Cheapskates' Paradise, part deux!

You might recall a few weeks ago I wrote about how Kiplinger's website named my own St. Louis #1 in their list of the 10 best cities for cheapskates.

At the time I waxed on about how awesome it was growing up in St Louis, where you don't have to have a lot of money to enjoy culture, science and the arts.  But due to my perhaps overzealous enthusiasm for the subject, I only managed to give details on the fabulous, free St Louis Zoo before my post got out of hand.  So I thought maybe it would be worth revisiting the issue to tell you all about other great things you can do in St. Louis on the cheap.  So since I started with the Zoo, there's no point going farther than right up the hill, still in Forest Park.  Folks, I give you the St. Louis Art Museum:

Picture courtesy of ArtKnowledgeNews.com

As you can read in the caption included in the above picture, we are once again in 1904 World's Fair territory with this building.  An altered photo, but a better view of the architecture, by Bill Haack at flickrhivemind.net:

See Saint Louis (Louis IX of France) on his trusty steed guarding the entrance there?  Good man!

A new addition to the museum, designed by David Chipperfield, is almost finished (on the outside.  Interior work is still to come), and is scheduled to open next year:

Artistic rendering courtesy of  e-architect.co.uk.

This new addition will allow the museum to keep more of its well over 30,000 works of art on display.  That figure includes everything from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Byzantine pieces to  precolumbian Native American art to the Americana of George Caleb Bingham to the best collection of 20th century German artist Max Beckmann's work anywhere, to brilliant contemporary artists, photography, design and decorative arts.  I believe I shared with you here about one of my favorite pieces already, 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán's St Francis Contemplating a Skull:

A few other of my favorites on display at the St. Louis Art Museum:

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, John Martin, 1812

One of Degas' "Little Dancer" bronzes

Van Gogh's beautiful "Stairway at Auvers".

 I love Van Gogh.  Partially because of the color and texture and intense life of his work, partially because of the heartbreaking story of his life and art and death, partly because of his self portraits with his gentle, sad eyes and partly, I fully admit, because of Richard Curtis, Tony Curran and Bill Nighy and the beautifully touching job that Doctor Who did with him in "Vincent and the Doctor".  

The above painting dates to July, 1890.  His tragic, still debated death came that same month, which makes it extra poignant.

You can see all of this and so, so much more at the St. Louis Art Museum, and you can see it for free!  That's right, like the St. Louis Zoo, the Art Museum is part of the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District, a tax district which provides subsidies to help keep certain cultural institutions available to all, regardless of their financial status.  In fact, above the entrance is the inscription "Dedicated to Art, and Free to All", a motto that was emblazoned on a t-shirt I got my senior year in high school when I got a museum membership as a gift.  I stopped wearing it in college after meeting a guy named Art I wasn't particularly fond of.  Not sure what happened to it after that!

Anyway, with the World's Fair-built building being nearly as beautiful as it's varied contents, the warren of galleries can be fun to wander without direction, allowing for a surprise around every corner.  That in and of itself can provide hours of completely free fun (donations accepted), but wait, there's more!  The museum is situated in Forest Park, atop what's known as "Art Hill", a fairly steep hill leading from the museum down to a reflecting pool with fountains, providing gorgeous views and plenty of lawn for your picnic.  If you feel like spending a little money, rowboats and paddle boats can be rented at the nearby Boat House, where there is also a lovely restaurant alternative to your picnic.  In the winter, bring your own sled and more hours of free entertainment can be had.  Sledding on Art Hill is as much an institution as the museum itself, and most of the population of the city can tell you stories of fun times had speeding down that hill.

New Kitsch and treasures - could use help IDing a couple of them!

I've been so bad.  I know I have plenty of great stuff for my booth for the short term, and should be spending all my free time on cleaning/researching/pricing my finds to get them ready for This Coming Saturday (eek!), and I have done quite a bit of cleaning and researching, but I can't stop myself from the fun of the hunt, and now that I can officially use the excuse that I'm acquiring "inventory", I just keep on doing so.  But I think I've acquired some nifty inventory, at least!  Here are some new nifties that have made it home with me this week:

Cool machine-age bronze colored desk lamp. 

 I love the (pencil-holding?) grooves in the front of the base.  Now I just need to test and see if it works!

Rubbery spindly-legged baby deer.  

Kitschy and adorable.  It's hard to tell but this little fella's huge.  He's at least twice as tall as the regular-sized coffee mug below.

Adorable bunny with pink and mustard colored mushrooms.

Very cute bluebird/angel print.

Sweet vintage Hoenig of California candy dish.

Hawaii tiki napkin-holder.

Fabulously kitschy scowly owl with rolling pin - love him!

Palest green sculptural bud vase. 

This little vase seemed so unique I had to snap it up.  It has the name "Mary Withrow" written on the bottom in what could easily be gold paint-pen.  That is the name of a former US Treasurer, but not of any potters I could find.  If it seems familiar and/or you might be able to point me in the right direction, let me know - I'd appreciate it!

Set of 4 black/gray/orange tumblers.

These really needed washed before getting their picture taken, but I couldn't wait.  Oh, and also they'd just come in from the trunk, so they were really cold and condensation was forming!

Signed and numbered picture in pinks and yellows.
Huge, in heavy wood frame (cropped out of pic).

 I love, love, love this, but the writing is faded so that, while it is definitely signed and numbered, I can't quite make it all out.  In the bottom left corner it says Ed 90.  In the middle I believe it says "Opera Interiors", and on the right it's signed Dorothy Something, 55 (which I assume is the date).  I Googled all the bits I could work out, but haven't had any luck.  If anyone has any guesses on the Something part for me (I think it starts with a B?), or can hook me up with a research resource, I'd be thrilled.

