespeare, with his ghosts and dead childhood playmates, like Macbeths' graveyard meditation in Hamlet with Yoricks' skull. Horror movies were a Friday night pastime in our household, and each kid had their movie monster bugaboo—my oldest brother was afraid of Frankenstein, my middle brother feared The Wolfman, and I was both fascinated and horrified by vampires, with all the nightmares they bring.

All that paled to discovering Tim Burton as a very young adult. When The Nightmare Before Christmas came out, I just graduated from art school and started my apprenticeship at my first job in publishing, as a production assistant. I remember my friends and classmates telling me "You have to see this. Everything you think about and believe as an artist is in this movie. It's you, Marie!! It's like we're watching you onscreen."

And so it was. The Burton aesthetic lit me up: how definite his P.O.V. is and how strong his personality. Doomed to die (as a part of the accepting human condition), but also deeply funny. How awkward and lonely we all feel at times, yet, this too, is so common and human, so then how lonely are we really, if we all share this feeling? It's a strong bond between us all. For artists, no holiday allows us to truly express ourselves better than Halloween. We get to be wildly creative this one time of year, without impunity. I am known for obscure and nebulous costumes which make you think "What exactly is she?" Hmm, yes. That's a good response.

Last year when I took my niece and nephew trick-or-treating in Brooklyn with my oldest brother,  I came up with a Dark Angel variation, one of my favorite themes. I had many things to consider: the weather was warm so my outfit couldn't be too hot, I didn't want to scare them overmuch or embarrass them with a loud or showy costume, plus I needed to able to walk a lot.

In the next post, I will delve into the flip side of all these demons and ghouls, with an exploration into the religious and cultural components which draw me to this time of year as well. Don't forget all you ghouls and goblins out there, that the very next day is All Saints Day. The ultimate purpose of dressing up is to fool you nasty devils ;) So be on the lookout for that angel looking over your shoulder.

Now, the ultimate question is: what are you going to be for Halloween this year? Stay tuned....

The Rockaways

One of the more surprising aspects of many New Yorker's lives is the presence of an active, old, and enduring beach culture. Too often our visitors hit the big tourist spots in Manhattan, maybe take a ferry ride or two out to the see sites, and just assume we all live on that island.

But the truth is, the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn are part of the larger land mass which forms Long Island. The Rockaways consists of a series of towns on a smaller spit off this island, between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. When you swim (or surf, or kayak) the Rockaways, you are in the Atlantic Ocean. And it's expanse is as wide and vast as that ocean.

I found the most interesting dichotomy to be this difference between an obvious beach culture, and the neighborhood right after the boardwalk, because many parts of the Rockaways border projects and ghettos. It's quite a shock between the two, a stark contrast in feelings and realities, given the beach and all its' connotations. One typically associates "beach" with resorts and vacations hot spots, not a depressed local economy. It is in this sad reality which parts of the Rockaways exist. There is no reason why these beautiful beaches shouldn't attract all kinds of visitors and New Yorkers.

It is my firm hope that after the revitalization project in Coney Island, we all turn our attention back to this place, and help smooth out the contrasts between the boardwalk and the bordering towns. This is New York, and we all deserve to comfortably swim it's shores, in an ocean as beautiful as the Atlantic.

Brooklyn Book Festival

A soggy day for this annual event did not stop the flannel-clad hipsterati of literary Brooklyn from supporting their bibliophilism.

Remembrance

I've always loved the simplicity of two pure, brilliantly bright white lights stretching high up into the clouds. It's beautiful, without being showy or overwrought; spiritual, meditative, and somehow, despite their size, quiet and gentle—a religious depiction of true faith, without hearkening to any particular one.

Whatever the outcome of all the recent construction, power struggles, and political gaming, I feel rest assured my fellow New Yorkers will always cherish this symbol of what remains our devotion to the ideals which this city has come to represent: liberty and justice for all. Displays like these, which mark the significant events that have come to shape the American character, serve as a reminder for us to hold onto all our beliefs and ideals even tighter.

Mourning is public. Grieving is private and personal. These represent both of those states to me.

The Brooklyn Cyclones

Nothing says "Summer" to me like a baseball game. Add in Coney Island, a Nathan's foot long hot dog, Brooklyn Lager in a black can, the boardwalk, surf and sand, and you have one heck of a good time. A Cyclones game is the minor leagues at its' best; where you sit is irrelevant, because you can pretty much sit wherever you want, despite what your ticket says.

There's cheerleaders (!), enthusiastic high school girls who dance on top of the dugouts, the standard t-shirt guns, weird balloon mascots, free jersey night, Thursday nights everyone gets to run the bases, there's fireworks on Fridays, and a real crowd pleaser called King Henry.

Once you've had you fill (of food or the game), all you do is exit through a gate and walk out onto the boardwalk. I always end a game by wading into the water, just a little bit. Please feel free to steal my tradition :)

The Grand Tetons of Wyoming

Mormon Row, in Grand Teton National Park.

The "hole" in the name "Jackson Hole" was originally used to describe a valley, crude as that seems to us now. The Jackson Hole area is actually one big valley next to the Tetons, and they are grand, especially from the backs of our bikes, rented for a tour of the area. Go see it for yourself!
 

The American Bison of Lamar Valley

One of the more interesting facts we learned during our large family vacation (from resident wilderness expert and tour guide extraordinaire, Mike) was the mistake behind the word "buffalo", as it is so often used. Buffalo are the animals from Asia and Africa, while "bison" refers to the American species. It is still allowable in common usage, given the prevalence of the term buffalo in American folklore, like historic songs ("...where the buffalo roam..." ) and mythic stories about the Old West.

It's an overwhelming and emotionally powerful experience to see them in their natural environment; how completely they fit into this big sky landscape! Given the abundance of food for them in their valley home, bison have exploded in population recently, giving us a sense of the originally massive herds that covered the land back then. Settlers once thought the bison of "The American West" were inexhaustible.

But dwindle from over-hunting they did, until finally (in order to re-populate Yellowstone), biologists replenished the wild herd we now see from private stock held in ranches. Those animals were crossbred with the few wild bison left, in order to create the large herds of Yellowstone roaming free that we see today.

It is a breathtaking wildlife preserve, as our very own "American Serengeti": a natural paradise for us here on Earth.

Yellowstone National Park

Geothermal features permeate the park by the thousands, to include: boiling springs, hot springs, both boiling streams and hot streams, mud pots, mud holes, geysers, thermals, cones—every facet of an active live volcano you can think of (besides the more well-known image of exploding lava), is in Yellowstone National Park.

You can easily see the instability of the earth's surface from a just casual walk around the park's most visited areas, especially at its delicate edges, because the landscape there changes and shifts all the time. New hot spots open, become dormant, or shrink and then widen very quickly, as a perfect example of how fast a landscape can alter. A wild and savage beauty, this is "The Great American West" at its finest. You have to see it.

"Siddhartha", revisited.

Siddhartha has always been the quintessential coming-of-age story for me, especially since I was a teenager the first time I read it. Having to re-design a book cover for it at the age of 40 was an incredible experience.

There was so much detail packed into every page, so much we all learn as we go about about living life, that as I re-read it, I kept nodding my head "yes" in agreement to almost every paragraph. It was richer to me than before, almost beyond belief.

How similar and timeless the human struggle for life and the pursuit of happiness is; something we as a species all share. It deserves to be the well-read classic it has become. Endurable. And such a slim volume, really, but that's all it has to be. It is a lot like life; short and sweet, with all its' highs and lows, it's all of it, and for that, it is perfect.