Roselle's Profile

I would like to point out that Marcel Duchamp HAD art training, and created beautiful, intriguing and interesting art pieces in addition to his found object art. The works he created, as well as the works he found, had a considerable amount of thought and intention behind them. They communicate complex ideas, inspire introspection, and make us revisit previously held notions of what art is. It's true that you don't have to like or 'get' a work of art for it to still be art, but it DOES have to communicate an idea, and even Dadaists did that. (Although they tried so hard not to!). I suppose what I'm trying to say is this: before you get huffy about someone requiring more of Fine Art than "it's a painting!", remember, not all 'books' are literature. Likewise, not all paintings are art.

But maybe that's just my art training talking. (Double major studio art and art education with minors in art history and psychology)

If you are really looking for the term "art" to be super inclusive of all designed objects, look into visual culture or material culture studies. Just because something isn't necessarily considered fine art by people in the field doesn't make it worthless or unimportant, but I do feel that art has to communicate a deeper idea than just "it made my wall prettier".

There were a couple of homes that I admired as a kid. Two in particular stand out in my mind:

My great-aunt's home had built in bureaus, cabinets, and bookcases under the eaves. I thought having a bureau built right into the wall was the most clever thing ever!

A friend of mine in grade school had a closet renovated to hold a twin mattress and be a "sleeping nook" of sorts. They hung up these awesome curtains to make it even cozier. We played in it like it was a cave, castle, or clubhouse, whatever the moment demanded.

My fiance and I would love to have a room like that in our home. Our living room currently serves all the purposes apart from sleeping and cooking, but we tend to entertain around his rather large table (3.5'x5' with two leaves that bring it out to 7'). We're rather geeky and like to play boardgames and role-playing games around the table, which makes shelves near it a necessity! He and I both have rather large book collections - he's an English professor - and it just seems to make sense to have most of them together. Not only is it convenient to store all the books together, but it makes for an attractive aesthetic statement too!

My fiance and I are currently dealing with a ridiculously noisy neighbor as well. (I can hear him stomping and crashing and banging as I type this.) We've tried politely asking them to be quieter at 1am and they were very contrite, but nothing changed. At night it's as though the bars empty into their apartment, and during the day we hear crashing and banging and loud music. When we aren't treated to one of those irritations, we get to listen to them (We think that the man is the one who pays rent, but his on-again-off-again redneck girlfriend spends most of her time there too) either having sex or breaking up. It has literally shaken our walls before! Every other apartment has also complained to the landlords about them and we are at our wits end. I don't understand why they aren't evicted already. It wouldn't be hard to find another tenant given the desirable location of our building.

I'm taking a printmaking course currently and I've found the same thing to be true about printing a series of etchings. The process is repetitive: ink, wipe, print, clean, ink, wipe, print, and you get into this rhythm that allows your mind to wander. It's a fantastic medium to work in.

That Murphy table is the most amazing thing I have seen in a long time.

My Print 1 class did this with Wintergreen oil and toner. It SHOULD work with any toner print out. Copy machines come out a bit lighter, and laser printers a little darker. I wondered if it'd work on fabric, and now I know!

Only the last image was anything like what I experienced in dorm life. It's the struggle of most students to make a sterile, uniform, often ugly space their own. Students are seldom allowed to remove or alter the offending furniture, and often deal with limitations on what they can hang on the walls, put on the floors, or what color choices they can make with paint (if any choice is given). Dorm life for a design junkie is a challenge indeed.

When I saw this I was amused. I was raised in Crystal Lake and a friend of mine in elementary school had that same playhouse on her porch. I couldn't help but wonder if it was the same one!

I'm from Maine and I can tell you it's not a bad representation, but it really changes depending on where in Maine you go. The coast is very different from Southern Maine which is very different from Northern Maine (aka: The County) If you added a few long-needled evergreen boughs it'd be just a bit closer to what I'm familiar with in the Central Maine region.

There's a lot of color up here. You won't regret it if you visit, but if you go any time before late-May or June and any time after October you'll have to deal with some of Maine's less pleasant weather: mud season and winter.