Big Eyes, Big Ears and "Beautiful Junk"

Window shopping in second-hand stores has joys all its own. While regular mall shopping might reveal the toddler having a pre-nap meltdown, seniors out for exercise, or teens tracking down the latest fashion, it’s at thrifts, antique malls and flea markets that stories, histories and memories really come out to play.

Even if you’re not in the market for anything in particular, a quiet afternoon stroll perusing the shelves of a thrift or the booths of a flea market can be free, whimsical entertainment. And it promises everything from humor and happiness to a certain amount of comfortably kitschy horror. All you have to do is open your eyes and your ears.
You might hear cheers, as someone reunites with the same dishes they remember Grandma serving on 20 years ago.

Or like this weekend, a woman on her cell spent time describing in patient detail a series of vintage copper Jell-O molds to a friend. “Are you still looking for some? They have a really nice aged look to them... And there’s a crab, a fish, and some grapes... Oh, wait! Here are three more small ones! Do you think you’d want them? I’ll buy them and bring them right over...”

You might spy that couple who stands before a booth, weighing every purchase together with the gravity of international peace negotiations... Where a single kitchen canister gets the same attention and deep consideration that buying a car or signing a nuclear arms treaty might.

Walk around one of these merchandise meccas of Memories, and you might even become inadvertently educated about the unexpected. For instance, I had no idea until recently there was actually a special tool-- small wooden tongs-- to be used specifically for removing toast from a toaster. Me, I had always left it up to chance, dexterity and the electric company.
Sometimes, you'll discover others like you, wandering the aisles in wide-eyed wonder. At the UFO in Greensburg not long ago, I passed a lady going the opposite direction down their overspilling dollar shelves. Vintage glass shone with possibility. The woman turned and smiled, knowing she'd passed a kindred treasure hunter. "Beautiful junk," she said to me. It was as if it were part of some unfinished thrifting Haiku.

And I had to agree, as I scanned the milk glass, the crystal, the aged bottles; it was. Somewhere, someday, someone would give it a home.

And of course, sometimes thrifting and other secondhand stores reveal the strange and unusual. In the last week, I've seen two plaster courting couple plaques that I will not-so-regretfully fail to decorate my French blue sitting room with... Their clumsy figures and awkward paint job would probably have made Boucher reconsider the cheeky shepherd genre.

Later, I did a double-take on a baby-doll with a lamp harp jutting out of her head. Many a tot may have found mental trauma in some of the toys that have made their way to secondhand stores.

And, then there's the virtually inexplicable. Is this a human? A beloved dog? Why is it wearing Carol Channing's hair?Perhaps it is Sir Elton John in his thin days without his big glasses. Here, I'll give you a closer view so you can truly immerse yourself in The Art.
Questions abound!

(And no, I didn't buy it. I have left it at the Ohio River Boulevard antique mall for others to spy out of the corner of their eyes, stop dead in the hallway, and drag friends over to see.

Which leaves me with today's questions: have you ever overheard something entertaining at a thrift store or other treasure hunting place?

And what, do you think, this last painting portrays exactly?

Inquiring minds want to know! :)

Treasures from Throwaways- or- Marge Gets Maniacal

Reuse is great for the environment. It can be a great test of your creativity, too. In Better Homes and Gardens "Treasures from Throwaways"-- circa 1976-- this book offers some clever little projects to recycle household items into artistic decor for your home...

But we'll talk about those next week. This week, we'll talk about the projects that perplex... shock... and would make you tell the well-meaning home-owner, "Wow, that's really... interesting, Marge."

Like when you're visiting Marge and she offers you a soda-pop. She watches you with keen eyes as you drink that cola right down. She waits for the last drops of the liquid to be consumed and then-- she snatches the can from you and runs off to her project room, laughing maniacally to herself.

"Er, what're you doing, Marge?" you ask suspiciously at the doorway. But then you look around her craft room and your question is answered.

Owls.

Tin can owls. There are hundreds of them there. Hundreds. Displayed in varying positions and styles. Barn owls... Snowy owls... Screech owls...

"Gee, Marge," you say. "You've been really, um, busy since the last time I saw you."

"I've got a whole case of soda cans to recycle," she tells you. "And I've found the best way to really use the owls to their advantage!... Come with me!"

Motioning, she leads you into the guest room. And there you see it.


The tin can owl mobile.

Marge turns on her heel and beams at you. "Don't you just love it?"

"That's really... impressive. Um, were there owls in that Hitchcock movie with Tippy Hedren, by any chance?"

You make a note to yourself not to ever stay overnight in Marge's guest room.

