dirndl skirt's Open Salon Blog

Peg O' My Heart

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:05:03 -0400

My grandfather on my father’s side, “Pappaw” Watts, was a foreman at PP&L (Pennsylvania Power and Light) and Renaissance man: a self-taught musician, poet, photographer, and beekeeper. He also was a Depression-era poster boy for saving things that he might need someday. Pushing that common trait one step further, he took apart every machine that crossed his path, separating its components into individual jars and containers. An aneurysm (“the size of a grapefruit,” he’d say with perverse pride for nearly a decade, refusing surgery), finally got the better of him in 1998.

We all went into the labyrinth of the basement and discovered poems, darkroom equipment, bee notebooks, boxes of every kind of gauge, gadget, and geegaw, and, of course, the jars. I took his pegboard treasures to use in the assemblage art I was starting to do in my Brooklyn apartment. In 2000, I bought my little house upstate primarily to turn the garage into my own workshop/art studio, and continue with this calling. But life events got in the way. After 9/11 I started writing, not assemblage-ing.

Pappaw’s stuff is finally ready for its close up. A person cared enough about me and my dream to make it happen in just a few months. He was not daunted by the leaky roof, the carpenter ant infestation, and a decade of my own personal (and highly subjective) hoarding of “things that I might need someday.” He understood and transcended my vision, performing a miracle on no budget.

Just like my grandfather would have done.

pappaw's stuff...

heart of darkness

dividing the garage

gettin' ready

there were many more, but some didn't make the journey intact

Reddi Kilowatt says OK!

My town's Open Studio Tour on April 29 included this newly minted studio.

And I have a new favorite place to hang out.

pics & words ~ sharon watts

more assemblage art here: dirndylskirt.wordpress.com

The Dichotomy of Me

Tue, 1 May 2012 16:05:24 -0400

My avatar here is only one side of me. It is the part that says “Hey! Look at me!” and represents my illustration style. Kind of girly and fun, whimsical and retro-chic. It’s on my website and business card, and I guess you could call it part of my “brand licensing,” although that phrase never existed when I was in my real heyday. It suggests not only that the glass is half-full but probably fizzing over.

If you look behind the confident pose, the red skirt, you’ll see a truer picture of who I am. And the way I am choosing to live a creative life.

This would be done in a slower time, with quiet materials. Lost trinkets, loose threads, bits of packaging that once protected fragile items. Strands of wire, shards of glass, backdrops of chipboard. Old family photos, fading memories, passed along to me, the human reliquary who finds meaning in far too many things.

Today I received an email notice to enter an art competition. Feeling that it might finally be time to push this very personal side of me into the glare of a spotlight, out of the quiet corners, I started uploading images. I reached the end: the point where I would pay either $25 or $50. I went back and read the fine print:

Share your work with friends, family and colleagues and have them collect your artwork for a chance at the $2,500 People's Choice Award.

Just follow this checklist and you’ll be on your way to being the People’s Choice Artist:

Share

+ Show off your profile with the share buttons on your portfolio
+ Encourage the people you know to spread the word about your entry to their friends

Get Collected

+ Have your friends hit the Collect button to collect you
+ The more collections you get into, the higher your chances of winning the People's Choice Prize
+ The highest collected artist will be the People's Choice Artist and receive a $2,500 cash grant.

Thanks for participating and good luck!

And I realized that I just can’t. I can’t hawk my work on Facebook and try to win a popularity contest. I can’t bother people this way. More importantly, I can’t do this to myself.

I am having trouble finding a real world to live in, to work in, to share in. I’ve wrestled with my attitude almost every day for the last few years, and I keep coming back to some true north in my soul.

Sometimes I’m flying, not falling.

words & art copyright Sharon Watts

My Vinyl Mania

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:04:59 -0400

MarianneSP and I have something in common: a fondness for thrift shop record oddities. Sometimes it was the bad taste of the cover that would send me diving for my Pac-Man change purse. This was primarily in the 1980s when I was embracing kitsch with a near religious fervor. Other times the vintage graphics and art were actually tasteful and fresh to my post-modern sensibilities. Mostly, well, the product was just plain strange. So of course, I had to have it. Some samples, sitting on the top shelf of a bakers rack that holds all my vinyl and turntable:

Frances Faye:"that mad gal from the Gowanus"!

The Louvin Brothers' classic

Ethel Smith, "First Lady of the Organ"

frisky risque art detail

my original 78 ~ Terrytoons' Mighty Mouse theme

Souvenir records from Times Square's

Hubert's Museum (Home of the Trained Flea Circus)

More Frances Faye

Next My Vinyl Mania will be my religious records.

photos property of author

video courtesy YouTube

For Trayvon, for Justice ~ Hoodie pic

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:03:03 -0400

Meandering and Meeting-Up

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:03:43 -0400

My first visit to NYC was in 1970; I was in the eleventh grade and on a school trip. We stayed at the New Yorker on 34th and 8th, across the street from the newly erected Madison Square Garden, with the adjacent block still a large construction site. I couldn’t wait to escape the confines of the hotel to hit the streets, and in no time flat encountered a flasher, a man on a dolly who had no body below his waist, and Macy’s. Revisiting this area reminds me how much has changed, and how much remains the same: in spirit, and sometimes in reality. I meandered about, capturing (or trying to) the feelings of then and now. The carrot at the end of the stick was meeting the charming and dynamic Alysa as well as the very vibrant other OSers that took up residence in the back of Coopers, which did not exist back in the day. I wish I could have stayed and talked to everyone more, but I had a train to catch. A future OS sleepover was suggested. I am not sure the bed bug problem has been solved.

And here is what you've been waiting for~ unfortunately I didn't get a chance to take everyone's pic and I had to leave early. Quel dommage! It was more fun to chat than snap, I guess.

Cranky & Jaime

Seth & Alysa ~ eyes wide shut (I have a gift)

Frank & Sally

Alysa et moi