What about you guys?  Anybody else thrifting this week?    Don't forget, I'll be in booth 78 at Kenrick Antique Mall starting THIS WEEKEND!  

Oh, and for my very first time, I'm linking to Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday.  Yay!

A couple of arty bits

On a recent trip to one of my favorite thrift haunts (ok, so it's St Vincent de Paul again - I swear that place has been fun lately - soon it will dry up on me and I'll be all about Value Village or The Salvation Army again), I found two nifty arty items.  The first is one of those "paintings" made with... I don't know, some sort of nature?  Wafer-thin slices of wood, or something.  Here, you tell me:

Birds on a branch in a gold bamboo frame.

And what's fun is, the wood slices (or whatever) are adhered to a real painted canvas, so that the branch and some of the leaves are painted on, and other leaves, and the birds, are overlaid on top:

That bird keeps looking at me...

You can even see a sketched-in but neither painted nor stuck-on leaf, just above the top bird's head.  The piece is signed S. T. Young (or possibly Yang, or Lang, or Zang, or Zoung, or Loung...), but I have yet to find anything online to compare it to under any of those names.  It's pretty well-constructed, too:

HECHO EN MEXICO

It's not exactly the most compelling art form to me - the wood-chip-art, or whatever - but I like that it's birds, and I like the details.

My second find from that trip caught my eye much more quickly and gives me warm fuzzies still.  It's an impressionist-style watercolor, I'm guessing from the 60s, of a young mother and two children in just lovely warm yellows and greens:

Sweet 12x12 watercolor in original cream and green mid-century frame.

I love the colors and the dreamy feeling of it - like nothing can touch this perfect, idyllic moment.  The real world is a million miles away.

It's signed M. Storm.

The back  has a label that says "A Truart Product".  Google shows that this was apparently a fairly common distributor? framer? of mid-century art of varying quality, and I found a couple of references to M. Storm, but no real information.  But I don't care; if I were a mom or a mom-to-be, I would build a whole nursery around this painting.  It's so soothing and warm.  I just love it!  

Update on the little pot from Monday and a thrift FAIL (or, laterally speaking, a chance for thrift genius)!

Hi all!  I still haven't unpacked my biggest and most interesting score from Monday, but here, as a consolation prize, is a cheap plastic item that will probably make you smile:

HEY, KOOL-AID!

But wait, there's more!  Remember the little pot from my first post?  The one with the sort of repeating Rorschach glaze pattern?  Well, I just happened to see a seemingly similar glaze style on an ash tray yesterday afternoon in the basement at Retro 101 on Cherokee Street (a very cool shop - any St Louisans with a yen for retro goodness, especially clothing, accessories and "smalls", needs to check it out!).  The ash tray in question had a sticker on it that read "Treasure-Craft, Compton, CA".  So I came home and googled Treasure Craft, and while I didn't find anything exactly like my pot, here's a Treasure Craft tidbit tray with very similar glaze colors and style:

from SWANKmoderndesign.com

More interesting still, when I googled "pottery glaze rorschach", Item #3 was this.  So what do you think?  Did I find the origin of my little pot?  It seems like a pretty reasonable guess, at least.


On another note entirely, I picked up a pair of slightly-too-big but very comfortable and seemingly sturdy desert boots while thrifting awhile back, and I've worn them a few times, and quite liked them until today, when the sole of the right boot started just peeling away, like so:

Thrifted desert boots - luckily I didn't pay much.

Now, this happened about 3 hours into a 12 hour work day, and as you can see, the sole peeled off quite a bit.  In order to make more than 2 steps without tripping, I had to walk like I was either:
A. Igor (or whatever Doctor Frankenstein's assistant was called), or
2. in a Monty Python sketch.

So on the one hand, giant fail of a seemingly good thrift find.  On the other hand... opportunity.  I can either:
A. throw them out - they're no good to anyone now.
2. look into shoe glue and try to fix them, because they really are very comfy and the materials are really good, even if they apparently weren't stuck together very well, or
C. try something crazy!

You know I can't just do A.  I'd have to at least try something else first, or I'd feel guilty.  So here's the inspiration for the Something Crazy I'm thinking about.  I apologize for the quality of the picture; I basically took a picture with my decent camera of an old snapshot I took years ago that's in a frame under glass that's, quite frankly, not very clean:

An old shoe (probably my grandfather's) 

on a concrete table under an overgrown arbor.

Now, I'm not sure how other people will react to this.  Some folks might think this picture is gross.  I think it is fabulous on a number of levels, including:

A. I love the idea of this small physical representation of nature reclaiming it's own.

2. It looks flippin' cool.

C. It's just so ODD!

So I've had this fascinating image in my mind (and on my tv stand) for ages, and recently, I came across this:

From this interesting site I need to peruse more,

where they have a recipe for growing moss wherever you like!

Now, I live in a postwar bungalow in South St Louis city surrounded by zoyzia grass rather than an old English garden or something more suited to this lovely and intriguing art form, but I filed the idea away for "someday", now that I know a recipe exists.  So today, when my really very cool (if slightly too big) desert boots decided to fall apart, I have to admit, I'm thinking hard about giving this a try.  I'm not sure what I'd do with Moss Boots once I had them, but surely something would come to me... right?

What do you think?  Try to repair, or collaborate with Mother Nature on a weird little art project?