Anne G. Fredericks featured in the Berkshire Eagle's Berkshire Week

The origin of haloes

By Kate Abbott, Berkshires Week Editor

Thursday December 22, 2011

GREAT BARRINGTON — Imagine a 15th-century night. With a lamp or a candle, walk into an unlit room. Hold up the light. In the solid darkness, on the walls, faces glow — looking down at a child, or looking up in prayer.  Maybe this is why medieval crafters inlaid altars with gold. So at the midnight mass on Christmas eve, people could see the saints. Great Barrington artist Anne Fredericks has re-invented this centuries-old art: water gilding, the craft of treating wood with gold leaf and burnishing it to a high gloss. “For centuries we lived in low light at night,” she said. Anything that could catch light, and throw light, was highly prized.

“Places where they would just have a lantern, and you have a serving dish or a writing box with gold on it — it would shimmer,” she said. “There was a sense of wonder about this light thrown off — some people believed the gold had a light in it — a vibrating light.” ”It fascinates me how we’re attracted to light. We need some dim light, some darkness, to appreciate it.” All of her work tells stories, she said — not from the Christian gospels, but from the fresh water ponds and meadows near her house and from her childhood. Across from her fireplace, golden stars gleam in a dark square around a mirror. She calls this work “Sagitta” for the constellation, the arrow, and the flowering plant with arrow-like leaves that blooms here when Sagitta rises in the night sky. As fresh-water ponds grow scarcer, so does the Sagitta flower, she said. This piece is not about looking in the mirror, for her, but about steeping through it, like Alice in the looking glass, into the kind of place where people bathe on a summer night in a pond, with minnows and dragonflies, and snails on the banks.

Anne G. Fredericks Art Sagitta

“Everything has a story about what we’re potentially losing,” she said. She likes the feel of working with natural materials, she said — a base of wood, a gesso of marble dust and hide glue, a surface of clay, tempera paint, and the gold. And all of her work tells a stories. The stories keep her involved with each piece through the painstaking months of putting it together, she said. She takes weeks to prepare the wood surface with gesso and a water-based glue and to coat it with delicate films of gold. A fragment of gold leaf clings to the skin like cloth. Rub it and it vanishes, with only a glimmer of a smudge on a fingertip. ”It takes enormous patience,” she said. What has drawn her to learn the craft, through trial and error, and to spend six to eight months on a single piece? ”It’s about the light,” she said, “about the beautiful sheen.” She has always loved sunlight and brightness in artwork ”My mother could make anything with a needle,” she said. “She made vestments with gold thread.” A very little gold thread could transform the cloth. Later, Fredericks discovered the gilded panels of Boutet-Monveil’s book on Joan of Arc, the gloss of laquerwork and the sunlit paintings of Joaquín Sorolla. She wanted to work with gold. Very few people practice water gilding anywhere in the world. So, with a degree in art history and with stubborn patience, she set out to teach herself. ”I thought, I can master a craft, and there will be an artfulness about it,” she said. Some parts of the world value highly this craft, and the time and care in any craft.

In Kyoto, Japan, a year ago she was taken to meet a gilder who creates kimonos for the royal family. He works in his grandfather’s workshop, using tools his grandfather used and made. She watched him work. He wasted nothing, she said — gathering up the tailings, fragments of gold, and pulverizing them to shake over laquer. ”He is very highly regarded,” she said. “People come from all over the world to work with him.” America does not have this kind of tradition, she said. In America, artists have often separated art from craft and held the idea of a work higher than the skill in shaping it. But after half a century of expressionists and minimalists, she believes American artists are coming around again to value patience and hands-on skill. ”We are looking for some integrity,” she said. “I think there’s room for beauty in art.” After two world wars, she explained, people thought beauty was dead — but no one can live in that darkness for too long. ”Artists are supposed to make sense of their culture,” she said. “Some beauty would be good for all of us right now.”

~ By Kate Abbott, Berkshires Week Editor

In my interview with Kate Abbott for her article in the Berkshire Eagle, reproduced here, we discussed some of the inspirations that moved me to choose gilding as a form of expression.  I have been studying art history since high school and looking at art even longer.  I was consistently attracted to certain things:

This started at home, watching my mother make things with her needle:  She sewed vestments with gold thread.

Embroidered Vestment (this is not a vestment made by my Mother but very similar)

I also went to Mass at school where I sometimes served as an altar boy.  I got a good look at the priest’s embroidered vestments while kneeling near them on the altar

My 1967 Needlepoint pillow

In my teens, 1967, I designed this pillow with my Mother.  It is an adaption of Peter Max’s ubiquitous work of the time. No gold threads but lots of golden hues.

My childhood books were a constant inspiration

Ida Bohatta Illustration

Ida Bohatta’s little German books with stars and moons.  I also loved HA Rey’s book “Find the Constellations” there was a tiny caricatured boy who would show the mythological forms in the constellations and who would identify the stars in the night sky.  I still have this book which I take out in the summer to show small visitors.  I loved the idea of all the pictures in the sky above us.  It stayed with me as I studied Greek mythology later at school.

Jeanne D'Arc M. Boutet De Monvel

This book fascinated me. There were bits of gold everywhere in the illustrations.  Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered the original paintings were in the Corcoran Museum in Washington DC where I attended art school in the ’70’s.  Was he inspired by Paolo Uccello, whose paintings of battles and silvered lances also inspire me?

Bilbin Folk Emboidery

Ivan Bilbin was a big favorite.  His illustrations were rich in gold detail:  the tail of the firebird, gilded spires and  onion domes, golden fish and this, one of his many peasant scenes, with richly colored and embroidered costumes.

Vincent Van Gogh Wheatfield with Crows

When I was in school, my kindergarden teacher, Blanche Canto, was also the high school art history teacher.  When I was in 2nd grade, she took us to see a retrospective on Van Gogh.  I very clearly remember standing in front of those Sunflowers.  I have been looking at art ever since.  In my travels, I always sought out art, not just paintings, but beautiful objects as well.  There are several artworks that helped me towards gilding:

Chapel of the Magi-Benozzo Gozzoli

Nothing beats these frescoes from the 15th century.  I spent days in Florence in the 1970’s visiting this small space over and over again.

Joaquim Sorolla Boys on the Beach, 1910

Sorolla’s work is suffused with golden light.  No one can paint light like Sorolla: on skin, on water, a sunbeam on the side of a woman’s face.

Odilon Redon Evocation

Odilon Redon Virgin with a Halo

Odillon Redon captured in his pastels and distemper paintings the intense blues I Iove.  He used Pastels to mimic gold, putting highlights in lovely dark scenes.

Jewel Box by Dagobert Peche

Have you seen this?  Peche’s objets, furniture and drawings are fantastic in the true sense of the word.

Chinoiserie Wallpaper, golden mirror and candlelight

The darkened rooms and chapels where gilded objects glistened, glimmered and captivated me on so many levels.

The screen depicts Japanese books and scrolls using antique Japanese fabrics.  The background is gold paper. My Japanese piano teacher gave me my first book on Japan, a book of Japanese crafts when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade.  Later, Masako Kondo, a Japanese ikebana master let me visit in her studio and home in Royal Oak Michigan.  There I saw her beautiful kimonos with golden threads and pottery with flashes of gold.  I studied Japanese art in High school and College, then found myself traveling to Japan every year from 1984-1991.  In some years I was in Japan several times, it was then that I saw the objects I had studied and admired.

Writing Box by Ogata Korin (17th c)

I was always interested in the Japanese use of gold in lacquerware, kimonos and screens.  More importantly, their belief in living with few, but beautiful, useful objects led me to make my first gilded and painted mirrors, jewelry for your walls. From there, the gilding grew to include panels, altars, and constructions.  The Japanese work and live in lower light. In these environments, their golden objects shimmer and appear to throw off light.  Last year I spent one month in Japan, where I saw more of the countryside and also worked in Kyoto with a Japanese gilder who gilds for the Imperial Family.

Me (Anne G. Fredericks) gilding in Japan 2010

Gilding Master, Kyoto 2010

These are some of the visuals that inspired me to design my first mirror in 1989 and then to continue for the last 20 years to explore ways to use and design with gold leaf.

Berkshire Eagle article: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/berkshiresweek/ci_19597691

For more information on the process of water gilding please see my Water Gilding blog entry: http://annefredericks.com/category/water-gilding

Listen to the full review here: http://www.nepr.net

New England Public Radio News writes:  ’For many people, arts in the Berkshires are synonymous with the big summer events– Tanglewood, Jacob’s Pillow and the four major theater companies.  But the region is also home to many independent performers, writers and visual artists.  New England Public Radio’s Chris Rohman reports – their work is the focus of an off-season festival now underway called Made in the Berkshires.‘

Don’t miss the opening event on October 14th, 2011 7:30 pm at the Colonial Theatre.

