Happy Holidays Everybody!

We piled into our 10 year old Volvo last night, picked up our friends the Gregory’s, and went off on our annual search for the Best Holiday Home Display. We’re tough critics. We’ve only awarded three perfect 10s in Rochester – one with a nearly life-sized Santa landing on the side yard in a helicopter and another with all the usual snowpeople, angels, and santas but also lighted palm trees, dancing dolphins and a garbage truck sized elephant. Obviously, tons of lights – all colors and some blinking – are basic requirements and music is always a nice touch.

This was our first nighttime excursion through the neighborhoods of our winter home here in North Carolina and I must tell you, it’s hard to get too excited about Christmas with temperatures still hovering around 60 and too many (ho-hum) displays of white lights on shrubs.

Then we found the open garage door at John Montalbano’s house.

From the driveway, you first notice the mid-range ear split buzz of model trains almost but not quite drowning out the Christmas music. Get closer….and closer….and THERE THEY ARE! Dozens of model trains race around tracks weaving through an idealist version of a village Christmas. Houses and storefronts glow. Nearly every tree is decked out with glittering lights while tiny people ice skate on ponds, sled down hills or wander the sidewalks. 0ne small boy perpetually makes snow angels. In the outdoor drive-in movie theater “White Christmas” - the real thing! - is playing to a few parked sedans.

John began this extravaganza seven years ago to cheer up his neighbor Grace. Grace is a double breast cancer survivor (The village includes “Grace Bridge. Really! Could her name be any more perfect for this entire concept?) A large bottle sits beside the garage door to accept donations to a Charlotte cancer research center.

John says he collects display parts mostly from garage sales and flea markets all year – everything carefully stored in plastic boxes until the first of November when he begins construction. His goal is to finish the installation by Thanksgiving when he hosts an unveiling party for his immediate neighbors. From then through December, the garage doors are open every evening for gawkers – any age – and John stands by to answer questions.

We clapped for John, for the trains, for the generosity of the holidays but we only gave John a score of 9.5. After all, there wasn’t an elephant in sight.

(For more info about Trains for a Cure, go to his web site: john@trainsforacure.org.)

PS More Photographs of Urban

Urban Ugly

I know these things about urban decay:

It doesn’t happen quickly but inches up on a city block by block.

What I call “visual ugliness,” someone else argues “part of business.”

Pride of Place depends on obsessive attention to detail.

Almost always, the people who are most attuned to visual cues – ARTISTS – are too busy or too self-absorbed to take on the Crisis of Ugly.

Finally, yes, there are grave problems of homelessness and hopelessness in ours and every other city, but Beauty and Stewardship of our Environment lifts across economic and social lines.

These are a few photos taken ONLY along East Avenue, our Grand Entrance to Downtown Rochester, terminating at the Liberty Pole, our city’s “living room,” with one or two along University’s Neighborhood of the Arts directly behind the George Eastman House, one of our cultural jewels.

As you see, I'm not a big fan of painted fiberglass objects: horses, animals, benches, et.al. At first, they are fun - for about one summer. They have a bad habit, however, of becoming permanent - decayed or not - and what was "fun" quickly morphs into bad streetside clutter. The worse part: people feel they've spent $$$ on public art. They have not. It's kitch. Please support artists! Buy the real stuff!

EXTREME MATERIALS II and MORE MAG

Yesterday I toured “Extreme Materials II” at Memorial Art Gallery. Putting words to intuition is my challenge and frankly, my intuition after this viewing was “ho hum, you really can’t go home again.” I remember writing a rave review of the first “Extreme,” a show that revealed a light-hearted soul. For the most part, the current show just tries too hard – and mostly fails.

There are the usual pieces trying to shock - a dress made out of condoms, a cake made out of tampons, a “drawing” made with blood. Sorry. Been there/seen that. The single piece that did move me was a pearl bonnet made from millions of corsage pins. Angela Ellsworth, its creator, grew up a Mormon, and WOW! Does this piece ever speak loud and clear about the restraints of women, particularly in that society.

Mostly, after reading the art review in City Newspaper, I really wanted to see Jennifer Angus’ installation “Creature Comforts.” This installation fills the entire Lockhart Gallery space with wall drawings (note: drawing medium: dead bugs.) The City reviewer wondered how people could voice such outrage over Otterness’ misstep (see previous blog entry) but casually accept this dead bug creation. Are puppies more important than bugs? Is there a hierarchy that dictates which killing is acceptable and why?

