History

The family mythology on my mother's side was that we came to the U.S. as fine English gardeners to a rarefied family in Cleveland.

This summer, I was at my grandmother's and found this album filled with images that provided us with unprecedented access into their lives.

I followed them as they worked in the greenhouse...




Climbed up onto the roof...


Took part in a summer fair...


and danced around a maypole.


Fell in love...




and played.

Indicators of a coming Apocalypse

This never happens.

Ever.






When it's raining frogs and Pi ceases to be 3.14 - don't say I didn't warn you.

A short stay in Michigan

This weekend I went on short (but highly enjoyable) mini-break in Michigan.

The Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso was holding its first Steam Fest - which is one of those odd things that you find out about in 1 of 2 ways:
1: You are - or are related to - those who actively seek out steam engines (I fall into the category of the latter - although having been acclimated to the sound of a steam whistle by age 8, I was just as likely to yell "Steam engine!" knowing full well I'd be hastily tossed into the car to chase it as far as we could.)
2: You went to college with the person who coordinated the event and can't escape its presence on Facebook.

I fall into both categories, actually.

It was a bit of a last minute decision to attend, and because the event was in a smallish town with accommodations sold out in a 50 mile radius, Ann Arbor was the city of choice.

We stayed at a wonderful B&B called Vitosha - The bike at the door was indicator enough that I would enjoy my stay...



The room had a view of the courtyard from the charming veranda...



We reached the festival and were quickly swept up in the sights, sounds, & smells of steam...









After we got our bearings - we took a short excursion that was pulled first by a diesel - then back by a small steam engine.

Of course, we had tea...





I think I may be returning for a fall excursion with my parents - once lured by the siren song of a steam whistle, it's difficult to escape it's grasp.

Low-key night

I stayed in tonight and it was glorious.
No bags to pack, no road to hit, no reservation to meet.

I wandered over to Pinky's Day Planner and left there thinking I may commission her make a jacket I coveted so many years ago.

I saw that Asterisk Gallery was open and stopped in to see 103 and Counting. Great work as always - I walked away wanting one of Sally Matia's pieces and loving that we have so much talent here.

I finished up with a sundae from Scoops to reward myself for all the gym workouts, and sat on my backporch enjoying the fallness of fall.

Later, I scanned and organized pictures, each one reminding me how much life I've led and how much more I've yet to do.

Flying in planes...



Playing on beaches... (On season and off)



Being cute... (Hello - can you believe I hated how I looked when I was 22?)



Racing with the motliest of motley crews...



Attending historic tree-plantings... (Newton's Apple Tree @ Case)



Conserving mosaics and paintings 60' up on scaffolding... (Despite a debilitating fear of heights)



Hey...

I'm pretty awesome.

Because the story is everything

I love a good story.
And like anything else the delight is in the details.
It's never just a man in a room, it's man in bespoke three-piece linen suit, edges slightly frayed from wear, sitting with a little more elegance for the cut, in a room filled with souvenirs of a life fully lived.

I never fill a room with "stuff," I fill it to tell a story.
Those stories vary - some tell an honest history of me, some tell of the life I wish I had lived, and some point to the life I plan on living... when I get around to it.

Most of my themes revolve around the train of thought that certain experiences indicate a particular strength of character.

I'm partial to stories of ex-pats, especially early 20th century women who go from genteel society to pioneer. Delicate flowers who leave the superficial debutante scene to keep house at the mercy of an untamed land. Osa Johnson, Grace Crile, Beryl Markham, Karen Blitzen and Elspeth Huxley are the keepers of some of my favorite stories.

So, little surprise that when I was introduced to the J. Peterman catalogue circa 1994, I was entranced. To me, it was so much more than the ridiculous narratives that accompanied the vague sketches, it was the inherent lack of concern that the whole thing had for the opinions of anyone else.

The clothes were from the closet of someone who eschewed the look of the moment and wore a hand-made suit handed down from her mother, or the caftan she wore on weekends of her three-month safari - it was the closet of the sincere eccentric I was in training to become.

Years passed, Seinfeld made it the butt of so, so many jokes - and Peterman eventually went bankrupt. But I started watching his website.. and first he continued to sell his cologne and the duster... and slowly, kept adding merchandise over the years.

I'm happy to share that it seems to be back, and as romantic as ever...