Made in the Berkshires, a brand new original works festival, will take place this October at both the Colonial as well as the Unicorn Theatre at BTF. It will feature cutting-edge theatrical works, live music, film, short stories and dance in a festival atmosphere like no other. New and innovative pieces will be created and presented by local Berkshire County playwrights, actors, directors and performers. Broken up into two hour blocks, Made in the Berkshires will allow audiences to get a look at the breadth and depth of the artistic talent that has landed in Berkshire County while celebrating the best in the visual and performing arts. The festival will be curated by Hilary Somers Deely and Barbara Sims, two local artists who have helped create the rich cultural tapestry that permeates the Berkshires.

Made in the Berkshires Schedule of Presentations and Artists and Block Titles

The Gallery will show the art of Berkshire visual artists in the lounge area off the Colonial Lobby during the run of the festival. 
The participating artists are:

• Bart Arnold
• Susan Dibble
• Autumn Doyle- video running as a loop on lobby monitor/ and framed images on wall below.
• Kinney Frelinghuysen
• Pat Hogan
• Cynthia Wick
• Michael Boroniec
• Nick Mongiardo
• Chris Hogan

October 14^th Colonial Theatre

Opening Night of Made in the Berkshires (sponsored by Wandering Star Handcraft Brewery, Kate Baldwin Catering and Berkshire Mountain Distillers)

A Taste of Made in the Berkshires

7:30 p.m.

• Welcome and Introductions
• Music: Concerto for Highland Bagpipe and Virtual Orchestra- composed by Peter   Taussig, performed by Nancy Tunnicliffe
• Film: Jay at Hatchery Hill by Sanjiban Sellew
• Film: A Brief Visual Berkshire Rave by Joe Wheaton and Anne G Fredericks
• Dance: Rain choreographed by Anni Crofut
• Poetry: Indium Blues and Notes from the Seventh Decade, by Elizabeth Elliott and read by the poet
• Short Scene: Again With the Rhapsody Oscar by Daniel Klein
• Music: Robert Oakes and Katherine Smith
• Short Play: A Headlong Act of Love by Richard Berlin
• Short Play: Feathertop by Nicki Wilson and Andrew Joffe
• Music: Viva La Diva medley, book by Bobby Houston and music by Randy Courts
• Aerial Artist: Abigail Elwood and Beat Boxer: Simeon Bittman

9:00 p.m. Party in the Colonial Lobby

• A Taste of the Berkshires- Local wines and goodies
• Spatial Atmospheres – Joe Wheaton and Anne G Fredericks

October 15^th, BTF Unicorn Stage

1-3p.m. New Play Premiere

• The Last Tree on Easter Island
  by Sean McHugh
  A wonderful satirical look at the politics of big business versus the environment

4–5:15p.m.The Shorts: Berkshire Writers and Their Stories

• Short Story Coming Home by Mary Mott, read by Mary Mott
• Short Play Invasive Species by David Scribner
• Short Story King Toot by David Anderegg
• Short Play Alice’s Profile by Maria Nation
• Short Story Jacob’s Vessel by Larry Robbins (read by Jeffery Borak)
• Short Story The Nut Game by Larry Robbins
• Short Story Memory in Bones by Sanjiban Sellew

7p.m. Birthday Boy

October 16^th Colonial Theatre

Poetry and Motion: Berkshire Poets and Choreographers present their latest work in a wonderful blend of words and dance

1-2:30 p.m.