WELL!! This does illicit some soul searching! How do we feel about killing … anything?

I admit that without so much as a qualm, I swat flies, mosquitoes, and set traps for mice in my attic. These guys are fine in their own space but not in mine. I’ve recently given up eating meat products, not because of some enlightened political awareness of the cruelty being inflicted in this industry but because I’ve become convinced that my own health will improve with a “green diet.”

As for Jennifer Angus’ bugs, her effort leaves me dismally unmoved. I cannot call it art. Maybe it illustrates a certain craftsmanship like stenciling or beadwork or…something. Pinning bugs to a background is hardly new; Victorians did it all the time. Visit any natural museum to come away awed by the beauty and variety of insects.

So I’m back to the original question: because Angus’ installation is NOT art but simply arrangement and Otterness did his dirty deed in the name of ART (CAPITAL LETTERS), it seems to me that yes, there is a difference. Is this dishonest? Am I just moving the rules around? These thoughts flew around my brain at 3 o’clock this morning.

And then, PRESTO FIXO, ten minutes ago, an email came to me with these Otterness images of some of his current work and I know what it is about him that disturbs me most: I just don’t believe he regrets shooting that dog!

Call it whatever you want, meanness and torture in the name of art is still meanness and torture.

Is This a Fight Worth Taking On?

Tom Otterness adopted a puppy from an animal shelter, tied it to a fence and shot it. He called it performance art and filmed the entire episode for gallery viewing.

Shocking? Today, he would face prosecution – certainly public condemnation. I can’t imagine any art gallery or museum condoning such extravagant lack of moral integrity. But back in 1977 when this event took place, few people ever heard of PETA. Football star Michael Vick had not been jailed for promoting dog fighting. The ASPCA maintained a near invisible profile and newspapers rarely ran stories of starving farmyard animals.

Now, thirty years later, Otterness is one of the country’s top “go-to” guys for public art. He’s established a successful career making big, comfy bronze sculptures of cute animals and marshmellowy people. Most recently, Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery awarded him nearly a million dollars to produce two sculptures for their re-configured University Avenue entrance.

The fun begins! The Democrat & Chronicle ran a piece exposing Otterness’ controversial history on September 29, 2011, but before that, PETA members began making some noise and several MAG members cancelled their museum membership in protest.

Rochester is late coming to this party. Otterness lost several BIG commissions in 2008 when this became news and San Francisco cancelled their contracts with him. Otterness apparently said “I’m sorry…I was young” or something equally inconsequential and continued making pieces for schools, parks, and subway stations in New York City. With this history, the selection committee at MAG selected this artist for one of our cities largest, richest art commissions. Not only is this artwork among the highest price Rochester has arguably ever spent on art (and that’s a sad story right there), it announces our collective value-taste by it’s position at the entrance to our art suppository.

How could they? Didn’t they see this coming?

First, the popularity of this artist speaks volumes about where we’ve gone collectively with public art. Selection committees do NOT WANT SERIOUS ART. They want “likable art,” that doesn’t rattle patrons nor whisper of any controversy. Please! No ideas! Gentle fun is called for and if it appeals to children especially, the artist has hit a home run! One might think that the campus of an art museum could be safe from the slings and arrows of art conservatives, that this is the singular place for challenging, thought provoking work. Obviously, in Rochester, NY, this would be a wrong assessment. Our beloved institution proves yet again that it will always take the middle road, erring on the lower side when necessary.

As for Otterness, setting aside the lack of artistry in his work – he is a very good equipment designer and his timing seems inspired! – he must be one of the more intellectually challenged artist I’ve heard of recently. A serious question: does youth ever erase the act of cruelty? I know lots of mothers who begin instilling the opposite message in their children at earliest ages. But having “done the deed” and been called out on it, wouldn’t you think Otterness might come up with a way to public ally atone for his misstep? A significant public gift to a zoo, establishing a foundation to aid the fight for animal rights, endowing a prize for beginner sculptors – any of these might be a start. A simple verbal “I’m sorry” will not do the trick.

Cutting Edge Art at Culver Road Armory

There’s a new art player in town.

Actually, not so new: art dealer Deborah Ronnen has quietly sold mega-$ of fine art from her home studio for years. She’s the “go-to” lady for gold-coast name prints, photographs and paintings. She has also served on boards for Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, Garth Fagan Dance and the New York State Council on the Arts. She’s sponsored shows at Memorial Art Gallery and Rochester Contemporary Art Center and made sizeable donations to Eastman Museum of Photography.

