What is on your walls?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

My roomate is an artist: quite a few of her paintings and sketches. Also photos of various members of her family.

Some photos of mine: fall colors in the Sierras, a shot of the Crazy Horse Memorial with some really nice thunderheads in the background.

Framed posters: “Moonshine” calendar on mylar showing daily moon phases. “Walter’s Wiggles” trail from Zion Nat’l Park. “Valley of The Yosemite” by Albert Bierstadt. “Havasu Falls” by David Muench. “The Beatles”- the B&W one from '68 where they’re looking off to the right.

Last, but not least, framed copy of the “Everest 1996 Film Expedition” poster autographed by David Breashears (expedition leader/main IMAX cameraman)

Here’s my chance to brag that I’ve shaken hands with two men who’ve stood atop Everest–the other being Ed Viesturs.

42

My wife is a jewelry maker, and makes a lot of trades at shows. We also know a lot of local artists. Consequently, we have a lot of original art hanging on our walls, very little of it actually paid for.

There’s sort of a landscape with charred wood on it.

There’s an abstract thing with some asphalt type compound on it.

There’s a charcoal drawing.

Two mirrors by a craftsman.

4 or 5 Chinese water color prints of birds and bamboo and shit.

An abstract oil painting.

A line drawing of a guy at a desk with a weird head.

A “Ne buvez j’amais d’eau” drawing in a bathroom.

A framed photo of our dogs by some artist-lady we know.

An artsy trivet.

An artsy thing with figures on it.

A Buscemi-signed Big Lebowski poster.

A weddding picture.

And a print of the “Floor Scrapers” by Caillebotte.

43

I’ll do the living room but, being a bit of an art nut, won’t do everything…

An original watercolor similar to this, a John Constable landscape, English home in trees with plains.

Two originalRiedel still lifes in oil. He called me when he was having trouble with a gallery and after visiting and helping with some purchase documentation David sent me a nice nude sketch, very discreet, and it’s on the far wall.

I met William Matthews at a show a decade or so back and bought an original watercolor of Waddy Mitchell that looks a bit like this. Matthews reminds me of a western Wyeth.

Gotta make room though for an original Linda Ging we bought last week in Santa Fe. It’s by far our most contemporary piece but should make for a pleasing contrast.

A couple of game stamp paintings, one of quail and one of ducks. Can’t remember the artist but he was good, unlike many you see.

Two original pencil sketches by… umm… me. One’s in the style or Frederick Remington and the other Winslow Homer.

44

Hey! I found a copy of the Pepper Mill + Griffin picture on the Internet:

Here’s the Main Site:

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Prints/PrintSet.html

45

I have five beautiful watercolor paintings done by my daughter when she was very young, like around five or six years old, one clock, and a portrait of my fiance Miguel and his son.

In the kitchen hangs the beer mirror I refuse to allow in the living room.

In my hall I have several family portraits.

My daughter’s room is covered with rock stars and drawings and poems she’s written directly on the walls.
I like her room the best!

46

My bedroom will suffice:

a poster of good luck symbols related to screenwriting. No, they haven’t helped a whole lot yet.

a poster of downtown Vegas

my extensive collection of souvenir pennants

a lot of keychains hanging from the pushpins that hold up the pennants

a couple of leis, a Southwest boarding pass holder, a bunch of award certificates I got for writing stories and for academic achievements, Mardi Gras beads

assorted postcards, mostly with artwork from museums

two calendars, various business cards, a b/w photo, and some art that my nieces made when they were younger

And my most favorite poster: Mt. Rushmore featuring the faces of Gandhi, MLK, Einstein, and Curly from the Three Stooges, with the caption: “The Four Wise Guys of the 20th Century”

47

In my dorm room I have:

Two ceramic theatre masks, Comedy and Drama

Five posters of shows I worked on during high school

Pictures from the show I directed

A Batman poster

A Boondock Saints poster

Iran’s advertisment in the New York Times a few weeks ago outlining their reasoning behind wanting nuclear energy

The patch I got when I became an Honor Thespian

My memberships for both Jr. Thespians and the ITS

A world map

A few placards and credentials from Model UN conferences I’ve been to

A poster that lists the different “Religious Views of Life”

The Flint Institute of Arts reopening poster

Yeah, I think that sums me up pretty decently: theatre, global politcs, and good movies. And geekdom. Can’t forget the geekdom.

