Yesterday my sister and I headed to Oregon City where there were over 70 garage sales this weekend, many in the lovely historic district of town. It was, unfortunately, one of the hottest days of the year hovering around 100, but we soldiered on and still found many wonderful things!
Ancient puppet women from Thailand, barn owl wings, a vintage double hourglass housed in bamboo and wrapped with metal, several wonderful old boxes to work in, an ancient domino set, and 3 very old handcarved duck decoys (3/$10), and much more. There were also things for the house and garden...wine glasses and weed barrier cloth. It was a very productive day! Now I'm ready to work again.
Pictured above is a whimsical, light piece...not my norm...but once I put those curlique wood pieces on the side of the box, it seemed that was where it wanted to go. The wooden "gateway" above her, the lace arch in the background and the 3 stars above her were all bins finds. On the right are plastic tree branches (probably from a Halloween decoration, also at the bins as was she and the giant die she is sitting on). Her painted face has a rather quizzical expression on it so once I got that far, I wasn't sure where this thing was going. Then I looked at my cluttered desk, and saw the taped together black envelope that has written on top "Fragile....frog inside" . You may wonder where that would have come from, but once my sister found a small frog that had become flattened by a passing vehicle. The dried out, very flat frog, was then sent to me with the cautionary words on the envelope.
Anyway, that jumped up at me, nearly flying into my hand and from there it landed in the tree branch, and I knew the damsel in distress was looking for her frog prince and the piece became "The Kiss", a title stolen from one of my all-time favorite pieces of art by Klimt.
(The Kiss, copyright by Diane Lou 2010. 16"x12"x4")