Clothes on a Line

It's a snow day here and I'm making up for lost time! I have some blog posts that I never got around to publishing, so I'm going to release them all now and pretend they have different dates...

  I have been largely consumed by this beautiful Victorian home that I am so tickled to live in. I grew up in an early 1900's reproduction stone farm house and I have always sought out old buildings as a renter. In my childhood home, there were Mercer tiles around a beautiful little St. Francis statue on the back of the house (this little thing was so important to me that I made rubbings of the tiles when my mom sold the house so I didn't have to leave them behind). Mysterious artifacts would sometimes get churned up when we tilled the garden and we ate apples from enormous trees that had been dropping fruit on that yard for god knows how many generations. It was all a big mystery that would never completely unfold. I enjoy the feeling of living in a place with deep history. This current house is so full of character and stories as well.
  This past summer, we renovated our little side porch and made all kinds of interesting discoveries. The crawlspace under the porch was hiding a huge, ornate bed post (it took a few weeks of walking past it in the hallway for us to place what exactly it was), several antique laundry ringers and a number of other great-looking but yet to be identified objects. THEN, we opened up the walls to add insulation and discovered that they were lined thick with old newspapers. They are very brittle and delicate so I carefully stashed them away in my studio, intending to do some projects with them but unsure of what they would be.
  I recently started a painting that incorporated these pages. I also used some stiffened fabrics that I cut into hanging laundry because I am sort of obsessed with clotheslines. Something about the way fabric catches the wind, and perhaps they represent a meeting of domestic life and the natural world. I can't put my finger on it, but I just love the image of clothes hanging on a line. It's been a while since I did a mixed media piece and now I remember why it is so fun! This piece is pretty rough around the edges, but when I get a solid block of time to work I think it will be very satisfying. I'm always off to a very messy start!
  Here is my progress thus far: