Dollhouse Down Time

Being snowed seemed like the perfect time to set up a dollhouse and Jackson's new train set. About nine years ago, I had the dollhouse built by Kellogg's in Cold Spring Harbor, my fantasy home with a mansard roof line and realistic brick chimney. It was more than we were looking to spend, but it was one of those moments where craftsmanship won out over practicality. As as an artist who paints small scaled images of houses, married to an architect, and a fan of The Borrowers, it was too much to ask of me to stay within our budget. Fortunately I knew a woman who was willing to swap her collection of dollhouse furnishings for two of my 'big girl' drawings, so it all balanced out in the end.
What is it about miniature furnishings and faux engine smoke that is so soothing? Is it the act of playing God, rearranging the details to suit one's fancy? Even Flickr has many photographers dedicated to chronicling their miniature fantasy spaces. All I know is that the kids were entertained for many hours yesterday, lost in their own tiny world.

Snowbound

What else to do with a snowy day?

A Thought Regarding Toys

Not a Box is a book about a bunny whose box becomes all sorts of objects: race car, skyscraper, space ship, proving that a large box and a small child equals hours of fun.
French thinker Roland Barthes wrote about the symbolic influence of toys on children in his seminal text Mythologies. Most toys, he argued, are mere replicas of the adult world, shrunken to miniature size so that children can be socialized to act out their future roles in society. From babies who wet their nappies to guns to arm soldiers, these so-called playthings not only establish gender identity, but also encourage children to become users, not creators. Thus, children take on a passive role, reinacting a defined persona instead of the creative role by inventing a new game. The superior toy for Barthes? Wooden blocks.
Take this a step further in our modern society. Video games foster the ultimate 'user' mentality, as those playing are rewarded for matching the set parameters of the game, not for their creativity. In fact, try to mix things up in a video game by driving off road or shooting something other than the target, and you'll find your game short-lived.
As the Bacchanalia of toys is upon us, I think back to the toys which have lasted and those which have been long discarded. What possibilities did the lasting ones offer that the others did not? I've often reminded my children that Laura Ingalls Wilder loved her 'doll' Susan, which was actually a corncob with a kerchief, proving that the most imaginative child can turn even the simplest object into a treasured one. And that may be a role which children can teach to adults.

The Philadelphia Story

From looking under the Liberty Bell to cool modern architecure, James and Jackson had a terrific outing to Philadelphia. Jackson loved learning about Ben Franklin and his discovery of electricity, and James was amazed by a lecture they heard about our founding fathers and the Constitution. Clearly an enriching moment in an important American city.

A Cloche Encounter

Couldn't help myself with that pun---
But good news for those who have been waiting for the perfect hat this winter. Adriane, who made my fab hat, has offered to make more. Let me know if you are interested. And thank you to Louise Millmann for turning me into a 1920's flapper in this pic.

Ripe Show Opens!

The BBC Reading List

When modernemama sent me this BBC list of books, I enjoyed checking off the titles I had read with great smugness. I also went back to the 2003 list for comparison and to see who had been dropped. Which books make the canon and which do not serves as an evergreen discussion in literary circles. Are all books equal? Are there some that are more worthy than others? The debate as to who determines which books are essential makes for amusing discourse on the subjectivity of reading in general. Though I've read nearly half on this list, there are some significant titles missing. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Women in Love? The Stranger? Meanwhile, the BBC evidently loves the dickens out of Dickens. As an educator, I like to think of literature as a springboard for discussion. As a reader, I love to get lost in another world. I'll never forget how I sat down and read House of Mirth cover to cover in 12 hours. Or how I read and reread the Little House series as a child. Neither made the list, but were powerful moments in my life as a reader. So accurate or not, here's the BBC list.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factoy - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

To Do: Frame

Make artwork: check. Print invites: check. Type pricelist: check again. Frame 26 paintings: ARGH!!