We tackled the garage recently. Another attempt to clear pathways through our stuff. I laughed when I discovered a box tucked away on a shelf above my head. The cardboard container had dividers inside to hold six bottles of wine. It had been empty and hiding for years. Bill said, "That's the first case of wine we ever ordered." I looked at him with crossed eyes. There was no wine inside the box, but we still saved the box -- a memento of another time.
We are still cleaning. When you are accumulators and/or artists, you save everything. Underneath a pile of old sketchbooks, I found a gold box filled with a project I had sent to Mademoiselle magazine when I was enticing them to choose me as a Guest Editor for their annual College issue. I won a seat at the magazine, but I had forgotten that I saved one of my many submissions: a 3-D construction of a shopping mall that I called Pooka Park. I laughed at the pieces in my hands as the construction fell apart, the glue and tape long ago had turned yellow and lost its tackiness. Yet, looking at the pieces, I realized I had a treasure of late 60s styles. I re-sorted the pieces laying them on a larger paper and took pictures this time. Did I then throw the project away? What do you think?
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| Pooka Park by Martha Slavin |
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| The original ad by Mademoiselle magazine. Does the style remind you of psychedelic posters from the Fillmore in San Francisco? |
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| We had many adventures during our month in New York City including a night out at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Helen Hayes attended the event along with other celebrities. We Guest Editors wore shiny paper dresses. |
From Stephen on FB: Fillmore poster art! Wow. Cleaning out garage was going well ‘til I came across my old report cards.
ReplyDeleteYou will never know what you will find, will you? Report cards, don't get me started!
ReplyDeleteFrom Terri on FB: Love those memories! Very representative of the 60’s.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Terri. Those were interesting times to say the least!
DeleteFrom Jane on FB: I am going through old family albums right now, sorting into piles to share with other family members. The memories are wonderful, but the work is exhausting - we are cleaning out our Christmas boxes next and that will be a real chore. No more room for large displays, so a lot of it has to go.
ReplyDeleteAmazing what we all find in those boxes we have stored away. Jane, thanks for your comments. I agree, it is hard to go through all of this stuff.
DeleteFrom Mary by email: Isn’t it fun when you come across boxes of memorabilia from our younger days. How exciting to take a look at your art from that time frame and see how you’ve grown and changed since then. I came across old letters passed to my girlfriend when she left for college. I’m amazed at how poorly I wrote and how immature I sounded. I should have read those letters as I was raising my children, I might have been more forgiving. I really appreciate the perspective that age affords us, it’s not a gift.
ReplyDeleteI loved the paper dresses, you looked gorgeous!!
Thanks, Mary, for writing. I'd love to see your letters. I feel the same way about some postcards that I sent to my parents while I was in college.
ReplyDeleteMy dad is a saver and recently gave me the gift of every letter I'd ever written home, from a postcard from my first stay at Girl Scout camp to letters I wrote when my children were small. I treasure the growth I see in myself and the love that made my dad keep them, all these years!
ReplyDeleteWow, that is a special gift from your dad. A book in the making?
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