Escape Artists

Turns out saying "I've been having technical difficulties" out loud on a blog is sort of like saying, "Man, it's quiet in here" in an Emergency Room. Next thing you know, BAM! You have a lot more on your hands than you bargained for.

Anywhosie, sorry if some of you were also having trouble getting to us in the past week, but I think the kink is out and we are up and running and moving full speed on to the next thing.

{Pause. Technical difficulties also included me not being able to get to the comments section and so not being able to get to your delicious pie recipes. I know this process is to the point of ridiculous, but winner coming soon! Baking currently underway.}

Play.

Let us talk now for a moment about how much we love summer. I am currently drinking in outdoor films on the National Mall, and I am sure you all have favorite things about summer as well. Ice cream? Walks outside? Fishing? Beaching? Whatever your favorite activity or haunt is, summer is the time to escape, and I hope you are getting to do plenty of that.

Now. If you happen to be looking for a new escape plan, might I recommend the Berkshires? This charming western Massachussetts hideaway has enough to keep you busy for many summers to come, all wrapped up in dreamy New England charm. A brief overview of what awaits you in this magical place: a Norman Rockwell museum, canoeing, fishing and brunch, a Shaker village, charming town streets lined with antiques stores and little shops filled to the brim with local art you cannot live without. Oh, and how about a summer concert series featuring members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and artists from the prestigious Tanglewood music program?







Yes, please.

Truly. There is nothing like the charm of a calm and sleepy and warm and cozy and lazy and outdoors New England summer.

Let us all take a moment to sigh. Happily.

Done?

Because I would like to move on to some more good news. We here at Shabby Apple want you to enjoy your summer as much as humanly possible. We want you to escape whenever you need to. But we know that that can be a little hard to accomplish sometimes. Because life and responsibilities and all that. But, it's OK! We are here to help.

If you can't have the perfect summer get-away, we would at least like you to have the perfect summer get-away dress. Like maybe a breezy, romantic, East Coast-y dress from our new Berkshires line.

Intrigued?

Keep checking back, my friends. The magic drops August 2nd, and you are going to want to be the first to know about it.

Happy escape!

Domestically Speaking: On Life

Happy Monday, my dears, and my profusest apologies for the lateness of this post. I experienced some major technical/technological dificulties over the weekend, so we are running a little bit behind. But, never fear! Pie finalists are being chosen as we speak, and a winner will be announced by the end of the week. In the meantime, please enjoy this last installment from the lovely Leslie Graff. Hasn't her visit been wonderful? I agree.

On creativity: I am a creative junkie. It is my one addiction. Creating in one form or another is kind of like one of Maslow’s basic needs to me. As a mom, painting is a mental salvation. It gives me that sense of completion, amidst the entropy of toys, laundry, lunch making, and dishes. For me, the creative groove is fickle though—it definitely comes and goes. I have learned to respect the nature of creativity. If I am not feeling it I have learned not to force it, because if I do the product is disastrous. So I’ve learned patience-- I wait out the funk and that good productive rhythm always comes back around.

My inspirations: I have a painting playlist that keeps my momentum through a painting session (kind of like workout music). It’s the perfect pace for me. Too fast or too slow kills it. I have also learned how to transfer a lot of the emotional energy of my relationships into my work. Trips and travels always inspire me to paint more.

On family life: As a mom of three boys-- life rocks and rolls. There is always a new mess being made somewhere in my house and most assuredly there are crumbs on my floor. My boys are my darlings, but mostly I am thwarting raids on the fridge for breakfast ice cream, reiterating the no snakes in the house rule, or chasing down a toddler who procured himself cake from the counter top with a lacrosse stick. We have daily casualties…glasses flushed down the toilet, Moroccan plates crashing off walls, paintings slashed with rulers during mock battles, but we roll with it. I promote a lot of good, old-fashioned fun in my house. New England is perfect for that. My town has no grocery store, one stoplight, two gas stations. My kids spend a lot of time creating, reading, playing, and catching fish at the town beach.

My home: From all my travels and living abroad, I am really taken with the warmth and hospitality of many other countries. I love how other places seem to relish the home more. I love being home and always want it to be a place others love to be. I have always been a domestic kind of girl. Ever since childhood, I have been known for baking treats. I taught a cooking class for other kids when I was eight and was known for bringing Tupperware containers of cupcakes to my high school and passing them out in the halls.