In other words, she’s got art cred the likes of few others in our little Upstate town.

Ronnen used some of that muscle to open the inaugural cultural series at the Culver Road Armory. The exhibition is cutting edge work by sculptor/artist Mark Fox and runs from September 10 through October 2, 2011.

I am told that the opening was HUGE – lots of people (everybody from a “who’s who” list of Rochester movers and shakers) and lots of sales of artwork priced from $5 to $15 thou. I was out of town and missed the gala. In fact, I haven’t seen the installation yet. And the big question: is this a one-shot deal or is Ronnen going to continue running an actual art gallery in the newly rehabbed space?

Since my return to Rochester last week, the topic of Ronnen and this art venture has surfaced in more than one conversation. One comment by a Rochester photographer – “but she doesn’t do anything for Rochester artists” – jogged my philosophical brain into motion. This is a position often repeated in Rochester aimed at nearly all our institutions from Memorial Art Gallery to Arts for Greater Rochester and ALWAYS when there are a few bucks to spend on public art, the cry goes up “don’t give the job to out-of-town people!”

In the past, I’ve wondered exactly what it all means. Do Rochester artists weigh the merit of everything so personally? Are we so insecure that we can’t stand the wider competition? Do we really want to stay so insular?

Does the art community deserve the Smug Town label along side the very same institutions/organizations we poke fun of?

Deborah Ronnen’s success in Rochester could not exist without the history we share here. She stands on the shoulders of Jackie Shulman who started Oxford Gallery nearly forty years ago, Shop One begun during the 1960s, Gallery 696… and on and on. It’s an art history that educates viewers who first ridicule, then question, then (sometimes) come to appreciate cutting edge art. I think Ronnen is aware of her heritage but I’m not always so sure that practicing artists (and sometimes, our art institutions) realize the importance of pushing boundaries. Sometimes we need an “in your face” look at what goes on in the rest of the world outside the safety of our home town.

The 63rd Semi-Annual Finger Lakes Exhibit at Memorial Art Gallery

Have you noticed the avalanche of memoirs on bookshelves? A memoir examines an event or a specific period of time in the writer’s life; an autobiography is his or her story of the whole enchilada. A safe assumption is that a memoir writer thinks his/her childhood was especially unique, h/h brush with death/illness/addiction unusually traumatic and h/h hometown full of the funniest, quirkiest characters. None of this is to be kept secret. The silent, stoic type has been replaced by the victim-who-has-lived through-pure-hell-and-needs-to-share-the-story-and-cry-with-the-world.

(This probably says something about the times we find ourselves living through but I’m not here to pick through that particular pile of existential trash.)

Have you looked through the movie page lately and counted how many blockbusters are stories of apocalypse, Armageddon averted at the last minute by….TA! DA! …MR. AMERICA or some other cartoon/fantasy character? I wonder when cartoonists became so revered?

These are two very specific and easily observable trends. So does art predict or follow popular culture? Is art merely another arm of the cultural body or are it’s eyes on a different landscape? Keep this in mind when you walk through the current Finger Lakes exhibition on view (through Sept. 25) at Memorial Art Gallery. I like unraveling networks to see connections. In this show, you can keep a scorecard and make a game - "Spot the Trend" - of it with your kids.

When a piece stands apart from the script, does that suggest the artist is receiving different signals? Maybe. PAY ATTENTION.

This exhibit is full of really bad stuff…photographs that look like pages from a cheap calendar, drawings that look like an Art 101 project, watercolor that looks like wallpaper. It's always true with this kind of juried show and that's half the fun of walking through it. But there are some thoughtful pieces too. Here are a few random pictures I've copied. I do like Frank Petronio's photographs and this one particularly (Rand Street? Looks more like Germany or gritty Liverpool.) and Marissa Turin's "home..." drawing is memoir raised to a most inventive level. As for the rest of the show, you decide.

For more, visit the MAG web site: http://mag.rochester.edu/exhibitions/63rd-rochester-finger-lakes-exhibition/

Fiber at Memorial Art Gallery

Every three years the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh pulls together an international show meant to wow us all with the creativity of artists working with textiles. The 2010 exhibit included 81 people from 14 countries and after debuting in Pittsburgh, the show is now on a 3-stop national tour. One of those venues is our very own Memorial Art Gallery where the work may be viewed until July 3.

