". . . book shops and libraries . . . those literary counterparts to the opium den . . ." Phillip Adams

I've told you before:

I'm a magazine junkie, 

and I wasn't exaggerating. 

Not. One. Bit. 

I am, in fact, the type of junkie who knows on what day of the month magazines are released and hangs around the periodical aisle, inventing a need for ketchup or kleenex in order to justify a trip to the grocery store at just the right time.  (Now Russ is having an "aha!" moment as he reviews 29 years of my grocery patterns . . .)

Actually, that's "Vintage Susan." 

"Modern Susan" subscribes.

So when I moved to o-l-d magazines, it was just a natural extension of a preexisting addiction. And since I already had a collecting addiction, an all-things-vintage addiction, and a definite nostalgia for certain eras (the 1930's, for instance) it's amazing it took as long as it did for me to become completely hooked.

But I realized sometime last fall that my vintage mags were taking over my studio in a way that had become work prohibitive.  So I began wracking my brain for some way to corral them that would cater to their delicate natures (old paper is fragile!  and can be smelly, but we forgive those we love for smelling) yet leave them accessible for illustrating my blog and sourcing text for my pieces.

As part of my January clean up, I finally hit upon the perfect solution (after a series of near-misses) and am delighted with the result.

No more piles of magazines 
on the studio floor!

Plenty of new room for piles 
of other things!

And I also sorted my ENORMOUS floor piles of current magazines into files, ready to be transported to my new studio which will have ever-so-much more shelf space.

That being done, I felt the weight of 2 Barnes & Noble gift cards burning a hole in my pocket and decided to go hang out at the newsstand for a bit and peruse some of the publications I don't regularly purchase to see if there was anything NEW and anything at all that I desperately NEEDED.

But the surprising answer to both questions was: No.

Nothing new, and perhaps even more surprising, nothing I needed.

For years I devoured every decorating and craft and art magazine wondering why nothing I did ever looked as SOMETHING as the things the magazine people did -- wondering why my projects just didn't have that "je ne sais quoi" that landed them in the magazines in the first place.

This is the kind of magazine feature that can induce an existential dilemma


And I yearned to be able to make things that looked like their things.

Actually, even when I spent 8 years being the person who did make the magazine projects, I wondered why my own art didn't ever measure up to the things the featured ARTISTS made.  (Which is just an illustration of how warped the yardsticks with which we measure ourselves can be, but that's another post . . .)

Perusing the books and mags at B&N there were plenty of things I thought were cool, and I did catch myself a few times thinking "why don't any of my pieces look like that?" and there was even a brief second where I thought of trying something that would look like one of the pieces, but the inclination faded quickly.

Because it seemed that with each page I turned,

the sea of sameness grew.  

I suppose many people make things that look alike for the same reasons many people dress alike --

no need to detail those reasons here, but it makes sense that in magazines for fashion or for making, similar rules would apply.  So I shouldn't have been surprised.

The surprise was how glad I felt that my work DOESN'T really look like any of those things.  

Glad for the first time! 

Seriously. Took long enough. 

Granted, I don't get featured in all the magazines either. Oh well.

Just like marching to my own fashion drummer in junior high didn't make me popular, creating my own kind of work puts me out of the mainstream a bit, I suppose.

It's the same with this blog.
Initially, I wanted it to be like all the other lovely art blogs out there.

Ed. note:  The problem seems to be that most Small Works posts have a nasty habit of "plumping when I cook them."  


But it has recently begun to dawn on me that I'm just not a regular art blogger (for one thing, I can't use a camera -- but that's another post, as well . . .)

So I shan't hold my breath waiting for the folks at "Artful Blogging" to come knocking.

 

Luckily there were enough people in school who overlooked my weird clothes that I didn't have to spend every day in the lunchroom by myself.

And by the way . . . thanks for stopping by.

(What's in your lunchbox? Want half a sandwich?)