The STUFF Sisters
S. Sloane Simmons and Casey Simmons
Sisters and business partners sharing life's stuff....
I reviewed these photos when they came in an e-mail today, and my initial comment to my sister was, “Geesh. It bothers me deeply that he has no talent.” Total tongue in cheek on my part, because I was stupefied and felt tied to my chair in amazement. But my soul was soaring….
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| I reviewed these photos when they came in an e-mail today, and my initial comment to my sister was, “Geesh. It bothers me deeply that he has no talent.” Total tongue in cheek on my part, because I was stupefied and felt tied to my chair in amazement. But my soul was soaring. |
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This is amazing art and incredible talent. This is what art is all about. This is about being just a wee bit crazy.
This is about following a powerful muse.
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Yesterday, I was hanging out at Starfish Co. in Cortez, Florida, having one of my all-time favorite meals – the Shrimp Box with extra hushpuppies, an order of clams to start, and a cold Corona Light with lime. I was half-heartedly reading a Country Living magazine (damp and wrinkled from being shoved in the bottom of the beach bag all morning) when I happened upon a feature about rope decorative items. And I was struck with a great memory of my dad and his sidekick in life, “The Vickster” (my stepmom).
Yup, my dad has a knack for interiors, and he loves to use adhesives. And my stepmom is addicted to home magazines.
It was many, many years ago when my dad purchased a lake home at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri for our family to enjoy. And I learned at that time that it is pretty common to buy vacation homes furnished.
Now, how do I put this nicely? This home was not furnished with the “Simmons Aesthetic”. There was a whole lot of brown – and not the “good” brown. But who in the world is going to march out and buy all new furnishings for a weekend lake home for use by a family of adult children, their kids, your friends, and a small kennel of dogs? Not this handy dude.
My dad took it upon himself to whip that place into shape. With family labor, he managed to paint everything he could in white, off-white and cream. He broke down and re-carpeted the joint (again off-white – not a popular choice with the family, but it did brighten the place up). After he gave a bunch of junk away (designers call this “editing”), he was ready for some decorative character.
So he went out and bought a huge amount of raw rope and his favorite adhesive for the job, and he meticulously (he does everything meticulously) wrapped and glued the rope around a large vase-like lamp that was pretty darned awful looking. No doubt with plenty of “guidance” from his trusty pardner. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t turn out great. Who knew it could have been featured in Country Living magazine?
If memory serves, I did hear him admit that it would have been cheaper to buy a new lamp, since it took a lot more rope than he initially thought. And I think I heard him mumble, “I will never do that again.” But what’s the fun in that?
I promise to get a photo of the rope lamp for y’all soon. But, in the meantime, I’m on island time.
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It’s an age-old dilemma…does art mimic nature, or does nature mimic art?
Today, while reading my July National Geographic magazine, I was unable to get past the article about the bower birds of Australia. It was mesmerizing and amazing at the same time. It struck me that these birds must share studio space with Andy Goldsworthy. My sister Casey has been on an Andy Goldsworthy binge lately, so he’s been in the forefront of my mind by professional and general sisterly osmosis.
My age-old dilemma, however, has been this: How am I going to afford to visit all the places in the world and see all the places and things that must be seen with the human eye – like bower birds in their habitat?
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Wow. Thank God for magazines.
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These images from Veranda Magazine this month got me thinking. Not just that I love the Zulu wire work, which I do. It got me thinking about collecting and about the fact that I collected items when I was younger with wild abandon. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve edited those collections by either ridding myself of the collection entirely or by purchasing in a more calculated fashion. My husband and I jokingly blame it on “the kid” – braces, team sports, food, piano lessons, and all of his varied expenses. If I’m honest, I think we’ve just slowed a bit and are more educated.
I’m still wild for blue and white transferware “state plates” and always have my eye open. I’m still crazy for hand-embroidered pillowcases. And, hands down, I will never have enough handpainted dishware from the Deruta region of Italy. Ever. And glazed blue pots. And split oak baskets from the Ozarks. And….
I check up on a few blogs daily. If you are a collector, check out collectionaday2010.blogspot.com. The way each daily selection is presented is visually very stimulating, but what overwhelms me is when the description says “part of a larger collection”.
That’s when the minimalist in me overrules the collector.
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I swam on Monday in a deep blue pool and realized, like I do every summer, that I was home. It was my first time in deep blue this year, and I was in heaven. I splashed with my niece and tossed a ball with my son in waist deep water. Then I dried off on a lounger next to my best man. I could tell that my husband had to have gotten a wee bit tired of me mentioning all the ways that I was happy – a happiness I hold deep all winter long.
