Category: Instagram

#673 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Instagram, SerendipityLeave a comment

September. Blink and you might miss it.

I nearly did. Why do the months I love most travel at the National speed limit, and the ones I don’t care for much just linger .

At some point in September I was planning to blog about ‘Second -hand September’

The second to last day of September is hardly going to spread the word but this blog is almost a confession. For someone who fully embraces the second hand world of Charity Shops (Op shops) and EBay my September has not seen me set foot in a Charity shop. On instagram I follow a woman who writes great wisdom about fashion and second-hand purchasing and the effect the fashion industry has on the planet.

She talks sense and I plan to try and emulate her instagram account by starting one that will chart my second-hand journey.

https://instagram.com/someone_elses_elephant?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==

I set up this Instagram page a while ago . Uncharted waters to do something that is not art or blogging related. As you will see there is not a single post but before September is done I will start the second-hand ball rolling.

My second-hand win of this September is a worthy starting story.

A long time ago I bought two new dresses from Toast. They are simple throw on dresses that can do a day at work or nighttime galavanting. They are still fabulous despite doing loads of twirls in the washing machine. The black one has been redyed twice. I thought they would be with me until the end of time.

Having lost my sense of taste and smell I am losing weight. Most clothes just fit me better but because of the low backed design these two dresses just hang off me, my shoulders are more out than in.

Intermittent browsing on Ebay paid off a few weeks ago. A smaller size blue dress appeared and I successfully bid on it, and am very happily wearing a perfect second hand version of a dress that I have loved for many years.

Not that the new instagram account will be all about clothes. It will be the perfect place to tell all the stories of my second hand shopping and non-shopping . Sometimes items on the shelves tell fabulous stories but are best left on the shelf…

Second-hand September, but only just.

P.s oh the reality, I realise that today not a single piece of clothing is second hand. One piece is very old and one new. Thank goodness I am sitting on a chair that was made in the 1960’s looking at a sideboard from the same era.

Nuts

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Instagram

I’m running an Instagram account for an arts organisation again this week. As these things often are,it is led by a hashtag +prompt. Today’s prompt is #nuts. To be honest the arts organisation is a million miles away from my daily ponderings on this blog. I’m not even sure I’ve mentioned it in any posts. However my personal response to the word ‘ nuts’ was so very typical of the ponderings of theoldmortuary I thought I would share it. I am constantly intrigued by what makes stuff stuff and why people do what they do. Some of my painted abstract landscapes have a similar specificity, they might be massive but in fact are only representational of maybe a square metre of actual ground

Beast From The East © theoldmortuary

Beast of the East is 1.5 metres square but was inspired by a tiny piece of frozen mud during the winter cold snap of 2018.
Similarly the photograph of nuts on wooden piles near the Staten Island ferry terminal, although only an area of a couple of metres, has come to represent the whole of New York and it’s development. A simple representation of construction without all the glitz and glamour that is the usual depiction of the city.In part this image was also created by one of my favourite books.

I’d read New York by Edward Rutherford, twice before I visited New York and found my self fascinated , not by the traditional tourist things but by the awesome engineering and construction that has created this amazing city.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8258519-new-york

The image of those four nuts basking in the sunlight on wooden piles has become my personal iconic image of New York.

Trawling my image archive to find this picture has given me a huge amount of inspiration for future blogs . I’m excited to ponder all that I picked up in New York in future blogs. Which I suppose is the point of a blog of no great significance.