I visited the gallery this week and I will admit to only the few of you who read this blog: I have more questions than insight. So I’m going to put my questions out there and I invite anybody to challenge, share, illuminate, educate….whatever your take on this, I’m happy to pass along.

First, it feels like a HUGE SHOW. But none of the pieces is especially monumental in scale and in fact, many are tiny. So why does the show seem to inhale space?

Of the 81 included artists, I noted only two or three male names; all others are female. What does this say about the medium? Does tradition refuse to die? Is there something in the female DNA that pushes us to historic ritual (dying, spinning, weaving, needlework) or is this learned?

The overarching response to the work is WHAT TEDIUM! HOW MUCH PATIENCE IS REQUIRED TO DO THIS AND IS THE MAKER BLIND YET? But is this response appropriate/necessary/even a consideration to good/great art? Where is the line between technical virtuosity and artistic expression? And if you’re aware of the debate when you look at a piece, has the piece automatically failed as a work of art?

Jack Lenore Larson was trained in textile art (at Cranbrook I think?) and went on to develop and run one of the most successful commercial high-end designer textile firms in the world. (He also has a great garden that I’d love to visit someday.) Is he an artist or a brilliant businessman? Which box would he check?

International art star Cristo “wraps” buildings, bridges – Central Park and an island! - with fabric. Does this make him a “fiber artist?” Why not? Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish I think?) exploded onto the international art world with her fiber “corpses”. I saw one of her shows last year at Davidson College in North Carolina and it was haunting. One of her works is at Storm King Art Park (in a glass Sleeping Beauty dome.) How does she fit into the world of textile art? Or has she jumped out of any material classification?

By naming the exhibit “Fiberarts,” have we already limited the artistic value?

Smalltown, U.S.A.

Never underestimate small towns. With the slightest nudge, they reveal fascinating history, quirky characters and nearly always the good heartedness we all hope to claim as our heritage. Mt. Morris, New York, is one of those small towns.

Mt. Morris hunkers down in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York, near Letchworth State Park (site of the “Grand Canyon of the East"), in Livingston County.

The Mt. Morris Dam (nearly 1000 ft. across and 250 feet high) was built here in the 1950s preventing the Genesee River from flooding downstream and leading to the town’s motto: “The Best Town by a dam site!” (That right there is good enough reason to love this small town.) Mt. Morris also brags that Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance, was a homegrown boy and that the largest epileptic colony in the country was once here. Now it’s a prison - a sad poetry in this coincidence.

Drive through the town center and up Murray Hill and you come into a campus of towering trees and quietly imposing two and three story red brick buildings each with a multi-paned glass sunroom on its top floor. Originally the estate of James Murray who owned local glass works and mills in the 1800s, the estate was given to New York and turned into a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1930.

Tuberculosis was proclaimed “vanquished” by the spectrum of antibiotics available by the 1970s. Tuberculosis centers everywhere were shut down and within a few years, the campus on Murray Hill was turned over to Livingston County. Now it houses county social services of all kinds and headquarters for the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts.

The arts council is in what once was physician housing which may explain the three kitchens in the relatively small building. Along with office space and gift shop, the Council runs the New Deal Gallery named for the 230 easel paintings discovered throughout the sanitarium facility. These paintings are works by Upstate New York artists, all purchased under the auspices of the WPA New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s and installed throughout the hospital at the request of the insightful director who convinced the WPA Board that original art would make patients feel better.

The artistic merit of these works is uneven; most pieces would never be included in any museum collection although I love Petra Mearns' painting. It reminds me of works by Frieda Kahlo who was painting similar images at the same time a half-continent removed from Upstate. (Petra Mearns invented the Scotch Cooler, proof that creative expression is seldom channeled in only one direction.)

But there is more to learn from this collection. Even mediocre art often adds huge dimension to our mythology, artistic expression is worthwhile even when the maker sees no or little reward and sometimes someone comes along with the power/money/authority who understands the human requirement for visual healing. The rest of us can only be thankful.

(These paintings all need restoration work. Even a small donation can help. Send to “Adopt Art”, c/o the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts, Bldg. 4, Murray Hill Drive, Mt. Morris, NY 14510. And a big thanks to Kathryn Hollinger, Arts Director, who lights up the walls with her enthusiasm.)

Public Spaces: Size Matters!

