Chicago Pedway

I was thinking about the underground tunnels that I used to take when I worked downtown in the early 70's. I googled it and came up with this great website Mark Spiegl's Chicago Pedway page. I used to take the Randolph St. pedway from Marshall Field's over to Michigan Ave. in the winter, and was able to get on the Illinois Central train from the underground. We only took them during rush hour when there were a lot of people around, because I remember them being pretty scary.


The picture on Mark's page shows a marked improvement to the look of the pedways. I remember them as damp and dark and creepy and they smelled of urine. Yuk. This great pedway map is from his page:

Here's another link to Gaper's block where you can read detailed information by Alice Maggio about the pedways. Part one and part two  It's really interesting and most people probably don't even know they exist. Another good read is this Wikipedia article.

Mark Hampton books re-visited

The books I mentioned in my previous post arrived and both of them looked like they had never been opened, much less read. Even the dust jackets looked practically brand new.

The biggest surprise was that Legendary Decorators of the Twentieth Century turned out to be a first edition signed by Mark Hampton! Remember, I paid a whopping $1.64 for this book and when I looked up a first edition on Amazon it was over $300, and that one didn't have an autograph. I don't know who Jane was, but she was lucky enough to have Mark sign her first edition.

It also has a publisher insert for an error on page 238, which could add to it's value even more. I can't wait to read this book and will share some of the amazing paintings in the future. I know this book was edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which makes it even more special.

I have chosen some black and white paintings from the book because I'm fascinated with the color values he achieved from black paint and water, and working with positive/negative space.

The other book, Mark Hampton on Decorating, was also in pristine condition. I'm embarrassed to say that I was disappointed that my $0.15 book wasn't a first edition also, but I think I can live with it. Again, I can't wait to read it. This book has charming notes written in calligraphy by Mark.

Mark Hampton watercolor

I ordered two used books from Amazon.com the other day featuring the designs and watercolors of Mark Hampton. I have always been fascinated by his room paintings and wanted to see more of them. Click on these pictures and view the genius of  his technique.

I ordered Legendary Decorators of the Twentieth Century and Mark Hampton on Decorating, $1.64 and $0.15 respectively. Come on, fifteen cents for a $60 book?  And what an odd price for the other- $1.64 -what is with that odd number? Can't complain though, $1.79 for both books! I bought them from Better World books and with those prices they sure made my world better. They supposedly have shipped, so I will post more pics when I get them.


This is the beauty of used books, they are so doggone cheap. There is nothing I support more than buying used books. I want to see a book, but I don't want to pay $60 for it. I love buying used anything, and buying a well worn book just reflects the joy that it brought to the previous owner. Anyway, here's a couple of samples of Hampton's work, so amazing. I would love to paint like this -  but I tend to overwork my paintings so that's something I definitely have to work on. 

Piet Mondrian

1965. Yves St. Laurent. Based on designs created by Piet Mondrian, he created one of the most iconic dresses ever. I would love to re-create one of these but it looks REALLY HARD.

This lady did it. Read about it here: http://www.squidoo.com/the-mondrian-dress

And consequently, there were all kinds of things Mondrian:

http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/2008/08/mondrian-madness-in-furniture-shoes.html

http://blog.lulusvintage.com/2006/08/piet_mondrian_s.html

Kara Ross Mondrian style clutch bag

Read about Piet Mondrian here.
And, last but not least, my favorite Yves cologne, Rive Gauche. I had a can of this for years, and I am thinking of trying to track it down. It's divine.

www.perfumezilla.com

Welcome Back, Colleen!

So, it has been almost two years to the day that I posted on here. Time to catch up. I've sewn, made jewelry, painted, learned how to use an iphone, played my wii, worked, lost weight, loaded a kindle, watched movies and t.v. shows, and married off a daughter. I have forgotten to take photos of things I have made, which saddens me because I usually have complete amnesia that I've made something once I give it away. I haven't even taken pics of Buster and Molly!

I feel technology has made me disorganized because there is always a new photo storage site or a new way to store data and I have stuff all over the place. My old phone allowed me to remove the SD card and put it into my laptop to transfer pics and things, but now I have an iphone and am constantly struggling with transferring stuff. Apple portrays itself as so minimilist, but I find a lot of the ways that they have things set up are very confusing and more complicated than they have to be. I have pictures scattered on two phones, five computers, Walgreens.com, and a digital camera. What a mess.

I kind of appreciate the way Google has correlated their software and I have decided that I'm going to embrace their setup by sticking with gmail, chrome, blogger, picasa, etc. I use google docs all the time and it's great. I bought a picasa app for my phone that will automatically upload my pics to picasa and I can bypass the horrible itunes. I usually just email my music, pics, etc. to myself for easy storage, backup and access - gmail allows 20 mb. attachments, or something like that which is great. And no one is ever going to max out their storage, I don't know how they can offer so much.

So, enough of that - I don't even know why I'm writing all of this because no one is reading it anyway LOL. I guess I'm just making notes to myself. I liked my blog because it's a snapshot of what I work on and a nice archive of all the photos, many of which I don't know the present whereabouts of. My daughter, Meredith, just started a blog (http://onceuponatulip.blogspot.com/) and peaked my interest. So, I'm going to try to do it, once again.

Some pics that were on my phone

My daughters works at Willis Tower. This was their department's entry into the office gingerbread contest. They didn't win. :(

    

This is a cute watercolor I just finished for Kelly.

Dentist

This is the building at 71st and South Shore Drive where I went to the dentist. The last time I went there, I was in college (1973) - I imagine the dentist, Dr. Haskins, is dead now - he was a friend of my dad's and we always went to him. There was a Steinway drug on the bottom floor of this building that we used to go to also, and the South Shore country club is across the street (on the right in the photo).

South Shore Public Library

This is the library I went to when I was a little kid. It was really small, but I loved it.

My sister's candles

My sister has created a candle line that has really taken off. They are extremely high quality and smell delicious. You can fine them here: http://shopcoletteltd.com

8 months later, let's pretend this lapse didn't happen...

I can't even remember what I have been doing since last July, but I'm still alive, so I must have been doing something.

I painted my sister's houses as a Christmas gift. Sorry about the quality, I forgot to take pics until after I had framed them.

I played with my grand-doggies.
I made some jewelry:

Plus, a lot more that I didn't photograph :( , but have already given away.
I think I need to regroup and organize my pictures - I have them on three different computers, my phone and my camera.