My style: People always ask ‘do you dress like that at home?’. The answer is no… well kind of. I do wear a lot of skirts, and I do wear aprons (mostly because I am messy when I cook). But at home I love to be barefoot. Sundays, parties, and pretty much any other excuse I can think of though you will catch me in heels. I don’t feel like the typical “crazy artist” (but maybe I am getting more that way) I like to think I blend in with the normal population. I am very sensory person I am always aware of things around me visually and textures especially. My brain never stops running and likes to make lateral connections and brainstorm. I have a reputation for crazy adventures and I always come home from a trip with at least one story.

Most delicious things I serve: Jordanian Mint Lemonade, Homemade Wheat Bread, Apple, Bacon, Almond Salad with a Sweet Vinaigrette on baby field greens from my garden, Moroccan Pan-Fried Chicken, Chocolate Poundcake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

And that's that. A big and massive thanks to Leslie for sharing her life and her passion and her art with us this week. Remember that there are darling vintage-inspired aprons at Shabby Apple waiting for you to snatch them up! And check back here later this week for the perfect pie winner. In the meantime, we have more treats up our sleeves. Don't you worry.

Domestically Speaking: From The Studio

How have you enjoyed our week of domestic bliss so far? I, for one, have been captivated. Have you picked a favorite Boysenberry Pie apron yet? And how are those pie recipes coming? Don't forget you could win your very own print of one of Leslie's domestic arts paintings (are you loving them?) as well as a set of notecards that looks something like this.

Today Leslie lets us take a peek into her studio, where all this magic goes down.

There is a definite sequence and process for me creating the domestic pieces. I always work from photo studies. I sneak these photo shoots in while my youngest is napping (must catch that great natural daylight) so I am always working under a ticking clock. Actually, this is the most exhausting task, which sometimes gets me a little neurotic, trying to mentally visualize the composition, choosing the outfits, the props, setting the scene. Then I go so far as to make homemade triple layer pound cakes from scratch and hand squeeze lemonade for the shots (my kids love that).



There is some crazy maneuvering getting the tripod and camera settings right, given that I am my own model and also take my own shots using a remote. The studies alone almost feel like their own piece of art. They are necessary for the authenticity of the piece, not just for the details of the image, but also for the reality of capturing the action of a moment in each painting.

People who know me well recognize the locations in my house, the shoes, the skirts I wear, and the broom I sweep my kitchen with. The studies are shot in either my home, my parents’ or my best friend’s—places that have intimacy, meaning, and memory to me.



The pieces all have what I like to call “domestic artifacts." Most of the aprons were hand embroidered by my great grandmother. It’s rewarding to see the longevity of her work, playing out through four generations. Many furniture pieces were hand-me-downs as well. My uncle’s mother’s tea cart, or my parents’ old dresser. I love those old Tupperware canisters. It’s kind of sentimental for me, building my own personal domestic heritage into the art.

Most of my time gets devoted to being a mom to three sons (9, 5, & 2), but I still stay current and involved in my professional field. So painting pretty much gets relegated to the bedtime hours, when my kids are asleep and I can get a few solid hours of continuous work done. My guilty pleasure is staying up really late to paint, but I always pay for it the next day. I have a big studio in my house, which I couldn’t live without. There is a lot of ‘stuff’ that comes with being an artist. I am known to migrate around the house when I work as well, leaving a trail of paints and canvases in my wake (my husband and kids have learned to just walk around it). I often follow my husband in the evening and set up wherever he is so we can keep company.





Nightly Indulgences: Come Home by One Republic, Walnut Tree by Keane, Straight Away by Mat Kearney, Lay’s potato chips, triple chocolate ice cream with marshmallows and butterscotch, maimeri polycolor in navy, liquitex soft body in parchment, movies on Netflix.

Remember, remember! Only one more day to submit your pie recipe! I am getting ready for a baking whirlwind this weekend, so send me your best!

Domestically Speaking: Motivations

I hope everyone remembers that we have a pretty sweet (literally) contest going on, in honor of our new line of vintage-inspired aprons, Boysenberry Pie. So don't forget to post your favorite pie recipe! You could win a whole lot of great stuff from this week's guest blogger, domestic artist Leslie Graff. Speaking of which, here she is!


People always comment on how the women are dressed. Most people say, "I never look like that when I am at home!" I chose to make the figures dressed up as a way of giving significance to the tasks. It's unusual and kind of striking, so it commands attention. I like the contrast of something elegant with something ordinary and mundane. I always get asked about the figures, as they are deliberately cropped and shot low angle. Choosing not to paint the faces creates universality, while also removing the personal element of the portrait. I want the viewer to be able to picture various heads on the figure, say that of a stranger versus that of a family member, and explore how that impacts the meaning of the image. It is part of the ironic push and pull betweeen personal and impersonal treatment of initimate family spaces and domestic behaviors that I like to play with.

What I love is that when people see the paintings they make comments (much more so than with my other styles of painting). They share their own feelings, philosophies or experiences in family life. Everyone seems to take something different from them. It kind of feels like I get to play the part of a qualitative researcher, having small scale discussion interviews with people. So this blending of my academic loves with art is really delicious for me.

All the pieces have phrases as titles, and each piece explores a sub-theme. For example, the "who's there?" piece is about communication and physical and emotional presence. The imagery of the corded phone is so loaded. In the days of my childhood, you had to be present to get a call. We didn't have voicemail. If you missed a call, you missed it. The phone cord tethered you, forced you to give a certain focus, connection. The "piece of cake" painting explores the allocation of parts in a finite whole. As a mother I constantly feel the tension of balancing the spending of hours in a day, money, energy and all the commodities we trade in daily, that we try to apportion and balance as we negotiate home, work, relationships, and personal pursuits. The serving imagery is about passing on our domestic heritage and knowledge.









I felt very driven to paint this group as a series. I haven't released the original pieces for sale yet (some are already on reserve), because I really want to show the entire series as a whole before breaking it up. There is just something in seeing them all lined up, something in the magnitude of more than a dozen of these large paintings that commands attention. So far, I have spent about 10 feverish months working on them, yielding 15 finished pieces and about 10 more in various stages.

I always consider myself a "woman painter." All my series explore relationships and influence. In other collections I employ more abstract and organic symbols, but the domestic series is overt in its portrayal and discussion of what has historially been a woman's sphere. My home life and painting have a very symbolic relationship. So it's fun to take it another step and pay homage to it as a subject matter.

Tasty tidbits: The cake in the "A Piece of Cake" study shot is actually the same recipe I used to make my wedding cake 11 years ago. The skirt in "who's there?" was actually the skirt I wore 14 years ago when I landed my first teaching job. Inspiration for "have a slice" was an Arabic music video, "Mashy Haddy."

Domestically Speaking: Origins

Have you checked out the new Boysenberry Pie line? Do you love it? Are you ready for our first guest post from the lovely Leslie Graff? Today she tells us about how her Domestic Arts series came out. Don't forget that you could win a print from this collection for your very own! Read away!





“I am an artist- right now I am painting a series of women (but only their bodies) engaged in domestic activities…”

That awkward line usually comes out of my mouth with a laugh when I meet people at parties and they ask what I do. Then it’s followed by a slightly confusing digression on how this series evolved and what prompted it.




I was looking for different perspectives for figure work which prompted the piece “cleaning up the mess," an ironic self-portrait of my current stage of motherhood. In the painting is an apron my great grandmother had embroidered and my favorite mid-century nook table, which kind of got my mind thinking about historical shifts in family life. So one afternoon, I spent an inordinate amount of time waiting at a doctor’s office (without my three children). I was bored and started thinking on that painting when all these related images started popping into my head. So I pulled out a marble composition book from my purse and there on the exam table I furiously scrawled titles and thumbnail sketches for more than 20 compositions. Ever since then I have pretty much been furiously trying to get those original inspirations onto canvas. I was a little nervous embarking on the series as it is a marked change from my normal style.




People at first glance see “pretty pictures of women doing housework” but the intentions behind the paintings are much deeper. My graduate degree was in Marriage, Family, & Human Development so I taught family studies and child development at the college and university. Studying this in an academic and research setting gives me a unique perspective both historically and culturally. There isn’t a large body of contemporary art highlighting domestic work, so I took it as a challenge to paint some, not only in an aesthetic way but also with an academic undertone. I see the pieces as a sort of social statement or rather a social question series.

In contemporary American culture I see a trend toward outsourcing in the domestic sphere. More and more, traditionally family behaviors seem to be sold off to the lowest bidder. Efficiency has become a model virtue in family life. Integrating props from various time decades I intentionally blur the historical context of the piece, and prompt introspection on various generational models of family life.




The purpose of the collection is to help the viewer have a questioning experience. The symbols, the titles, the irony in the pieces, hopefully spark the viewers to explore their own experiences as the doer or the beneficiary of domestic work. The questions I want the viewer to explore are: What is the importance or significance of these tasks? Does it matter who does them? How do these tasks impact family life, generational ties? How has domestic life changed, and how have our attitudes toward family, home, and domestic work changed?

My brain food: Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Erikson’s Theory Psychosocial Development, Interpreter of Maladies, NPR, Scientific American podcasts, Dwell, The Time Bind, F Scott Fitzgerald Short Stories.



Join us tomorrow for more Leslie and more pie! See you then!

