bubbliscious ....

i think the new lights over my kitchen table are a step up from the previous lighting (see the last blog post for that sad story...) ... they are called pop fusion pendants .... groovy name, huh?they seem to be like bubbles ... bright, colorful, happy bubbles ....they remind me a bit of candy too ... you know the candies that are in noisy wrappers with a twist at each end ... the kind that you open up and everyone knows you're sneaking a candy ....

my favorite is the butterscotch candy ..... whaddaya think?

one bare bulb .... and the artsy rationale ....

so ... this is like a rorschach test .... look at a picture ... tell me what it makes you think of ....

what's it mean to you? ....one bare bulb ...

it's not suspended from a wire, so it might not be for a brutal, eye blaring interrogation .... but it could be ... that's what i think of ...

that bulb? that one naked, bare, pitiful bulb is in my house ... it looks like it should be in the garage, right?

or a basement ... come to think of it, i might have one just like this in my basement ... nope... i think it's fluorescent lighting in my basement actually ...

or it looks like it should be in the broom closet ... or the closet that you never go and the spiders have taken over ... thankfully, i don't have that closet in my house ....

but i do have that light bulb .. that bare, pathetic, institutional seeming bulb ... though i don't think they even put these in institutions any more, do they?

...a few months ago ... ok fine ... FOURTEEN MONTHS ago, my family moved back into this house after a glorious six month renovation .... and i CHOSE for this light bulb to be put in my house..... in a closet? in the basement? in the attic? in the garage?

no, it's over my kitchen table .... the kitchen table where i ADORE family dinners ... the kitchen table where i've played hundreds (literally) of games in those fourteen months ..... the kitchen table that, really, our family life revolves around ... the kitchen table where i have had at least a dozen sit down dinner parties in the last fourteen months ... oh my ....

one bare bulb ....

you see, i had a vision for my house .... my kitchen table is in a green sunroom .. not just green .. but GREEN ... my kitchen walls are orange ... with white cabinets ... my family room is yellow ... and not just any yellow, but a yellow that benjamin moore was smart enough to name SUNSHINE yellow ... yes, it is brighter than you can imagine ... nope, brighter than that too ....

all of the area surrounding this bulb is sunshine happy joyful house ...

apparently i ran out of steam ... i found a great green light fixture that i put in the dining room ... and i thought i should have put it over the kitchen table ... cause it's pretty casual ... but i didn't want to shop for a formal dining room light ... i like the green casual one i had gotten ... instead ... i wanted groovy and colorful and fun over my kitchen table ... tall order, that ... and i gave up .... periodically i'd cruise the internet or a store and look for adequately cool light fixtures ... but ... ordinariness prevails ...

not to mention? i'm kind of a status quo girl ... once we moved in, that bare bulb didn't bother me .... i hardly ever noticed it ... it was remarked on at every dinner party ... mr.e.beck.artist has gotten good at talking about it as art ... that bare bulb represents a minimalist simplicity in this house of maximalist unsimplicity, apparently ....it is the lone piece of white and unadorned in a house that is a riot of color ... it is the calm in our colorful chaos .... it was our statement ... or, he liked to say, we ran out of renovation money ... or, the truth, i just ran out of steam ....

.... i'm not a decorator kind of girl ... when it's a chore on my to do list, i can get it done ... but once the moment is gone ... it never crosses my mind ... i would have been the 60s housewife who still had an avocado green fridge 25 years later .... i would have been the 70s housewife who left the orange high pile shag rug in the living room well into the mauve nineties ...(were the nineties mauve, or was that the 80s?) ...

so there you have it ... my bare bulb ... here it is with the far wall ... the one white wall in the house ... bead board and white to display my art ... a perfect backdrop for the bulb ... it's a white on white thing ....

oh my gosh, how pitiful is that? fourteen months of bare bulb .....

the electrician is coming tomorrow ... he's replacing that bare bulb ... i can always get him to come back later if i change my mind and want to go back to simple ....

... catching up with my artsy things: three paintings and picasso

my church is opening up a new outreach center .... food pantry, thrift store, help center .... we named it after a retiring priest and i did this painting for him .... it was a big surprise that he was being honored, let alone that he was having the whole center named for him ....

he took that painting off into retirement, but i was asked to do something in the same vein for the new center .... my girls and i did these three collages, we call the series love your neighbor ... they are big ... each, 30 inches square ... mini me, i mean little.e.beck.artist worked on the one on the right .... it has the story of the good samaritan around it ... girl.beck.artist did the one in the middle, it has the story of st. martin .... and i did the one on the right, with the story of mother teresa ..... each one reflecting on people who helped others ....

i actually finished them a week or so ago .... but i did a OH MY GOSH FABULOUS trip to new york city for just two nights .... there were tons of trip highlights, but i'll tell you the artsy one ... mr.e.beck.artist and i went to the met for some art viewing ... we looked through the whole museum, but i went with the intention of seeing the picasso exhibit ... and ... in fact ... i believe that the picasso exhibit at the met is the single most impressive art exhibit i have ever been to... i adored it ... it was HUGE ... it was fabulous .... i learned so much (and i've read books and books about picasso already) .... i was giddy for how lovely it was ....

it stark contrast was the kandinsky show at the guggenheim ... gosh, i was completely underwhelmed .... i adore kandinsky, but this tiny exhibit was not worth the special trip i made ....i'm not sure i've ever given a negative review on this blog ... hmmm ... i'll think about that ....