(My blog title says “Rochester Art Review” but I’ve spent months now talking about gardens, art and events in North Carolina. Should I rename the site? Reopen a second one that deals strictly with “the south?” Does it matter?)

I took a side trip to Asheville last week. It’s a beautiful small city in the Smokey Mountains steeped in surprising architectural richness, a deep history of both traditional and contemporary art and crafts, and a liberal acceptance of racial and sexual diversity. The University of North Carolina has a large campus in Asheville: there’s a major teaching hospital that’s always expanding. The Biltmore is there – the closest “castle” we have on the U.S. eastern seaboard (open to the public, still in the private hands of a Vanderbilt whose family built this estate) with grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmstead - one of his grandest achievements along with Central Park, NYC.

A newer attraction in Asheville is the North Carolina Arboretum.

The arboretum was planned during the 1980’s, built in the late 1990’s, and added to every year since – the newest room/garden, the Bonsai Exhibition Garden, was installed in 2005.

I love visiting gardens and I especially adore stonework. North Carolina is full of stone; it gets used often and well and in this arboretum, the stonework is magnificent. I don’t know of many projects built since the 1930s WPA projects that have featured such beautiful stonework – evidence of so much hand labor – or such top quality materials showcased in a public project.

But (here it comes!), it costs over $5 million to keep the gates open (according to its 2008 annual report) and 58% of that $ comes from the state of NC. If my calculations are correct, for every person who stops to visit (entrance fee is $8), NC taxpayers shell out approx. $15. This at a time when the State is nearly broke and libraries and schools are closing.

What bothered me even more was the nagging feeling that this garden was simply not appropriate for its setting. Really now, how can a prissy little patch of annuals compete with the grandeur of those mountains? Yes, there are hiking trails but the area is sitting astride one of our nation’s ultimate hiking trails. Presumably, part of the goal of this venture is to teach students natural history of the region (Bonsai? A part of the regional history?) And ecology but everywhere I looked, I saw the result of continuing intensive labor – pruning, pollarding, pleaching.

I’ve often been at the front of the line pleading for beauty, art, and good design in public spaces. With that advocacy must come responsibility: appropriateness to setting and history both past and future. Where is Olmstead when you most need that vision?

AN ART-WARMING STORY

I never heard of Felrath Hines until this morning. He was born in 1913 in Indianapolis and while working as a dining car waiter, took his first painting lessons in his 20s. He entered the Chicago Institute of Art when he was 31.

Hines ultimately became a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art, then chief conservator at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and retired as chief conservator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He died at 79 in 1993.

For all those years, he continued to paint, seldom exploiting exhibition opportunities that he surely had. When he was invited by the Whitney Museum to exhibit in a show called “Contemporary Black Artists in America” (the exhibit helped catapult his friend Romare Bearden and other black artists to the spotlight), he declined saying “I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a black artist.” Instead, he quietly stacked finished work in the attic of the home he shared with his wife and family.

Last summer the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N.C., mounted a retrospective of his “color balance” paintings to good reviews and his widow continues to donate his work to the Ackland Art Museum at the U. of N.C. in Chapel Hill. All this makes a good story. But it’s not the end (at least, for today.)

Lawrence Toppman covers art and culture for the Charlotte “Observer.” He and his schoolteacher wife saw that Durham exhibit and fell head over elbow for Hines’ paintings and began tracing connections to a gallery source in New York City. After various failed tries of contacting the gallery through modern electronics, they climbed aboard a plane for New York City for a weekend search. The SoHo gallery had closed.

This is a news reporter after all; he wasn’t ready to give up. Next he contacted a Nasher Museum employee who put the Toppmans in touch with Hines’ widow. The couple took a week of vacation time, flew to Massachusetts (in February…in the snow…in one of the worst winters that area has had in years!) for a visit and left carrying their very own watercolor original.

To make the purchase even more interesting, they hand-carried the painting aboard the plane but the it didn’t fit under the seat or above in the luggage rack. The idea of checking it and watching it hurled into the hold of the plane was rejected out of hand and so they ended up purchasing a third seat and belted their new baby safely in for the ride back to Charlotte.

Toppmans are a two-income family but together, no one could call a school teacher and local news writer “wealthy.” They must have swallowed hard before taking the plunge (Hines' oil paintings generally sell in the $5 - $10,000 range - watercolors on paper, substantially less. ) Yet, they went to these extremes to own a small bit of paper with some painted triangles that was produced by someone they had never heard of until last summer purely because they connected spiritually with that work.