Between the years 1906 and 1939, a trickle, then a light rainfall, then a downpour, of Englishmen, Germans, Scots, and some remarkable women, began to fall upon the immense gorgeous plateau of East Africa.
Some came for a year, and stayed a lifetime. Some came to farm; or make a fortune; or to put something awful far behind. Don’t ask what.
All came to start life over again. Fresh.
Discovered they hadn’t been expelled from a Garden of Eden after all, but were just now entering one.
That first night they lay awake listening, hearing Africa, hearing for the first time how to hear.
And how to read a flattened blade of grass: who or what had passed through here; and exactly how long ago.
It was paradise. It lasted three decades. Days of laughing, dancing, talking all night; ostrich omelettes the morning after; walking thirty miles to see an ocean of oryx, a river of hippos; flying low over a sea of wildebeest; driving among elephants in a maharajah’s 3-axle Buick; great luxury; great simplicity.
We couldn’t bring back the era, but here are some of the clothes, judiciously updated for today’s Karen Blixen.

I'm not quite as smitten with it as I was 14 years ago, but I still very, very much appreciate the ideal of the people he intends to sell to - who we are, where we've been and what we can eventually become.

Another doodle

I don't remember if I've posted this or not - but I always loved this map of life given to me about 10 years ago.

Self-protrait

Two dorky girls glowing with glee.

Work in Progress I

Happy February!
About a year ago or more (cringe) I took on a project for our family to organize and create a generational quilt for my grandmother.

Pretty basic, just squares with embroidered hand prints and names... but I wanted to do something fancy for the center.

So of course it took me ages to get things back on track. This week I swore I would have the top done to hand over to my aunt to quilt and finish....

Ta Da!



Close up...

Cambridge Graffiti

Right before the holidays, there was a news story about drawings of penguins found in a basement at Cambridge by Shackleton and Scott.



They reminded me a of photo I took of a corner where someone had scratched directions to the river Cam in the medieval maze of the city. My guess is that someone wrote that years ago, and generations later, there has always been a punter with a piece of chalk ready to carry on the tradition of directing people to the river.



Something about this graffiti is charming... maybe its the ephemeral nature of the medium? Maybe the simplicity and sincerity of the message? Or perhaps the priority these otherwise brilliant minds seem to place playfulness...

If you get to Cambridge and love a good graffito, don't miss these and The Eagle Pub where the RAF soldiers all left their marks in soot on the ceilings during air raids.

When the gales of November come early

Don't forget to dust off the Gordon Lightfoot and crack open a bottle.

Here's to the wives and the sons and the daughters.

weep

Madeleine L'Engle died today.

Read her books, if you haven't already.

I always wanted to be Meg Murray and someday meet my Calvin O'Keefe.
What a great example of awkward teenage love...

Is there anything more pure, more baggage-free, more soul-comforting than 100% unsullied-by-time nerd-love?

No.

No there isn't.

*sigh*

In Grantchester, in Grantchester!

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: According to 2 other versions of the poem, I found this phrase, "ei’ qe genoi mhn" - in place of this phrase, "Uítu gunoímen." The explanation reads as such: Epsilon-Iota/Theta-Epsilon /Gamma-Epsilon-Nu-Omicron-Iota/ Mu-Eta-Nu"

Which still means little to me - (It's all Greek to me...?) - ideas, thoughts translations? Again, please share.

UPDATE: No, I have no idea what "Uítu gunoímen" translates to... if you know, please share.

Excerpts from "Grantchester" by Rupert Brooke, May 1912

"Uítu gunoímen . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! -- -
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson notes, with studious eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by . . .



God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of that district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester."

For entire text, click here

photo by l. perkowski

Oh yeah...

Well I have Christopher Walken's HEAD.

circa August 2001

Thought

You know what I haven't done in a while...?



...ridden a carousel.

That sounds like fun.

Fallen: Work from another lost artist (Spring 2004)

I was free-lancing at museums prior to returning to school for my masters. As before, there are always artists working there to pay the bills and subsidize their real pursuits.

In spring 2004, I worked with a photographer named April. I loved her work and was totally game when she asked me to participate, esp. since she wanted to evoke broke-down fallen and otherwise disheveled.

My Road Map

Years ago I worked in a museum with a brilliant mountmaker/artist/musician/what-have-you. The details escape me, but I was confused about some decision and after hearing me out, he drew this.

It cuts right through the shit, doesn't it?

That's about the path that things have taken so far... I don't expect it to detangle any time soon.

If DaVinci had photographed me.

I worked with a number of excellent and prolific artists when I lived in Arizona. Among them was Julie, who was doing alot of work based on traditional mythologies. Unfortunately, I have lost track of many of these individuals, including her (the state and the line of work were both filled with nomads easily lost).

But I recently came upon this this photo she took. It was sometime in 1998 - taken with a Polaroid instant camera. She was doing a piece that included Lachesis and Atropos and wanted a refererence for flowing hair. So we tried a number of ways to capture hair in motion... swinging my head, hanging the hair downward, lying down with hair spread out... and this was one of the "failures." But the motion created such beautiful abstraction and the chiaroscuro is amazing.

I don't know if the piece was ever finished, or the hair properly captured... but I've always loved this photograph.