this is something of a continuation from my last blog, I went to this huge flea market in Sparks and they had all sorts of "trash" or "treasures" depending on how you want to look at it, I saw both for sure and I flexed all sorts of personal urge control from buying all sorts of stuff. I do love old stuff, it is so unique and it has a patina and I love to think of who first had it or where it has been over time or who has cherished this thing or of course who had it and is now dead (I can be a teensy bit morbid, what can I say) it is fascinating to me. I guess that kinda leads me into this post, I came across a bunch of old photos and I love just to look at them and picture those people as if they were living today and see what they are wearing and see if they look weathered and stuff like that... anyway I came across this couple, aren't they a pair?? I have to say that if the woman wasn't wearing a dress I might think they were 2 dudes and check out those hands! WOW, them are big for lady hands!! Look at the his coat and how it is buttoned, all the little details. I wonder if these two had been married for years and raised tons of children and livestock and worked the land and finally saved up enough for one of them fancy portraits like folk in the big city get.
This weekend I went with my friend Donna to a mega huge flea market: here is the description-SPARKS - - 1st SUNDAY-Road and K-7 Hwy. Seasonal market, Sparks Flea Market. 290th Sunday in may and the three preceding days. Also held in mid July, Labor Day weekend and a 5 day show late in fall. Call for specific dates. Free adm & ample parking. Indoor and outdoor market. Market is strong on quality antiques, collectibles, and antique furniture. Lots of great collectible/smalls spreads here along with many high grade quality dealers that set excellent booths. Approx 4-500 dealers.
I saw some pretty crazy stuff, unfortunately my camera battery was dying so I didn't get a lot of photos. There was plenty of "awesomely gross" things like this wolf and owl duo, the gross factor is just how dirty these things were, ewww. There were tons of vendors and they had some interesting set ups, some stuff was under canopys or umbrellas or in some funky old beat up houses or old store buildings, but my all time fave was in a super creepy mobile home. It was just as cool to see the insides of these places as to browse through all the stuff. Next time I will have my camera charged for sure. I scored a great buy! I got a danish modern bench for ok ready, $10 friggin dollars yeah, crazy, the guy who had it said he didn't want to haul it back. Sure it needs LOTS of love but it is sturdy and all I need to do is sand it down, refinish it and make some cushions, considering I got it for 10 bucks that isn't bad!!! I think I want to have it in my basement in my screenprint studio, since it is a wooden frame it won't pick up any of that basement funk. It was the only "modern" thing I saw there, I had to rescue it! I took a only a couple of other pics and I will post those too. The crazy baby heads are a picture for my friend flora and the johnny walker pic is for my friend Mimi, I thought of them when I saw this stuff. The wolf, i'm posting that twice, just look at his plastic face sewn onto that dirty plush body, ha, and that dirty little owl pal of his.
Awww, look it's some frolicking chihuahuas in the garden. I'm not sure about the colors yet but here is a clean layout .
from art unleashed I had some sketches that I thought I could still play around with if I decide to burn some screens. I still think I do everything too clean and orderly and I feel like I need to reverse more stuff out and loosen the heck up. I could always add some typography too or a doodle or swash, or... call it a day. We'll see later. Here are the sketches and I will play some more.
This year for art unleashed I wanted to screenprint again and of course I had to use chihuahuas as my subject matter so I did some sketches and decided to pretend it was a little poster. I love to design posters!! I will share some of those later. Now that I am more familiar with my screenprint studio and I have more confidence with it I have been experimenting more so on this particular piece I have so many different looking versions of the same design, I used different colored papers and I handdrew on a bunch of the papers before I printed on them. The prints are missing a white diamond coming out of his hand an white being on the skull because I haven't burned that screen yet. I need to take some more photos to show some of those but for now I have a couple of detail shots. I love the way screenprint looks when it is slightly off register and the colors overlap or they glom up just a bit in one spot while in another they are really thin. SO COOL. With my set-up I need to keep things kinda chunky because I don't have access to a vaccuum light table for exposing the screens but for what I have I think it's not bad.