48

A couple of candle sconces left by the last person in this apartment, a nicely-framed print of Picasso’s Guernica, and a full 6-bottle wall-mounted wine rack (w00t). I think my best friend’s getting my a print of Picasso’s still life with the leek, water jug, and skull on a table for Christmas, which’ll be awesome.

And that’s counting all the rooms - bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen.

Help! I even bought a few blank canvases a few weeks ago, hoping to splash some paint on myself to liven up the walls, but I’m not an artist and nothing’s coming to me. I was thinking of doing some block Mondrian-esque art, but what else?

49

We’ve got an assortment, all Zyada’s so far, but soon some of mine.

In here we’ve got a botanical-drawings calendar (all roses) and a bulletin board.

My bathroom has a drawing of a tiny dragon in a beer stein, thoroughly hung over, and one of a cat head-down in a jug of milk, wondering how to get out.

The bedroom has a couple of big Georgia O’Keefe posters.

The living room has a print of El Jaleo by Sargent over the piano, and one of a woman standing on rocks by the shore, over the fireplace. There’s also a tambourine, a bodhran (like a tambourine without the jingly bits), and her belly-dancing sword.

The kitchen has an assortment of iron trivets over the stove.

We’ve been renovating one room as a den/computer room, and got some more stuff framed to hang when we can. There’s a set of four small-size posters for “The Art of the Book,” a show in Vancouver in 1986, each with a photo of one stage of bookmaking. (I got those two or three years ago when the organization that put on the show found a few boxes in the back of a storeroom!) I also got a printing-related poster from the Governor’s Palace in Santa Fe, with a cowboy and an old manual press. Then we got a Byzantine botanical print from the Met in New York, and Zyada had a b/w photo she took of the sun shining through a Ferris-wheel car in a local park. (The wheel is long gone, unfortunately.)

We’ll be putting those up with a picture rail around the top of the room, with the pictures hanging from hooks with fishline.

50

That “woman standing on rocks by the shore” is Ecstasy by Maxfield Parrish, at

http://www.famousartreproductions.com/ecstasy.html

Duh!

51

Interesting thread. Let’s see, in a random look-around:

Two Fred Machetanz lithographs, five George Ahgupuk original pen and inks on animal skin, 12 Robert Mayokok original pen and ink drawings (they’re small), a tile with our coat of arms from my mother’s side, a photo of my grandfather, a photo of my wife’s parents’ wedding, several African masks, a Jon Van Zyle print, some wildlife photos that I took, an original watercolor by artist unknown that has been in the family for several generations, some antique photos of Southeast Alaska in old piecrust frames, and an antique clock from Vienna.

Ebay has been very, very good for me.

52

The Living Room Walls:

A print of this Larry Bell Vapor Drawing

126 cat whiskers set in rectangular array on cocus wood, surrounded by a frame made from a single chunk of silver maple recovered from the stump of the tree in the back yard.

Several Dream Catchers

A framed New Scientist cover titled “the throwaway tail of the lizard” featuring a stump-tailed lizard riding a bicycle.

My wife’s “24 dancers” poster, featuring the symmetries of the tetrahedron.
One of her more intricate high-school macramé hangings.

Chinese flower/bamboo prints.

A really tacky cat calendar.

Above the kitchen door is a collection of gears, prisms and mirrors from an early Beckmann DU spectrophotometer, and a nice pyrite sun.