• Poetry Moving the Brook by Dennis Pollock
• Poetry Rabbits by Dennis Pollock
• Dance Lift Ev’ry Voice, Wired, Django choreographed by Olga Dunn
• Poetry My Mother Was Superstitious by Michelle Gillett
• Poetry Love Poem 137 by Michelle Gillett
• Poetry How to Resuscitate a Bird by Michelle Gillett
• Poetry Ghazal by Michelle Gillett
• Dance: The Queen Years choreographed by Anni Crofut
• Poetry Sad Cave Resplendent by Poncho Pelligrosso
• Poetry I Just Want to Say Hi by Poncho Pelligrosso
• Poetry We will Find a Way by Poncho Pelligrosso
• Dance Melting Pot, excerpt from One Potato, Two Potato choreographed by Dawn Lane

4-5:30  Young and Talented: Emerging young writers, film makers and composers

• Music Chris Considine guitar and vocals
• Film Bonding by Nannina Gilder
• Short Play The Life Logic of Mr Lampilla by Tadd Gero
• Film Live Out Loud by Jennifer Gomez
• Film Sound of Snow by Autumn Doyle
• Music Rap by Antonio Maclellan

7-9 p.m. Musical Notes

• The Jewish Jazz Project led by Paul Green
• Divinitress with Erin Laundry and Tistrya Hamilton
• Billy G and the Bluezone led by Billy Gilbert
• Dave Bacon led by Dave Bacon

October 21 BTF Unicorn Stage

1-3p.m. New Play Premiere: The Cuckoo’s Egg by Emily Fulop

• The female Cuckoo places her eggs in the nests of other, unknowing birds, leaving her young to be raised by the “foster parents”- but will it work for humans as well?

7-9 The Edge: Two cutting edge performance piece and two short works that push the boundaries!

• The Life Logic of Mr. Lampilla by Tadd Gero
• habitat (de) fragmentation by Stefanie Weber and the Creatures of Habitat Physical Poetry Performance Project
• The Memory of Bones by Sanjiban Sellew
• Dark Meat on a Funny Mind by Wesley Brown
• Lucia by Frances Benn Hall

October 22 Colonial Theatre

2p.m.-4p.m. Make Sure Its Me by Kate Wenner, NEW PLAY PREMIERE

• In this compelling new play, award winning producer Kate Wenner explores what happens to those soldiers are not killed outright or outwardly injured in the Iraq war, but who are exposed to intense IED blasts over and over again.
• Followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Jim Frangione.

October 22 BTF Unicorn Stage

8-10p.m. New Musical Play premiere

• Viva La Diva by Bobby Houston and Randy Courts
• This exuberant, rollicking musical from Oscar winner Bobby Houston follows the lives of Lolita and her family of drag queens and cabaret stars as they live and love “underground” in Castro’s Cuba!

October 23 BTF Unicorn Stage

2-4p.m. Viva La Diva (One More Time!)

4 p.m. Closing Party with Joe Wheaton and Anne G Fredericks’ images and music, A Brief Visual Berkshire Rave

For complete schedule and ticket information please visit:  www.thecolonialtheatre.org

The cover of the HINDOSTANI book was made of very fine colored rice paper which came from a Japanese calendar I received each New Year from a friend in Tokyo. The small glass beads came from my grandmothers stash of beads and buttons, they were over 100 years old when I used them. A moon shaped button became a sikh crescent. Part of the project was to use what one already had to make the book–nothing bought, nothing prefab. You can see the big stitches made using regular binders thread. The title came form an incomplete set of the 1910 edition of the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ that I owned
(the correct spelling!)

Opening-I chose the photos, without text, on an entry about India. The ‘Encyclopaedia’ was printed on very fine paper, like a thinner version of the printed Japanese rice paper.

I was trying to use a new form for this book, a small book that would open into something larger.

4th opening–the book fully opened (or is it) to show 5 majestic examples of Indian architecture. I created the random ink patterns around each picture, my imprint. The blackness of the ink stood out from the greyed images held within.

Central image–the Taj Mahal–of course!

A Tower image surrounded by a fake sanskrit pattern I devised

In the border, a garland pattern which could have been used to adorn the massive columns in the picture.

Beneath each picture is a hidden text describing the buildings illustrated on the overleaf.

Each is named again.

More quick ink drawing around the title for each illustrated building–hidden away.

To finish the book, I made a small sheath in another patterned rice paper. The gray and white pattern relates, in my mind, to the photos held within. The paper was so tactile and the format a nice surprise. To sit quietly, cutting and drawing, gluing and stitching did allow my mind to flow over a number of ideas and images that I would use later in my other artwork. My hands were exercised as well as my eye. Book making has been a great pleasure
in times when other projects were not flowing or a big idea was just to much to pursue.

