The Last Painter of Happiness

"La vie ne m'a pas toujours sourit, mais j'ai toujours sourit à la vie."

-Raoul Dufy

I saw this beautiful and charming cartoon one day in university - I was escaping a very boring art history class, and I discovered that a class on the History of Animation was being held right next door. That's where I first saw 'The Invisible Moustache of Raoul Dufy' (from UPA studios):

Dufy was a perfect mix of craftsman and artist - he started out making paintings at the beginning of the 20th century but branched out into ceramics, textiles, set design, commercial illustration, interior decorating and printmaking. He's had a huge influence on me in more ways than one.

 I was lucky enough to see a small exhibit of his ceramics at a design museum while travelling in Belgium a few years ago:

L'artiste lui-même.

We don't call women 'stout' anymore, dear

I now have a Tumblr account which I am using to build a portfolio website (which is still under construction). You can view it over here.


Some images from the small yet incredibly amazing haul from my visit to a church basement bazaar this  morning in Petite-Patrie:

I now have more doily books than one person should own.

 I couldn't not buy a macramé instruction book with a title like this...

...and then I looked inside and saw these.

Some of the advertisements in these "ladies' craft journals" are downright odd.

  

          Yum yum, lard icing! Thanks Loretta!

This one was in the classifieds of a 1962 issue of 'Workbasket'. There was an episode of Wiretap about mail-order monkeys on CBC recently -  it seems they are not as sweet and docile as the one depicted in this advertisement. (Thank goodness the monkey comes with instructions.)

I also picked up an assortment of cassette tapes purely for their aesthetic flair and because cheeseball country music is awesome:

One more button!

My heeeero

Whoosh whoosh!

Some recent knitting machines tests done at school.

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Two posts in one day!

The Death of Lonelypants

Photo taken on Parc avenue by my lovely friend Bronwen Moen.

Put a Willy Wonka hat on it

I'm cooking up some ideas for the articule members show in March: wearable art is the theme. I'm thinking of creating something about etiquette and courtesy. I'm loving some of the instructions found in some of the older books, like Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book (1859)

• "Young ladies noted for abounding in beaux, are generally rather inconvenient visitors; except in very spacious houses and in gay, idle families."

• "Pouring butter-sauce over any thing is now ungenteel."

• "A lady should never be seen to rock in a chair, and the rocking of a gentleman looks silly."

Also loving these explosively genteel church hats from this website:

Wearable art is really cool at its most luminescent:

From artist Beo Beyond

From artist Rebecca Wendlandt

As for myself,  I've been having fun making paintings of meat-filled pastry from an old Time-Life cookbook.

 I should add that I'm very been very much titillated and and inspired these days by the Queen of Food Porn (and she is so much more...)