I have been escaping to pools since I was a pre-teen. I’m sure I dove into our pool at home thinking I was under great stress at 14. Whatever. Our family, like most, has had our fair share of challenges, troubles and loss since those easy summer days. The summer after my youngest sister died, my son was only a year old. It’s little wonder he’s such a greater swimmer now, because I gave him no choices as we loaded into the car almost every day that summer and made the trek to our public pool. Some days we were there for only an hour, and some days we were there for much longer while he napped for several hours. I spent those hours healing myself with quick dips in the water when the heat of my memories and the sun became too intense. I watched him sleep in the stroller, and I got lost in the din of other people’s children and their splashes.
This was all during the first several years of stuff. Casey was working her butt off every day of the week, except Sunday, when I was in charge. In addition, I worked during the week when my son was sleeping – or when he was peaceful enough to work “with” me in a retail environment, which wasn’t much. And I was in charge of all errands and chores that could be accomplished at 30 miles an hour with the little dear strapped into a car seat.
Casey and I had decided at that point to continue the corporate consulting that we had brought with us to stuff from our previous careers. Over the first six summers of stuff‘s life, the trade-off, in my book, for Casey working 6 days a week at stuff was me working the four summer months with the United Autoworkers and the Ford Motor Company. I was the lead developer and implementer for their joint special events and projects at the Claycomo Auto Plant here in Kansas City. It was exciting, fun and exhausting. We were building our dream business, I was building a family, and we were continuing to hone our consulting skills.
Most days were a blur during those summer months with my baby/ toddler/ little man – those months were crucial to our new business, but I nevertheless escaped to the pool and cooled off mentally and physically. It was then that I realized for the first time that stress can’t swim. It runs screaming from the hot concrete and waits in the nether regions. Upon further research, I found out stress can’t even float. This form of dedicated scientific research involved me floating on my back with my ears under the water and my eyes looking skyward. It is a divine was to spend a few minutes, and is something I do every summer when the sky is truly blue enough. I can swim by myself for hours and be happy, but put my teenage son in the mix and I’m beyond contented.
As our son’s love of the water has increased, so has mine. I thought it would be impossible for me to love it more. But I guess there is a kernel of truth in those old sayings about how much the human heart can hold.
Mine can hold the Pacific Ocean. And maybe the Atlantic, too.
Here’s the link to windows installers: https://troysglass.com/visalia/.
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We didn’t leave the Greater Kansas City area last week during my son’s Spring Break. We stayed put, slept in our own comfy beds every night, journeyed to wonderful places during the day, and ate great food at all the wrong times of the day. It was awesome.
A month or so ago, we started making a list of all the places I had, though the years, been telling our son we would see “sometime”. I had been making this “sometime list” since he was old enough to read – maps, road signs, magazines, etc. Over the years, he has been known to say, “Hey, Mom, can we go to the Thomas Hart Benton Home this weekend?” or, “Mom, have I ever been to The John Wornall Home?” or, “Mom, when are we going Fort Osage?” To all of these, over many years, I have responded that yes we would go to these places but just not “right now/this weekend/soon”.
So Spring Break 2010 was a journey to of all these accumulated places we’ve never been to as a family. A listing of it all would be boring – although none of the destinations were dull – but a real highlight was the day we traveled to Sibley, Missouri, to see Fort Osage. Find out more for yourself here. It’s worth a trip. We had a ball.
And, just when I was least expecting it, one of my favorite art forms appeared – forged metal. This door lock had me transfixed, and I love the way the worn gray wood is the perfect backdrop for the metal. I was instantly reminded of all the blacksmith shops I’ve stood in with our son, over many vacations and just as many years, while he planted himself stock still as metal was bent with flame. (He still keeps by his bed the nail that was made right before his eyes at Monticello.)
My mind wandered while my husband took photos of the lock for me, and I thought of the new artist we are representing at stuff, George Rousis, and how his metal work has ignited keen interest in our store. We even started doing progressive stamping on metal. We have never carried a metal smith before. Silversmiths? Yes. Steel-, iron-, and copper-smiths? Not so much. Until now. I had a discussion with a customer just before Spring Break about the balusters and balustrade that George was custom forging for their home and how “organic” they were. His eyes were lit from within as he described it to me – and I had that same look a few days later in the crisp sunshine.
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Yesterday it was back to the “real world”, as my son put it several years ago when vacation was over. He has returned to school. I, however, made sure I checked out George’s pieces in the cabinets and on our walls at work this morning. That way, I can pretend Spring Break hasn’t ended for me.
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Shell art ranges from classic to kitsch, from spectacular to horrible. And I love it all.
I am a shell collector. And, though I have always talked about creating shell art, I just can’t quite bring myself to give over any of my collection to the permanence of grout. (No hot glue here, folks. I think sand grout is the only way to go.)
I have always said that when I die I want my ashes and my shell collection returned to the ocean, though I can’t quite see my friends and family dumping my shell art into the ocean. But wait! It isn’t such a bad idea – it would help create a small reef. (Another reason to skip the hot glue.)
