RMW Ramblings

  Cottage Mermaid While rebuilding from our Isabel flood (September 2003) I constructed a small closet in the kitchen recycling a door and trim from an old non-functional toilet stall from another room. Since we have very high ceilings I included a transom door to access the higher space in the closet. I painted a very human mermaid swimming in a fantasy aquascape on a panel inside the beaded board transom door. Most of our visitors never know she is hidden there.  

 Carl Larsson Art With My Remarques Carl Larsson was a turn of the 20th century artist in the spirit of the Arts & Crafts movement.  He is best known for his depictions of domestic life at his family's home, Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn, Sweden.  We have visit his home, now a museum, and have a collection of books of his art and life, and several prints of his art. I made two large prints from images on a Larsson calendar which I scanned and printed at high resolution on an oversized printer.  Since the aspect ratio of the images did not correspond to that of the frames I was using, I provided an oversized border on one edge of each and painted on each my own remarques in Larsson's style, themed from details in Larsson's painting.  I've never heard of prints being remarqued by other then the original artist, but I suppose that some have been fraudulently done and passed along as being from the artist's own hand.  I had no intent to deceive; these were don...

  Strigilation Sand & Water Strigilation is a term for a sinuous pattern found on classical urns, architecture, and such.  It echos the patterns found in nature.  Here is our stratigulated sand and water by our cottage.

  The Mystery of Ruth Belew And the Dell Mapbacks   As a kid in the 1940’s I was fascinated by the piles of paperback mysteries that sat around my grandmother’s cottage.   I poured over them in the flickering yellow light of the “coal-oil” (kerosene) lamp   while playing Hot Pretzels or The Pennsylvania Polka   on the crank-up Victrola.    I studied them carefully, but I wasn’t reading the stories.   Instead I was fascinated with the covers.   Specifically the back covers.   The mysteries   were 25¢ Dell paperbacks, those we know today as “mapbacks.”       Over the years I have accumulated two dozen or so of these graphic design classics.   They were produced from 1943 to 1953.   They had a style all their own.   Dell Books was a venture of George Delacourte, a New York publisher, and Lloyd Smith of Western Printing and Lithography in Racine, Wisconsin.   (Much of this information comes...