Shirley’s Blue Book

Shirley’s sweet little blue book, for the colors round robin, was a joy
to work in.  It was an old, shabby photo album, with a worn leather
cover that wrapped around a series of pages and tied with a string. 
The page were old and sepia-toned, embellished with flourishes.  Each
page had four cutouts, designed to hold a 4×6″ photo, and Shirley’s
request was that we make a piece of blue art, any color of blue, and
place it in the book.

Because of the book’s fragile nature, I didn’t want to scan my piece, so instead, I snapped a really bad picture.  I didn’t realize I had cut off the right side of the piece until after the book was already in the mail.  Bad photography seems to be a theme with me lately.  And I’m especially sorry about it in this case, because I was happy with the sort of ethereal result of this piece.

This piece is called “Dwelling with their father” and I will share a bit of the story with you.  I was browsing in an antique store here in town with my Mom.  We found a little basket full of old photographs.  Most of them were cabinet cards, with logos from photographers all around the country.  But there were a couple of pictures with no label, and this was one of them — a picture of a wedding party on the front steps of a house.  I immediately recognized the house, an old, arts & crafts style house that is up the street from us.  It’s front porch is very distinctive.  The image of the girls in the upper right corner is a fragment torn from a copy of the photo.  And the trees represent the sort of place these girls must have dwelled — my neighborhood is called Forest Park, and despite the passage of close to 100 years since most of the houses were built, it is still a heavily-treed area.  I imagine they must have had nice, happy lives, dwelling in the house of their Father.

It would be easy to do a little bit of research and figure out who they are, but for now, I’m happy with the mystery.  Shirley, I hope you like your book!