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That’s it! I am going to create my own shell art burial reef. Just take the structure, shove my body inside, haul it out into the ocean, and feed me to the fish.
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I am officially the mother of a teenager. The first day was flawless and full of special breakfast, a “cold” lunch, a special dinner, cards, singing, small gifts from friends, phone calls from family, and an overnight with his cousin in his own bunk beds.
I know all the days of my living with a teenager won’t be like this – for him or me. I won’t get cocky and think that the bad days will pass me by. Let’s be serious: a working mother like myself cannot be relied upon to make “cold” lunch every day. Why do these kids think hot lunch became a reality in schools? Because, all those years ago, mothers who work inside and outside of the home had vision for a life less hectic. Or, that’s my take on the situation.
What I miss the most as my child grows up is that with each passing day it seems the chance of his having one of those amazingly deep belly laughs diminishes. They’re not gone; they just don’t happen several times a week like they used to. We still laugh together, and he smiles all the time, but now I find myself rating the smiles like I used to rank the belly laughs.
And a few days ago my sister and her band of hooligans gave him a smile that came from so deep inside him I think it even surprised him.
You see, my sister has a concrete retaining wall on her property that faces a park. Yes she has fabulous views and an amazing home, but she also can be the victim of graffiti artists and their “tags”. Tags to me are cheap imitations of the true art that graffiti artists are capable of. Where is the art in painting your signature all over midtown? But I digress….
The morning of my son’s birthday, Casey was tagged. She found out about it via a phone call and immediately knew how to fix it. She became the graffiti artist she always knew she was and “fixed” what was clearly not art. Late in the afternoon, she formed what I will loosely call an “artist alliance” – her mom, her mom’s partner, her daughter, and another 5-year-old – and took her spray paint for a little walk around the block. They painted an amazing and happy masterpiece that celebrated my son’s birthday with a “D” and a “13”.
If you want to see a teenager be happy for a very long time, graffiti a wall in his honor. Hands down, it’s the best gift he’s ever received, and you can see it in his smile.
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Here are my favorite things from today.
1. Blushing. Definition: Speaking publicly with my sister at lunchtime and watching both of us become so passionate that different parts of our faces become reddened. (My cheeks, her neck.)
2. Art. Description: Finally making it to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and touring the American Indian Art Collection with my two main men. (Below are my top picks, but nothing in the rooms let me down.)
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3. Treasuring. Explanation: Knowing that the hand that occasionally reached out at the gallery to hold my own doesn’t know that the young man to whom it belongs will continue to grow up and find the comfort of touch far from his mother. (And that’s the way is should be. But it doesn’t make it any easier.)
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At work things get broken. Some break in the store, and others break in transit. A basic fact of retail life.
This angel, which you can’t see entirely, had a wing broken on the way to stuff. She holds a bird, and the base she is standing on is simply inscribed with the word “peace”. She was cast as one piece – wings and all – in all-weather resin. She stands almost 3 feet tall.
I seldom bring broken things home from stuff. Not because I don’t enjoy the things we sell – broken or whole – but because I am not crafty and don’t salvage broken things very well. I can re-purpose things beautifully however – pitchers as vases, wind turbines as sculpture, vintage soda boxes as recycling bins – and our house is full of those playful and useful twists.
But when I found this angel in two pieces in the shipping box, I knew she was going home for a little artistic triage. One wing was broken off, and right then I knew exactly what she would look like when I was done. I knew I could take a hacksaw to the other wing and, from there, fill the holes with twigs to make her fly again. The hacksaw part was easy. It was the twig part that took six months to achieve from the date of her second amputation.
I wasn’t happy with my initial twig findings. I went looking but never found just what I was looking for – pretty much the case when you’re hunting for something specific that you have seen only in your mind’s eye. Then, on a walk with my dog on a still chilly spring morning, I found the trimmings from pruning in the little arboretum just south of the main shelter house at Loose Park. I knew they were perfect. I was also pretty sure I would not really be able to decide right them what few small pieces I needed, so I took the whole pile. My type A personality was in full bloom while I was wrapping them in a cotton sheet and delicately shoving them into my car. The dog didn’t even blink when I made him ride in the front seat with me so as to not hurt the trimmings.
When I got home, I chose well, snipped wisely, bundled the two sides carefully, and secured them in the two holes my angel was harboring with Spanish moss. My husband has lived through a few of my artistic and crafty endeavors, and he knew that chance of this ending well was slim. But what cracked him up was that I kept a small pile of “replacement twigs” for the future.
That was over a year ago. I keep my perfect angel where I can see her in all seasons. She makes me incredibly happy.
In this picture, you can see her in all her winter glory. Enjoy.
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