]]> http://annefredericks.com/artist-book-hindostani/feed/ 0 http://annefredericks.com/title-artist-book-despair/ http://annefredericks.com/title-artist-book-despair/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:27:06 +0000 admin http://annefredericks.com/?p=172 Several years ago, I got together with some artist friends to discuss the art process.
We all agreed we needed an exercise to stimulate our creative juices. What resulted was the decision to make books- this was not book binding but a way to express what was on our minds and to use a different medium to express ourselves. There were books on raising, killing and cooking rabbits for food-with a rabbit fur cover, a book carved of local marble, books about money and finance, and our basic mis-impressions of life. Ultimately we invited a host of other artists to make books, discuss their process, and what they were thinking about when they made them. Over the course of a winter we met at my home and learned from, and enjoyed each other immensely. A small exhibition resulted a year later for which I submitted this book. It has been shown several times in exhibits since then.

DESPAIR–This is a hand-stitched felt book, approximately 6″ high x 8″ wide

The first page of Despair  shows stitches unconnected to the needle

Page 2–Button holes too large for the buttons.

Page 3 Snaps that make no sense!

Page 4  An attempt to repair holes, but the pins do not address the problem.

Page 5  Safety pins that don’t function to close the raging red gash.

DESPAIR was a poem to my Mother, to whom I dedicated this little book. My mother could make anything with a needle. She smocked dresses, knitted coats, embroidered priests vestments with golden thread, knit argyle socks for my father with his name knit into the toe.

Hats, scarves, sweaters, needlepoint pillow and purses flowed from her needles. Her hands were always busy, she rarely needed a pattern. I made this book when she was 89 years old. Still beautiful, with an active mind, she found she could no longer sew as she could not thread a needle. She found the things she had been doing from childhood impossible to do. She was not debilitated-just failing eyesight and some arthritis in her hands.

DESPAIR was what I imagined she felt about this change. When she visited, she loved the book but was completely puzzled by it, especially the title. She in no way felt despairing, that was just my take!

I thoroughly enjoyed stitching up this book. I loved the feel of the felt, the lovely silk threads I used. The intricate sewing hardware-things that many people will never handle or purchase again in our throw away culture. This is one of my favorite creations, a lovely tactile object.

Lucy Gray, a San Franscisco based artist will be using Anne G Frederick’s artwork in her upcoming art project “Genevieve Goes Boating,” Fort Mason, SF, CA, 2011 – 2012

Bird Necessities: Outdoor Installations by Artists and Designers
June 11 through labor day
opening reception: June 11 th from 5:30 – 7:00 pm
tickets are $ 25 and can be purchased from the Berkshire Botanical website: http://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/index.html

This exhibition explores ways to provide birds with food, shelter, habitat and the artful assistance in attaining them. Curator and artist Anne Fredericks is joined by Naomi Blumenthal, Dale Culleton and Jon Piasecki.

All of the participants in this show are active members of the Berkshire community and have a special feeling for the terroir. As citizens, they have worked in different areas to preserve aspects of our local environment: tree species, view-scapes, gardens, historic sites, and indigenous woodland environments. As artists, they have each developed a personal oeuvre that is deeply rooted in nature.

For more information call: (413) 298-3926

I began hanging out bits of yarn and string for the birds to use in their nests when I was a young girl in Michigan. I delighted in finding the colors neatly woven into the fabric of the nests when the autumn came along.

When I moved to Massachusetts in the early 1990’s, I often found nests on my farm with the cornflower blue yarn that the young neighborhood girls used to braid their horses and pony manes with for the local horse shows. I would also find long fibers from blue tarps in the nests-the birds had unraveled some of the tarps that covered the wood pile. It was then that I revived the practice of putting out yarn, string, old fabric scraps, netting and tinsel in small ‘pavilions’ that I hung form the trees each spring. This is the background for the show that I was asked to curate this summer for the Berkshire Botanical Garden.

For the show, I designed and fabricated 3 copper pavilions to hang high in an old apple tree at the garden. As the limb I was using was quite high, I oversized the pavilions to create the right effect. In addition to the same things I put in my smaller pavilions, there was lots of room to add horsehair collected over the winter, sheep’s wool collected from our paddock, raffia and chamomile stems from my herb garden. Nothing goes to waste, nothing needed to be purchased.