"Oh, and did I show you these great vases I made?" she asks. She leads you into her teen daughter's room and grins. "Can you guess what they were originally?"


"Aw, just go ahead and surprise me."

"Tennis ball cans!" she exclaims in delight.

"And those flowers?"

"Tissue paper, cardboard and wire!"

"Gee, Marge, does Chuck know you've converted all of his tennis ball cans into pop art vases?"

She waves it away. "He hasn't noticed yet. He's really into golfing at the moment. It'll be months before he wonders where his balls are. Oh-- but I've completed a few more projects, too."

"I can hardly wait."

"This was for Chuck and his buddies' poker night," she says, leading you into the den.


"Gosh, a beer can table how... different! Chuck must have gained a few pounds, drinking up all that beer."

"No, that was me. I had to. I wanted it to be a surprise. The Bud and Miller were okay, but the Schlitz was a little strong for my taste."

"You drank all that beer yourself? Well, this is starting to explain quite a bit."

She blinks wide blue eyes. "Do you think your husband will want one? Because I have some extra cans."

You assure Marge that you and your husband are pretty good on coffeetables right now, but you'll let her know if you decide to redecorate.

"Well, come see my new sitting room. You remember how boring it was before? I'd wanted something with a little more energy."


And she got it, you assure her.

"Gosh, it's like a scoreboard fell on a bunch of Pittsburgh Steelers fans," you say before you can stop yourself. "Very peppy!" you add, as a clever save.

"The table is supported by steel drums. I have some extras which we use for Music Nights."

"Oh, do you?" You hope your smile doesn't look too strained. The patterns in this room are starting to make you a little nauseous. Black and white numbers are swimming before your eyes. "Um-- I'm not feeling quite well. Could I go splash some cold water on my face?" you ask.

"Sure, the powder room is this way."


You press a cold wet washcloth to your temples as hundreds of magazine models stare at you, looking like they feel all fresh and breezy, and not ready to expel a whole can of cola. Some of the models are peeling off the walls a bit due to the room's moisture, you notice.

This certainly wasn't here before. Hadn't the bathroom been a simple powder blue not long ago? You're starting to get really worried about your dear friend Marge. You step from the bathroom no more refreshed than you were before.

And Marge is waiting.

"The magazines..." you say.

"Oh yes!" Marge says, eyes alight. "Isn't it divine? And when I get tired of seeing a particular cover, I just pull it off the wall and put another one in its place! So easy!"

"You got all of these ideas from a book, or something?"

"Oh, it was such a eye-opener to an entirely recyclable way of life!" Marge tells you. "It changed how I see simply everything!"

"It does seem that way," you agree.

"If you're feeling a little better, come and see what I did to Sally's room."


Stepping into Sally's room, you feel like you've fallen through the rabbit hole. You feel Marge might have almost hit on a doable style here, but there's just something about that armoire that bugs you.

It's the eyes. The eyes on that Alice character.


Alice seems to have gotten into the same beer Marge has. Or possibly something more potent.

"You look kind of pale," Marge says with concern. We'll go sit for a while in the family room."

You thank her for her concern and try to tell yourself, how bad could the sitting room be? Then you see the giant heating pipe snake.



"We don't use this room as much as I'd like," Marge admits. "I don't know why, but the kids actually won't come in here. Which is such a shame. I mean, look how cleverly this pipe transitions into an overhead light."

"Oh, is that what it is?" you ask, waiting a moment or two to see if the lighting bears its fangs and strikes. "...I hate to be such a nuisance today, but do you think I could, um, have a glass of water?"

"Sure. Of course there's soda or beer, as well. I could use a few more empty cans..."

"No, no. Just water would be perfect."

Marge bustles off to get you a glass of water. You can see a bit of the kitchen from here, and it appears on one wall she has made a mural of a tree using harvest-colored shag carpet remnants.


Your head pounds. You turn away from the berber foliage. And now you notice what's happened to the antique typewriter her dad had left her.


It looks like it was a casualty in a Fruit Stripe Gum factory explosion. You are a bit dizzy from the swirling colors as Marge returns with your water.

"I see you're admiring the typewriter," she says.

You take the water from her hand and chug it, then wipe your mouth on the back of your hand. You don't care about ladylike propriety anymore.

"Can the kids still do their homework on it?"

"Oh nooo," coos Marge, like the very thought of that is silly. "It's transformed beyond just a mere typewriter now."

"It has?"

"Why, yes! It's a note holder."

"A note holder..."

"Sure! Say I have something I need to tell Chuck. Well, I just write it on a slip of paper, tuck it into the typewriter, and he's sure to see it."

