RMW Ramblings

  The Secret Garden Coulisse Earlier this year ( https://rmw-ramblings.blogspot.com/2024/07/over-mantle-secret-garden.html ) I posted my painting The Secret Garden."       For a Christmas present for great-granddaughter Alaina, who is in the painting with her great-grandmother, I created a coulisse version. The scene is reconstructed in layers similar to theatrical sets.  Using Photoshop I modified the image to achieve an aspect ration to fit an 8 x 10 inch frame, then made three prints for the three layers.  Each layer was laminated to black foam core,   The assembled layers were attached to the back of an 8 x 10 inch frame under glass. 

  Christmas 2024 Looking Back to a '50s Christmas Here's our 64th home designed Christmas card: And here is our seasonal display in our library of framed 8 x 10 prints of most of the card images from the last few decades:

  A Christmas "Tree" My library ladder is seeing temporary duty substituting for a Christmas tree. A color changing Christmas tree light tops a grouping of books on the top. The glass hanging ornaments are mostly salvaged light fixture pendalogues.  On the top step is a small retablo style creche, possibly from Mexico

  Autumn Leaves The ginkgos and sweetgums are at their peak color now.  I celebrated them in the past by painting this diptych, framed in a thrift store folding copper frame.  [Mixed media on hardboard, 3 x 5 in. ea.]   Here in past photos are our sweetgums and ginkgos nearby on Greenhill Ave.  

  Bridges of the Brandywine In my posting last month, The Three Bridges ( https://rmw-ramblings.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-three-bridges.html),  I mentioned that that project lead me to investigating all of the other bridges over the Brandywine in the Delaware section.  I visited and photographed all of them and researched their historic predecessors in the photo collections at the Delaware Historic Society and the Hagley Museum Library.  I painted watercolor views of each of them, then using scans of the individual paintings created a pictorial map of the Brandywine.  I had 18 x 24 inch prints of  Bridges of the Brandywine produced.   The border of the print is modeled on the truss work of some of these bridges.  The legend is modeled on Delaware historic markers.  For display I built a frame overlaid with truss-like metalwork built from pieces of an old Erector set. I have some copies of this print/poster still available.

  Sentinels These three storey buildings mark the beginning at Union St. of the W 17th St. climb up the hill to its terminus at Rising Sun Lane.  They are no longer near-mirror images, as the building on the east side of the intersection, right side of the painting, has been significantly altered in appearance.  I have painted Sentinels as they, in my imagination, might have appeared in the 1920s.  The current number 10 bus line was then a trolley line. I have taken some liberties with some of the architectural details and have omitted some visual clutter.  My starting reference was a cellphone panned photo taken from the south side of Union St.  Wilmington's Public School 13 faced up 17th St. from this spot in the 1920s, long since replaced by Highlands Elementary School, recently renamed in honor of Joseph E. Johnson, Jr.  The old No. 13 school survives in much modified form as offices of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington's Dialog   I believe...