Fabric scraps from design projects-cut and tied to be used in a ‘pavilion’

Raffia, cotton batting, linen scraps , and recycled produce nets in process

The pavilions in process in my Botanica where I work on plant based projects, and where I process my herbs and store winter vegetables

Tying off the pavilions in the apple tree -I had two fantastic Eagle Scouts help me with the knots and hanging the pavilions safely. My husband Marc Fasteau and photographer Tom Zetterstrom

Inspecting the hanging pavilions

All finished-swaying in the breeze and already attracting the interest of wrens who have been choosing items for their nests

Anne G Fredericks is the curator for the current show at the Berkshire Botanical Garden entitled: ” Bird Necessities: Outdoor Installations by Artists”. This exhibition explores ways to provide birds with food shelter habitat and artful assistance in attaining them.

Along with Anne the other artists are Naomi Blumenthal, Dale Culleton, and Jon Piasecki. All of the participants in this show are active members of the Berkshire Community and have a special feeling for the terroir.

As citizens they have worked in different areas to preserve aspects of our local environment: tree species, view-scapes, gardens, historic sites, and indigenous woodland environments. As artists, they have each developed a personal oeuvre that is deeply rooted in nature.

The exhibit will be on view from Memorial day until Labor Day. The opening party is Saturday June 11, 5:30-7:30.

For more information go to: http://www.berkshirebotanical.org

By Kate Abbott from the Berkshire Eagle

]]> http://annefredericks.com/exhibitions-and-events/feed/ 0 http://annefredericks.com/artwork-2/ http://annefredericks.com/artwork-2/#comments Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:55:16 +0000 admin http://annefredericks.com/?p=107 Raven

Raven Detail Wheat

Over the years, I have purchased art which now constitutes a ‘collection’. I appreciate things which are well-crafted, regardless of the medium. Clear line, clear colors, humor. I value art made by people who allow themselves to be seen in their creations. This means their work is not a copy of something else or art that is made to fit neatly into someone else’s predetermined ‘art’ box. I like artists who use their medium to express ideas or who are interested in putting their expressive stamp on a landscape or scene. Many of the pieces that I have collected have been made by artists who have subsequently become friends or who I know as a consequence of having purchased their art.

The first painting I bought was by a woman named Elaine Gifford. This small mixed-media piece is built around a hand-colored map and rubber stamped images of Indians. I found this image very evocative and comforting. It has traveled with me to my many homes, both permanent and temporary over the last 30 years. Even looking at it today, I get a sense of joyfulness and delight that never fades. I followed the career of Elaine and bought one other piece of hers but it was this first piece that I have always chosen to accompany me.

I read a story when I was a teenager about Helene de Rothschild and her favorite painting. When she traveled for any length of time or moved from house to house, she would remove this painting from its frame and carry it with her in an oversized magazine. The painting in question was a small Pierre Bonnard oil. (Bonnard was one of my favorite painters even then, He was the subject of the first monograph I bought in 1968 in a used book store). The mention of Bonnard drew me in. The owner was so comfortable with this precious object and so enamored of it that she wanted it with her. This spoke volumes to me about the intimate relationship one could have with a piece of art. That art should not be treated as a commodity, kept in vaults or airless, lifeless rooms, but enjoyed.

The art that I have collected over the years has given me great enjoyment. I have sculptures made of fabric and of stone, paintings, etchings, lithographs and photographs.

I have a number of found objects that I display in bell jars: hornets nests and bird skeletons amongst them, butterflies, turtle shells and stuffed birds that live well amongst the pictures hanging nearby. I find them beautiful. The thread that unites the different works is nature- in many guises. I find the works of others evocative-the way the artist approaches the subject-often in a manner quite different than my own. I enjoy the individual way artists have framed a view, manipulated their subject, used light. The work informs me, educates me, inspires me. It enhances my life, everyday.

It is only recently that I have been able to see the disparate things I have collected as a ‘collection’. Over time, it has become clear that the art I have ‘works’ together. The pieces complement one another: Tom Zetterstrom’s tree photos and Walton Ford’s birds, Lucy Gray’s portraits with Cynthia Atwood’s sculptures. (The women artists – so sexy!). These works are daily companions.. Paintings hang where I want to see them – in the bathroom, in the kitchen, valuable next to found, 21st century side by side with the 16th century or the 19th. They inform and delight me and help make my house a home. They also tell a story about where I have been, what interests me and what I value.

photos by © sabine vollmer von falken
book project: Woodland Chic by author Marlene H. Marshall
Storey Publishing, available 2010