Pie In The Sky

Is your week off to a good start? Do you want me to make it better? I'd love to!



First of all, we are going to be hosting the illustrious Leslie Graff on this blog through the rest of the week, starting tomorrow. Leslie is a lady and a scholar and a domestic goddess and a painter who is currently working on a series of truly stunning paintings depicting women engaged in the lovely details of every day life. Her work looks a little something like this.




If you like what you see here you're just going to want to keep reading. Trust me on this one.


In addition to stunning us with her wit, wisdom and style, Leslie will be helping us unveil Boysenberry Pie, Shabby Apple's new line of truly scrumptious, vintage-inspired aprons. It is so cute it will make your teeth hurt. Each apron comes with straight up adorable-ness and a pie recipe. Making a pie while wearing a darling apron? Don't mind if I do.







But, this is the thing. There are as many delicious pie recipes as there are people in the world. And we want to hear yours. Will you share?



This is the way it is going to shake (and bake) down.



You put up a post on your own blog with your favorite pie recipe. Maybe it's your grandmother's recipe. Maybe it is the pie you have eaten every Thanksgiving of your life. Maybe it's the kind of pie you ate at your wedding, or the day your first child was born. Give us your recipe and tell us the story that goes along with us.



Also in the p0st, link back to Shabby Apple so all your friends know about the good things we have going on around here these days. (Be forewarned: if there is no link to our site in your post, it will be disqualified from the contest. Don't say I didn't tell you.) Then come back to this post and leave us a comment so we know where to find you.



We'll leave the contest open until this Friday, July 16th. This is a quick one, so get cracking!



Using a random number generator, we'll pick three semi-finalists and we'll spend the weekend baking (I know, such a hard life) to find the winner! We'll announce the winner next Tuesday, as soon as we have recovered from our pie comas.



The winner will receive a complete set of Domestic Art notecards for a total of 15, one for each of the completed paintings in Leslie's series, all hand-signed, titled and individually sleeved, PLUS a 20 x 30" hand-finished and signed giclee print of the Domestic Art painting of their choice.



Wowza!



If you don't want to win this contest, I quite frankly do not know what is wrong with you. So stop reading this post and get posting!



And stop by tomorrow for our first post from Leslie, plus some more sneak peeks of Boysenberry Pie.



May the best pie win!

Don't Cut These Apron Strings

I moved over the weekend and my new kitchen is a total and complete disaster with boxes filled with who-knows-what stacked up to the ceiling. We are eating off paper plates and using plastic forks and knives and drinking out of the faucet because who can be bothered to unpack over a no-work-for-three-days weekend?

I am really, super-duper excited to use my new kitchen, though, and am already brainstorming all sorts of ways to spice it up. Like some adorable, vintage-inspired curtains to match the red KitchenAid. And maybe some floral hot pads and oven mitts. Oh, and maybe a darling 1950s-style apron, like this one, coming to Shabby Apple next week?



You read that right cats and kittens. This so-cute-it-hurts kitchen commodity, and many more like it, are coming to Shabby Apple soon. Along with an amazing (I mean, uh-mazing) contest with an incredible (and I mean, in-credible) prize and some awesome guest posting as well. So consider yourselves teased, and check back here for more details soon.

Have A Firecracker Of A Fourth

I don't mean to make everyone jealous, but I have to say that I think I live in the best city ever for enjoying the Fourth of July. I mean, celebrating the independence of the country in the capital of the country? Yes, please.

So, I will be watching the fireworks sitting by the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument (OK, I do mean to make you a little jealous). But I am sure you will all be doing something fabulous as well. And, just to make sure, here are a few little extras to help you pay tribute to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

I am never really one for flag T-shirts and other patriotic wardrobe choices, but a nice pair of red, white or blue Toms Shoes doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Pair them with a flirty white shirt dress from Shabby Apple (and have you heard about our BIG SALE?!?!) for the perfect picnic-and-fireworks outfit.



If you're looking to spice up your weekend with some summer tunes, here are some numbers (mostly old but still awesome) that are making me really happy these days. Nothing like an impromptu dance party to say, "Thanks, Founding Fathers!"










Or, if you happen to be the hostess with the mostess this holiday weekend, check out this delicious summer dessert recipe. Pretzels, cream cheese and fruit? Yes, please! For an extra dose of I Love America, you might consider adding some blueberries to the top as well.

Most importantly, though, be safe and happy and enjoy your Fourth!

(And, because I really like you guys, I'll tell you that we have some pretty amazing stuff coming up in the next few weeks, so once you're done celebrating, check back here! You won't be sorry.)