Make a Moo Or Two: Vintage Love

They are young, they are in love, they have great hair.

I like the Moo format so I thought I'd have a go at this week's Make A Moo Or Two challenge: Vintage Love. As good an excuse as any for a bit of silliness.

Theme Thursday: 4 x 4

BOUND

This week's Theme Thursday challenge is a 4 x 4 inch piece on any theme. This is the current version of something I'm working on at the moment.

Think Monday - Think ATC: Ice Blue

This week's Think Monday_Think ATC challenge has given me an excuse to work with another of my Lapland photographs.

See more of my Lapland images on flickr at this link

Quirkie 73: Mrs Whistler finally gets a visitor

"Old Mrs Whistler? Oh yeah, she's in the room at the end of the corridor. Funny old stick, doesn't say much, never wants to go in the lounge with the others. We've put a telly in her room but she hardly ever watches it. She's got a son, artist or something like that, but he never comes to visit her. Would you like to take her cup of tea in with you?"

This week's Quirkie challenge over at Digital Art Quirks was to create an image that incorporated the painting Whistler's Mother, a cool colour and some lace. This is my response.

It can be a lonely, scary place and we're all going there.
Please support Help The Aged and Age Concern
http://www.helptheaged.org.uk/en-gb
http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/default.asp

All items were fished out of the cyber sea

Gothic Arches Challenge: Gypsies

Shrine 1: Shave Green

When freedom is taken away
The Flower of life shall wither
And none but those weeping
Shall be found on the face of the earth

Sven Berlin - Dromengro: Man Of The Road

I've only just discovered that his week's Gothic Arches challenge is Gypsies. As it happens, there is a work in my gallery that is a Gothic Arch, if rather a large one. The piece is actually a 120cm x 120cm light box.
Shrine 1: Shave Green commemorates the Romanies and Travellers of the New Forest in Hampshire who, for centuries, enjoyed tolerance and free movement. From 1926 they were forced to live in seven restricted compounds where, despite oppressive and unsanitary conditions, they formed remarkable community settlements. The locations of the compounds are now regarded as secret and sacred places, treasured by many Romanies and Travellers. The late, great, Mr Len Smith, Romany scholar and political activist, took me to the beautiful Shave Green site, where I took these photographs. He also introduced me to the work of artist Sven Berlin who befriended and lived amongst the New Forest Gypsies.
The young girl was Dosha Wells, a New Forest Romany whose descendants still own the coral necklace.

This work is dedicated to the memory of Mr Len Smith, British Romanies and Travellers who are still fighting to be given equal respect amongst other ethnic minorities and my own Romany and Traveller friends and forebears of whom I am deeply proud.

Whither must I wander?

Home no more home to me,
Whither must I wander?

Robert Louis Stevenson

Many of us who grew up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s have memories of cheery Tyrolean-themed ornaments brightening up our homes. I lived at my grandparents' house and on the mantelpiece in their bedroom, there sat a little wooden log cabin that was supposed to predict the weather. When a tiny man holding an umbrella emerged from the left hand side doorway, rain was sure to follow. If the little dirndl-clad fraulein popped out of the other door, then it was going to be fine. Nan and Grandad also had a small collection of glass-fronted boxes, plaques and paper weights containing still-life arrangements of shells and dried flowers in front of views of Bournemouth, Broadway and Stratford upon Avon. I imagined them them as portals through the dull, tired wallpaper of our Black Country home into a world where every day was cheerful and sunny and so nobody needed a Tyrolean weather forecasting log-cabin.
The photograph of my grandmother and aunt was taken sometime between 1955 and 59. After leaving technical college, my aunt lived for a while in Austria before emigrating to America where she still lives.
What the three little girls who appear to have just escaped from their mountain iydll are about to get up to, I leave to your imaginations...


Credits: papers: Flitting Fall Faeries by Lorie Davison ; Happy Day by Studio Natali
wooden frame: Flitting Fall Faeries by Lorie Davison; glass in frame: empty broche element (modified) from Vintage Elements by Linda GB (www.scrapartist.com); card frame: Recollections kit by Christina Renee;
chain: Playing with Chains by Studio Natali

China figurines, dried flowers and postcard are my own work

Days like this

I Put This Moment Here