"So you don't, er, type the messages."

"As I said, it's found its higher purpose now. It doesn't need to do that silly typing anymore." Marge sounds a bit irritated at having to explain this, and a chill runs up and down your spine.

You hand Marge your empty water glass. "Thanks, Marge, for everything today. But I think I'm just going to go home and lie down."

"You mean you don't want to stay and join us for Family Music Night?" she asks. "We've made all of our own instruments. And we sure could use a steel drummer!"


"I'll have to pass. Maybe some other time."

You grab your purse, coat and hat and run for the station wagon as fast as you can without looking too suspicious. You break a heel on your way, but you just decide to leave it. Marge will put it to use, anyway...

Yes, indeed, Marge will put it to use.
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• For folks who missed out on last week's Treasure Box Wednesday, where we take a look at collector's books, click here.
• And last Sunday's post, Finding Vintage Romance in Today's Independent art discusses a few artists and photographers out there capturing the romance, beauty and whimsy with their creative eyes. Click here to read that.

And next week, we'll take a look at some really workable and clever trash-to-treasure ideas from the very same Better Homes and Gardens book we examined with Marge today.

Marge won't be joining us, incidentally. She's currently at "Happy Acres Convalescent Home for the Stressed and Strained."

Hope to see you next week!

When Good Crafts Go Bad

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again... Someone famous once said that. Probably director Terry Gilliam after “Don Quixote” fell apart.

But as anyone who crafts will tell you, there are the craft projects that turn out nicely, maybe even better than expected. And then there are... well... the sorts of projects I’ll be showing you today.

My hope is that others will benefit from my crafting and artistic mishaps, and avoid these particular errors themselves. And for those who don’t currently craft, or who have always wanted to try a particular craft and are afraid of the consequences, I hope you’ll see that there are folks like me out here crafting-- happy, forging ahead, undaunted-- who are COMPLETELY clueless sometimes. And so there’s nothing to fear and everything to learn by taking some time and giving it a shot.

Will there be mess? Yes, unquestionably! Ugliness? Like Medusa on a bad hair day! Poor planning? Like roadwork in spring! But we laugh it off and carry on. When it works, it’s all worth it. Every bit of it.

And here we go.

The Mad Mosaic Window
In the movie Spinal Tap, one character marvels that there’s “such a fine line between stupid and clever.” And this, I fear, trods on that line.

I was looking for an inexpensive way to make myself a stained glass style window to sit in my dining room picture window. So I bought an interesting and cheap old window at an architectural salvage place. Then I started gluing. This has bits of a broken table lamp in it. Flat marbles from a floral display. Stained glass. And a few extra lamp crystals I happened to have lying around.

And WOW does it look it! Especially in person.

The funny thing was, no matter how many hours I spent gluing on these darned pieces of glass, I still wasn’t filling up the space. It’s as if the more I would add to it, the more the clear space was expanding like the universe itself. And the lamp bits? No matter how small the lamp glass was, it still wouldn’t lay flat. So from the other side, you can totally see all the glue I had to add, just to get things to stick.

I do like the colors. And as you can see, the light does go nicely through it, highlighting the glass and the, er, crystalline globs of glue. So this window remains in my basement-- far, far from unsuspecting guests-- until I can either think of a way to correct it, or, well, until I’m a very old lady and have to move into assisted living.


The Pepto Bismol Globe Shade

I have my great-aunt’s pink Victorian oil lamp with yellow flowers. It came to me missing its globe shade. Seeking to restore my beloved relative’s antique possession, one day I had the bright idea that I would paint a globe shade to match it. So I found a clear glass shade, got myself some glass paint in the proper shade of pink, read the instructions, followed them precisely, and began to paint.

What I did not realize was that glass paint is not really meant to be brushed on to cover large surfaces. And if used in that manner, it will never be, say, EVEN. Or DRY. So the more paint I added, the more streaky, drippy flat and uneven the shade actually began to look. It was like someone spilled a bottle of Pepto and left it. To repair the situation, I thought I could even it out by spraying it with a clear frosted glass spray.

And then it began to crackle. So instead of the makings of a restored Victorian lamp, I had a globe shade with eczema.

This globe now sits in the basement where it can chat with the window about misplaced intentions.

Future Thrift Store Art
The rose. Artists and poets have been inspired by roses for centuries. And if roses actually looked the way I currently paint roses, I really do believe a lot less poetry would have been written on the whole.

