antiques and bovines

Hello everyone!

Today my mom and I made the drive to Fairground Antiques in Swanzey, NH, and on the way there found this field of dozens of cows!

I have a deep love for cows.

So sweet! And now to the pictures from Fairground Antiques (an amazing place if you ever get the chance to go):

This scared me so much at first! I thought she was real.

I wanted this statue so much, but it was too expensive.

State flower embroidered map!

I love the odd pairings of objects set up in the booths. They're like little art installations. This elephant/white car in front of clear bottles and a black and white city-scape was my favorite.

school of fish

panther on an ink display stand

"the life of a hunter"

I almost bought this! I love the colors.

foxfire

"Alice 1946"

elephant lamp with a mismatched shade

quintuplets paddle fan?

This old white bunny toy is so beautiful.

New Looks Montgomery Ward summer 1940

You could order two pound boxes of bees from Montgomery Ward in 1940.

And also some New England chicks. 

boxed poodles

nurse adventures

There is no finer cat than I am.

I love reddish-orange roses with the color lavender. 

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On the way home, we stopped at Bolton Orchards to get pie, and I was laughing at their fruit personification. 

I loved this pumpkin. It's wonderful how bacterial growths look so beautiful on plants and vegetables.

Last night's artist talk was so much fun. Thank you to everyone who came! I'll do a post with pictures from the night later this week. I also found something absolutely wonderful at Fairground Antiques. I brought it home and it deserves a post of its own, also soon to come!

I hope you all had an excellent Wednesday!

Love,

Amanda

speak easy

Our artist talk is tonight! Come by if you can. :) In the words of Scott: We're gonna get so scholarly! Teachers, invite students; students, invite teachers. This is like Gardner's Art Through History volume 17! Or at least we'll tell you all about unicorns, dragons and tattooed ladies.

RSVP here.

7-8 PM 

at Space 242

242 East Berkeley St.

Boston, MA

Pugs have pretty feet.

Katrina over at Pugly Feet has very graciously made me her "blogger of the week"! She keeps a wonderful blog about fashion, art, design, decorating, city exploration, and, of course, her pugs. :) So far she has used my "Your secrets felt like velvet" painting for her weekly "colour lover" post and shared the "Back to Before" Jerry Fish video that features the album cover with my painting. I love seeing one of my pieces broken down into a basic color palette. Thank you so much, Katrina!

Love, me

this little cabin

Another new painting currently up in the show:

"the language of foxtrot"

acrylic on masonite, 8x10"

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P.S. - This is very last minute! I just found out about (and signed up for) the MSPCA's walk for animals tomorrow, and here is my donation page, should anyone want to donate one or two dollars. Happy weekend, everyone!

a paper heart painting and a pigeon

"Desire is the daughter of invention (my heart is made of paper)"

acrylic on masonite, 8x10"

One of my new paintings featured in The Foxtrot Code, a piece on making peace with your own delicate heart. Not even delicate in the sense of being easily broken, but rather delicate in that you take the weight of the world on your shoulders (think May in The Secret Life of Bees).

Today, I found this pigeon in front of a popular Harvard Square bookstore. Pigeons nest on the tops of their very tall outdoor display cases, and this pigeon seemed to have fallen. He couldn't fly and was looking for comfort in his reflection, which he thought was another pigeon. I called Cambridge animal control, thinking he was sick, but when the woman arrived she said he was a large baby pigeon who hadn't learned how to fly yet, and he wasn't eating the bread I was trying to feed him (given to me by a very sweet girl) because he was used to being fed by his mother. She told me the best thing to do was leave him there.

This may make me sound crazy, but I spent the next four hours with this pigeon. He was so helpless and scared, I couldn't bear to leave him alone. He kept crying. I would sit with him and pet him, and then go far away for blocks of time to see if his mother or father would fly down in an attempt to get him, but they never did. It was also difficult because it's a very busy area, with lots of people traffic.

I was desperate for ideas. I went inside and spoke to someone who worked at the bookstore. As chance would have it, a girl who worked there was known for saving birds. She told me the parents might have kicked him out of the nest, and that maybe I should put him in a box and take him to the local park.

I grappled with this idea for about an hour. I called my mom several times. I called the Boston Animal Rescue League to see what they thought I should do. Eventually, it seemed that everyone thought it was best that I leave him there, which broke my heart.

It was starting to get dark at this point (and oddly cold), and my little pigeon was closing his eyes and beginning to fall asleep. (I even saw him yawn a couple of times, which I did not know birds could do! It was so cute.) I made him a "nest" out of a cardboard box and news papers, and left him with the remainder of the bread. I called my mom to tell her I was finally leaving the pigeon, and it made me start to cry. I couldn't believe that in all that time I hadn't been able to do anything that would secure the safety of the pigeon.

