A Smile to Start the Week With.........

Following on the cozy Brits theme of last Friday.......... 

Here's a little bit of granny chic for you all from a clever girl in Norfolk, featured in a recent Cote Ouest (click to link) October/November 2010.   Just the place for tea in bed and storybooks or tickling (at length) small rosy-cheeked children.  Red stripes are also featured rather heavily in this edition - if you are a red-stripes type of person!   Oh I would also click to enlarge so that you can get the full delicious effect of those wallpapers!

It's getting to be that time of year for tucking up isn't it?  

How was everyone's Hallowe'en?

Any Weekend Projects Planned?

What about pinboards (bulletin boards) like these at Cath Kidston in London?  So easy I think!

Have a really nice one everybody!



Corner View - Pondering

I know, I know......

I was supposed to come up with this post two weeks ago.

But then, my head was in an entirely different place.

This week, with the changing of the colors,

I AM

PONDERING

the vast and endless possibility and varieties....... in NATURE.  I'm not at home today so apologies if I don't come by to visit you.  But you know I'll catch up, and I love what you do!

More Painting - Breon O'Casey

Excerpted from Breon O'Casey, Scolar Press 1999

These painting posts are especially for Sophie, who's finishing up a couple of huge projects

just about now, and has been engaging herself

and many others of us, in a wonderful conversation about

form, color, pattern, texture, positive and negative space

layered realities, and the role of nature in our art making and in our lives.  (Oh, and edges!  Did I mention edges?  Which are some of my favorite things in painting.)

Soon, I hope she'll get a chance to put her feet up and just enjoy.  (Before she sprints off on another huge endeavor/adventure which I can't help but think must come her way).

Link here for more about Breon O'Casey.

Painting - Squeak Carnwath

So how was the weekend?  I'm heading off in a slightly different direction, hope you like it.  Since we've been doodling about the Bay Area for the past week, here's a little something I found in Berkeley a couple of years ago.

Excerpted from Squeak Carnwath, Lists, Observations and Counting, Chronicle Books 1996.  Squeak Carnwath is Professor of  Art at the University of California, Berkeley.  Most of these paintings are slightly more rectilinear and the slight curving is a result of me photographing them straight out of the open book.  What do you think?  Website:  here

Paris Lovers: Save the Greenhouses of Auteuil!

Via Delphine, at my blog cousin, ParadisExpress (see Blogroll at right), something you might want to know.......and help with:

The French Tennis Federation, which holds the French Open at Roland Garros Stadium, adjoining these greenhouses (containing rare flowers and 100+ year old orchids), are mounting a campaign to acquire them.  They will either replace them with tennis courts, or close them in, rendering them inaccessible to the public.  Now I like tennis, but I like flowers better!!!!!!  (And where else do you find greenhouses painted that gorgeous color of turquoise?) 

If you feel these beautiful places should remain open and within easy reach of the public, please sign this petition and hurry.  And tell your friends too.  The decision will be made at the beginning of 2011. There is not alot of time.

Meanwhile everyone, have a great weekend!

 

San Francisco - Mission Mission Part Three - Window Shopping

I won't add much more to

this third and final post about the Mission.

Only to say, what is the fascination of barbers' pictures?  I once saw Alec Baldwin in one in NYC.

And is it telling us something about our economy and the world when the Pawn Shop window is full of carpenters' tools?

Celebrations go on, nonetheless, and 30% off is definitely something to celebrate.

Beauty doesn't cost so much, considering the pleasure it brings.

Here at Lolo's, every day must be a party.

And since it IS San Francisco, the coffees are consumed, alongside the beers

to fuel whatever cyber-project is propelling you.

We're at 22nd St. and Valencia again

and between here and 20th St., bicycle shops in numbers,

South Indian vegetarian restaurants in pairs.

(This one is Dosa - guess what they're serving?)

More colorful San Francisco.

The way you expect it to be.

And here.  I don't know the name of this store, but if someone does, speak up.

A mesmerizing retail locale.  Sort of like visiting your cool, bookish, not-the-una-bomber

uncle at his cabin in the woods.

The one who's kept all the old stuff he's ever owned, plus

welcomed any of anybody else's who's ever wanted to share with him.

He's got all those books you've always meant to read - or read again.

And lots a pretty old girlfriends who stop by in rubber boots with dainties (no, what I really mean are giant monster brownies, and scones bigger than your head) for nibbling..... and.... a glass of wine.

When it's time to leave, he follows you to the door, reciting Poe's "Raven" as you go........

And suddenly "POP" you are back on Valencia St. in the Mission.  And it's time to pick up some pasta and head home.  .............That, my dears, is my Mission in the Mission.  Accomplished.   It went too quick, didn't it?

Corner View - Holiday Pics - Butlin's

Hello to the Corner Viewers!  Since a large proportion of this blog already consists of a fair amount of my vacation pics, (enough already, right!?) and because this week's theme was chosen by our itinerant Brit, Ian, at An Englishman Abroad, I thought I would share somebody else's idea of vacation pics.

These come from a book called "Our True Intent is All for Your Delight" (2002) and it is a book

of photographs taken at a number of England's Butlin's Holiday camps* in the 1960's and 1970's 

by the Irish photography studio, John Hinde.  Mr. Hinde (a descendant of the original "Clark" of Clark's Shoes), later handed over actual photographic responsibilities to the following:

Elmar Ludwig, Edmund Nagele and David Noble.  The studio produced these highly saturated

picture postcards that inspired a young Martin Parr, now a

very well-known English photographer specializing in similarly highly saturated and almost hyper-real 

photographs of English people enjoying their leisure activities.  (As here, in the company of the Queen's swans.  Did you know that every swan in England has been declared to be her property?  Now you do.)

Butlin's is still in operation as you'll see if you click the link above, but does not remotely any longer resemble these pictures, sadly.  And most Brits just hop on a plane to Spain or Italy these days.

I keep hoping someone will open a vast cocktail bar in Honolulu or Los Angeles that looks like these pictures.  (I would settle for San Francisco.)  How fun would that be? Meanwhile the book, with an introduction by Martin Parr, who declares himself on a "mission" to share these photos with the world, is still available on Amazon UK and elsewhere. Just google: "Our True Intent is All for Your Delight".  The publisher is Chris Boot Ltd.,  photography publishers in England.

Cheers!

*  Holiday Camps were more like resorts with little cabins and large shared recreation facilities.  You would see reference to them in movies like The Who's Tommy and in the English (shown on PBS in the U.S.) comedy show, Hi-De-Hi 

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