Just when I’m falling into the abyss of art cynicism, here comes a hook that brings me off the cliff. I’ve never met the Topphams but I love them instinctively and I love their story.

Happy March!

A PEARL WORTH KEEPING

Bishopville, South Carolina, is a tiny town about two hours by car from my home near Charlotte, North Carolina. Pearl Fryar lives there. His house is brick, single story - a typical southern 50’s suburban style - sitting on 3 acres of mostly flat yard, a yard that Pearl - all by himself - has turned into an explosion of topiary and sculpture.

When Pearl was 40, he decided to enter a local garden contest. He had no formal training – not in horticulture, art, marketing, or gardening design. He was “handy.” He had a full-time job that paid a living wage with full benefits (it was the 1970s) and a wife who obviously loved and trusted her husband.

She needed all that because the next thing she knew, she was looking out her window at her husband, standing on top of a 14 foot ladder with a chain saw in his hands about to carve up a spruce tree. That was the beginning.

Pearl said “Success is determined by hard work. Nothing good ever comes out of negative thinking.”

In his book OUTLIERS, Malcolm Gladwell refers to a magical 10,000 hours, the necessary experimentation investment to achieve success in nearly any given field. It was the time The Beatles spent honing their music ears in German bars before returning to England with the sound that would send them to the world music stage. It was the hours that teen age Bill Gates spent isolated with a university computer absorbing and pushing the limits of a foreign technology.

Pearl would know all about that. He’s been at this hobby for over thirty years. A few years ago, he was “discovered” by gardeners of America, HGTV, and Martha Stewart. PBS filmed a documentary of his life and art (the movie was subsequently shown in independent theaters) and his topiary was included in an important university review of North American folk art.

Now tour buses regularly drive down Main Street, Bishopville, en route to his house expecting to walk through the garden and perhaps find Pearl, now crowding 80 years old, standing on a ladder clipping a wayward green branch. His wife will tell you that's where he spends most of his days.

This Friday night, Pearl will speak at the Cornelius Art Center (N.C.) where a photographic exhibit of his lawn/yard/garden/outdoor gallery is on view throughout February. Unfortunately, I can’t be there to hear him but that’s all right. His life choices speak loudly enough for me.

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One huge problem with outdoor spaces such as Pearl’s: what happens when the creative genius is gone? Who protects the work from unsympathetic chain saw wielders?

Recently, The National Garden Conservancy took responsibility and has added the Pearl Fryar outdoor gallery to its list of national treasures. The NGC does what it can with limited resources. Consider helping them with a $$$ donation.

NEW BEGINNINGS

The holidays are over. Ready or not, we are launched into 2011. I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions but I do believe in new beginnings and always, new ideas.

Spending time with people outside my own age-geographic-political persuasion spurs me to investigate alien territory. My grandchildren play this role. I always assumed that “cinnamons” were little red, hard, hot candies but now I know that my grandsons are cinnamons - red heads.

I wore a new necklace last week and my daughter, Holley, (the font of all things trendy) said, “Mom, you’ve got a steampunk necklace.” (The necklace: an old domino, various nuts and springs, an antique typewriter letter all threaded on black rubber.)

Obvious question: what is steampunk? That led to neo-Victorian. Wow! Here comes a bunch of those intertwining threads that somehow I’d observed but not connected.

Victorians embraced nature (but “embraced” may be too kind. “Control” is better.) They incorporated examples of the natural world in all design and art. Dark wood, lots of metal (industrial?) – often transposing hard with soft, i.e. lace, velvet, industrial played against the softness and beauty of nature.

So what have we been seeing these past couple of years? The photographs I’ve found are a beginning. So was the headline in the style section of the newspaper “It’s the Year of Velvet.” Now that we have a category, look around and you’ll start seeing neo-Victorian cropping up everywhere.

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This is a time to stop and consider the blessings of this past year. Here is my partial list. Please make your own.

1) Observing first hand the wild North Carolina wisteria in bloom

2) The color taupe

3) Watching the international space station cross the black sky with my grands

4) Lucy and Abbey who finally stopped chewing up oriental rugs

5) Finding buyers for slightly used oriental rugs

6) M&Ms

7) “Winter’s Bone” – my pick for best movie of the year

8) Creative people (you know who you are)

Happy New Year, dear friends.