I think I take on too much sometimes, but even though it doesn't always work out, I'd rather do all I can and have it work out a good handful of the times that I try. I suppose my pigeon was a good lesson in learning I can't save everything, and to let some things rest in fate's hands.

So I came home, and I'm feeling a little better now, although I keep wondering about the pigeon. I am sure he'll be fine through the night, though, and I believe if you send out good thoughts that good things will happen, so I am sending good thoughts to my pigeon.

xoxo

a room of one's own

Welcome to my new home:

The front porch.

The back yard.

The front of the house.

The beautiful kitchen window.

And my new room!

My bedroom is finally like a forest, which is something I've wanted for a long, long time. I got the birch tree window panels at Ikea and decided to hang them behind my bed! (I like beds to be under trees). Someday when I have a house, I want to paint my own bedroom trees! I got this beautiful white wrought iron bed at Ikea, as well. It's my first full-sized bed and I love it.

At left, painting table, and at right, writing desk (which I found for free on the side of the road!).

This will be really cluttered with paints in about 12 hours.

My beautiful new bookcase! I finally have a bookcase big enough to easily house all my books (although I still need to bring a ton of them here).

poetry and short story books.

vintage (books, people, and one-eyed cat - special because my dog had one eye, and because we had a black cat). That's Frida and Diego on the black easel.

When I was walking back to the house tonight, a possum ran across my new street. It feels just like home, with all our nocturnal creatures. I live next door to a dog named Jack, who I can see from my window through out the day! My street is beautiful and tree-lined, and yet I am a 5 minute walk from city life. I love it.

I've been exploring my new area and taking lots of pictures, so I'll probably do a post on all the beautiful houses I've been seeing. I also live near the park where I used to walk Nikko, which makes me very happy. I visited it the other day and read on a bench while birds played in the fountain (it's for children on hot days so it only runs for 5 minute blocks. I kept pushing the button for the birds. :)

I hope you all had an excellent Monday/Labor Day!

Love,

Amanda

sleeves of golden roses

"a new beginning, 1953"

acrylic on masonite, 8x10"

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One of my new pieces that is currently for sale in The Foxtrot Code!! I couldn't stop thinking about how beautiful it would be to be covered in yellow rose tattoos. 

I hope to see some familiar faces at the artist talk on September 15th!

Have an excellent weekend, everyone!

P.S. - This is my three-hundred and thirty-third blog post!! haha!

in a lemon yellow suitcase

I forgot to mention that in addition to 6 original Tiny Art pieces, these packaged paper doll and art prints will be for sale at Three Graces Gallery! I had a lot of fun making the little fold-overs for the bags. On the back of them is the web info for Pet Finder, because I like to promote pet adoption from shelters (as opposed to pet stores where the animals come from inhumane mills) as much as I possibly can. :)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Tomorrow my room should be all set up for the most part, so maybe there will be new room pictures soon!

Love,

Amanda

The Teeny Tiny Art Show

The Teeny Tiny Art Show 5 is opening September 4th, tomorrow night! So if you're in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area, you should check it out. The reception is from 5-8 p.m. at the Three Graces Gallery on Market Street.

Once I get settled, I'll post images of the pieces I did for this, as well as the new work in my solo show! Happy Thursday, everyone!

A beach named Crane and the Give-away Winner!

Hello everyone! The next couple of days I'll be moving into my new place, so blog entries might be scarce/non-existent. So before going on a mini hiatus, I wanted to show pictures from my trip to Crane Beach in Ipswich with Abigail and Becca!

My camera can't seem to handle bright sun anymore. All the pictures completely washed out (this happened in New York City back in March, too)! I actually really love how it makes the pictures come out, though. I think Becca's dreds look really stunning in these photos. :)

The beach was really beautiful, and they have multiple trails that go off in four or five different directions. We took an hour-long hike and had to run through the wooded parts because they were so swarmed with mosquitos and green flies! The landscape kept switching back and forth between beachy woods and sand hills and prickly plants that reminded me of the desert. It was really fun. I miss swimming every day (last year when I was babysitting full time, we swam in the lake all the time), so it was fun to swim in the ocean.

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And......I'm happy to announce that the winner of the give-away is Kirsty!!! Thank you to everyone who entered. I think I'll do another give-away this fall.

Have a wonderful week! I'll try to post again soon.

Love,

Amanda