I am close-ish. But I have yet to learn what I’m fully doing wrong. I tend to get lost, somehow, in petals and shadowing. And while the composition itself is usually not too bad, and they are in fact identifiable as roses, the execution always ends up looking either muddy or cartoony or both. This one below, this one with its black, brown and 70s red has a color scheme that reminds me of Johnny Cash at a Harley Davidson convention.

And the one here below...

... on the surface it doesn’t seem too bad. But somewhere along the way I was apparently a little bit negligent on stems. One... two... three... four flower heads. One... two... three... no, just three... stems? Well, one is... hiding. Sure, hiding. Or one stem goes to two flowers. Hard to say which, really. Perhaps it’s a bit of MC Escher’s influence.

Needless to say, I am unwilling to forgo my rose obsession just because of a few deformed flowers. So I figure eventually if I keep at it, something will click, and I’ll finally paint a rose worth displaying outside of (you guessed it) the basement. I think I’m getting there.

Then there was my art class “Moody Blue Pepper Among Monochrome Artichoke and Eggplant.” It symbolizes the isolation that individuals feel when tossed into an urban, hustle bustle society and...

Actually, I just wanted to try out my Pthalo Blue.

Anyway, those are just a few of my artistic and creative oopsies within the last year or so. I hope you either got a chuckle, got inspired to try something you might not have otherwise, or felt a little consolation on a past errant project of your own.

And next week? I will share with you the recipe for one very sweet Valentines treat. See you then!

Sunday Drivers of Thrift Store Art

I saw Elvis at the Goodwill. A five-foot-tall velvet Elvis, that is. He was in profile, crooning into the microphone. Young Elvis with an unnatural chin. Wearing an Old Elvis jumpsuit…

“Bubba Ho-Tep” Elvis, really.

And the next time I returned to the store? Elvis had vanished. Clearly, someone was all shook up by the opportunity.

Yes, thrift store art is growing in desirability. Velvet Elvises (Elvii?) are not as common as they once were. Prints of big-eyed children are rare commodities. And vintage paint-by-numbers actually show up for sale in antique malls.

But me, I’m more neo-Victorian in my tastes. So while good Bad Art certainly does bring a smile, I figure the shortage of velvet Elvii and sad-eyed urchins is probably something I can endure. Instead, I will simply have to carry on in my quest for Sunday Paintings.

Sunday Paintings, you probably already know, got their name because Sunday was when Victorian ladies would have the time to spend on leisurely activity like art. Subject matter during this time leaned heavily toward still-lifes and landscapes.

Today, work in this spirit will occasionally show up at thrift stores. Think of your Aunt Tillie who took that art class in the 70s. Or your Grandma Esther who always had artistic flair. These are the masters of current Sunday Paintings-- and the products of their labor can work beautifully with vintage decor.

Like the best thrift store art, a Sunday Painting’s charm is often in what the artist felt she needed to express but couldn’t quite perfect. The missing shadow. The skewed road. The barn which defies all proper safety regulations. These weren’t the paintings that the artist and her family decided to keep, cherish and pass down for generations-- for whatever reason. No, these are the ones she used to hone her craft and fill a creative need. Thrift store paintings are the love of art and the learning process laid bare.

But like velvet bullfighters and paint-by-number kittens, Sunday Paintings are becoming harder to find. My last great discovery happened about two months ago, when I stepped inside the back room of a Salvation Army, wholly unaware of the treasures that awaited me.

And there, propped in a far corner, was a painting of a castle. “Unusual subject matter for a thrift store painting, and clearly embracing the perspective techniques of medieval scribes!” I exclaimed.

I was making my move to secure this little masterpiece when my sharp-witted shopping buddy gasped and caught my attention, pointing to the opposite corner of the room. I was awestruck.


“A still life! Note the deft brushwork and classic composition! Also, it will match my dining room.”

I thanked my friend for her acute understanding of my style, and seized that painting, too.

And over here what was this?

Swans! A landscape with swans, whose slender necks turn, as they contemplate just who installed the overhead lighting under that natural bridge. I was in my glory!

There were about three more paintings-- some children with balloons and a rural scene-- which I did not buy, mainly because, unlike the ones in my arms, I didn’t know just where I’d display them. Dolores Sinay was clearly a prolific painter with a flair for the romantic! I had not had such a day since the Tapestry Chair Score of 2005.

Then as I was checking out, the cashier explained how the artist herself had come in to donate them. And the gist of the story is that Ms. Sinay felt that while her skill had improved significantly since painting them, these works of art were simply not good enough to give to family and friends.

Me, I display them proudly, as delighted with their quirks as with their obvious promise.

And that’s the beauty of thrift store art, isn’t it? Thrift stores are the places where everything gets a second life.