53

I attend a lot of women’s basketball games, and pick up free posters (gfenerally featuring a schedule and photos of the players). So my walls feature the following:

2001-02 DePaul
2001-02 Drexel (men’s and women’s basketball)
2001-02 Indiana University
2001-02 Villanova
2001-02 Purdue “Out of this World”
Another Purdue poster from that season, featuring the “Boiler Mazer” (cornfield maze in the shape of the Purdue locomotive logo) issued by the university’s Extension Service and signed by the players at a Boilermaker fan club picnic
Newspaper clipping of the 2001-02 Purdue roster and player photos

2002-03 Notre Dame “Tradition Lives On”
Another Notre Dame poster from that season, featuring the “wingspan” of Jackie Batteast and signed for me by that player
Sheeet of paper signed by members of the 2002-03 Purdue team (wonder why I never got a poster of that squad)

2003-04 Illinois “We Mean Business”
2003-04 Purdue “Let The Good Times Roll”
2003-04 Western Michigan “Fight On Fight On For Western”

2004-05 Purdue “Rise and Shine”

2005-06 Northwestern
2005-06 Purdue “We’ve Got Your Game”

College non-basketball:

2004-05 Purdue Dance Team
2005 Northwestern volleyball “NU Year, NU Attitude”
2005 Purdue Pete mascot (promoting his candidacy for the CapitalOne All-America Mascot Team)

Women’s National Basketball Association:

2002 Indiana Fever team photo
2003 Fever
2005 Fever “The Girls of Summer” with player shots and schedule/calendar
2005 Fever with small team photo plus action shots of individual players
Small Fever pennant
Small pennant for Cleveland Rockers, now-defunct team I supported when I lived in Northeast Ohio

In addition to the above, I have:

Large pennant of Johns Hopkins (maternal grandfather’s alma mater)
Mirror on wall opposite dining room table side on which my computer sits (yes, the apartment is that small)
Bedroom mirror
Painting of window decorated with flowers
Drawing of a goldfinch on a branch (signed “peg wheeler hope”)
Tassel from high school graduation
Blue ribbon won at the 2000 Tippecanoe County Fair by Sternvogel, a goat (wether) owned by Long Time First Time, named after my online alias, and shown at the fair by one of her daughters
14-jar spice rack
Kitchen clock (needs a battery)
Calendar featuring various scenes of Lafayette (this month’s is a photo captioned “Sunset by The Wabash by David Pavese”)

54

A Star Wars Revenge of the Sith poster
A Harry Potter Sirius Black poster
A Harry Potter poster from like 1998 before the second book even came out.
A Beatles poster
A Weezer poster
Some flower painting that my mom got like twenty years ago. I’ve got no idea who painted it or where my mom got it, but it’s pretty and matches my room so it’s up on my wall.
Then random pictures of cute movie actors I like.

Why yes I’m a teenage girl, why do you ask?

55

Let’s see - I’m in my office off the cat suite, so:

Two walls are bookshelves. The door is in one of those.

A third wall has shelves with cats on them, and another bookshelf. Yes, I read a lot, why do you ask?

The fourth wall is my hockey wall - a team signed jersey from the CHL Championship team, 5 hockey pucks, two car tags, one hockey stick, one frisbee, last year’s booster club lanyard, and framed pics of me riding the Zamboni, with our head coach when I bought my stick at Tip-A-Snake, pics of me with the players I got my game-worn jerseys from, pics of me with some hockey buddies, pics from when I threw out the first puck at a game, several team pictures, and a great shot of all the guys in their tuxedoes for Tip-A-Snake a few years ago. Those fellas cleaned up pretty nice!

56

Entranceway:

-A picture of a curiously startled-looking musk ox taken from one of those animals-of-the-world books that were popular in the 1800s
-A fossil of a fish, framed in a shadow box
Kitchen:

-One of the “limited edition” Chrome posters from a few years ago
-A Residents poster from the Wormwood tour
-An owl made out of welded nails that my mom picked up at a craft show years ago (it’s one of those things that I’m not real fond of but can’t get rid of, since my mom gave it to me…)
-An Irish straw cross
-A random Scandinavian woven straw decoration
-An antique wooden ladle used for scooping sour milk
-A painting of a cat that an aged aunt did
-Four pairs of chopsticks (they’re tigerstripe maple with rosewood rests that slide onto the chopsticks–hard to explain, but it looks cool)
Hallway:

-A picture of a wolverine (akin to the musk ox, but from the 1700s)
-An Escher poster from a museum exhibit that was in town several years ago
-A wall-mounted piggybank-type thing (it’s a miniature of a large coin-collection box at the 1700s-era church in my father’s home town)
-A wedding photo from one set of grandparents (1920s-era)
Bedroom:

-A mirror in a custom cherry frame
-A print of a samurai that a buddy gave me several years ago
-A couple of prints that an aged aunt got when she was stationed in Japan after the war
-A painting of wood-burners that a great-aunt did (she was quite a good folk artist)
Living room:

-A woven wall hanging (I can’t remember the right term for it)
-A calendar
-A black velvet painting (woot!) (it’s from Australia and shows native-style depictions of a bunch of animals–it’s actually pretty cool. It was a gift; my parents are doing the retired-folks travel thing)
-A horsehair fly wisk
-A decorative adze (I think from New Zealand; also a gift from the parents)
-A poster of Yang Cheng-fu demonstrating tai chi postures
-A print of Animal Licking a Splinter by Stanislav Szukalski
-In a few days, I’ll hang my prints of Victor Hugo and Echo, also by Szukalski

57

In the couch room (with the TV) a big photo of our daughter and her horse, an old NY subway map that my wife picked up somewhere for $1, and four small paintings my we got in the Congo when we lived there in 1961-1962, and which I inherited.

In the chair room, a NY Times photo of the NY public library lions I gave to my wife for Christmas last year, and a photo of the Atchafalya in Louisiana which we bought on our way out of the place 25 years ago. Also two paintings of the town in NJ where we lived, which friends gave us when we left. In the hall, a quilt from a friend in NJ, an old sampler from my wife’s family, and a picture of dogs our neighbor just gave us. In our bathroom a picture of lady bugs a friend gave us for our wedding. In my office an old F&SF cover I bought, some random awards and a few patents.

58

Sitting here in my cubicle, I’m reminded of how much more stuff I’ve got to stare at besides the aforementioned Flaming June and Hylas and the Nymphs.

I’ve got a picture of my girlfriend, of course, casually leaning against a railing on the strip in Vegas. It tends to prompt spontaneous bouts of dreamy stares and/or drool.

I’ve got an enlarged copy of a comic titled “Phishermen’s Tales” depicting two guys wearing backwards baseball caps and t-shirts. One is saying to the other, with his hands out, “I once got an account number this long”.

Next to that is a page ripped from a IT Security magazine. It’s an ad for some sort of phishing protection software/service that is a picture of a sign hanging from a doorknob that says “Phishing Gone”.

Next to that I have two photo postcards of Billie Holiday. One from 1936, one from 1948.

Below that I have a small painting by the same college artist friend who I mentioned previously. It is an acrylic depiction of the view from one of my family’s houses in Southern Humboldt on a foggy morning.

Next to that I have a 14"x24"Libra zodiac print by David Pallidini. I love this piece, and I’ve had it my entire life, but it frustrates the hell out of me because apparently his series of zodiac art was pretty obscure and I can never find any of the other signs. Each of the members of my family has one. Gemini for my Mom, Taurus for my Dad, and Cancer for my older brother. My parents bought them all at a street fair in Southern California in the 70’s. But the only thing I ever find on eBay or when combing through dealer and merchant sites is some Aquarian Tarot cards that he did in the 70’s as well. I’ve never found hide nor hair of the zodiac series that corresponds to the ones my family have, aside from one other person in pretty much the same boat as me. She posted to a discussion board looking to expand her collection from the few signs that she has.

Next to that I have a frame with two “promotionally” autographed pictures of the Indigo Girls. It looks pretty much exactly like the one linked. I won it as a raffle prize, probably 10 years after it was signed, as I believe they signed a horde of them during their promotion of 1200 Curfews. But I do get to run into them out and about in Atlanta quite often. At Eddie’s Attic…free Sugarland concerts in the Piedmont Park…“My Sister’s Room” (the dyke bar). This makes me happy. :smiley:

Then there’s my corporate houseplants. One bamboo, one pothos, and two spider plants.