Saturday, March 18, 2006

Toss That Baby Over Here


One year when I was married, before we had kids, my wife made me a lamp for a present. She had taken a lamp we had picked up at a garage sale, a socket and shade on a board really, and turned it in to a work of art. She covered the base in faux leopard fur, attached two basketball playing cake decorations that she had turned into demons and added a plastic baby. She then adorned it with plastic beads. It was really cool and attained a place of honor in my basement studio.
I had used the lamp in a painting I had done, called "Still Life With MR T Lamp and Ukelin", but it was hard to render as it was a smaller part of the painting. So i immeduiately started on another painting focusing solely on the lamp.
She used to bead up up lamps we purchased at garage sales and then would sell as art pieces at the vintage clothing store where we had a space. Many a night she would spend in her space with a glue gum and a tub of beads, tirelessly toiling on these lamps. And the people loved them, I believe we sold everyone we took down there. But then we had children, and all the time she had to do this was now spent on changing diapers and all the other joys that come from being a parent. This lamp is now gone but the painting remains. When I asked her back then what she called this lamp, she shrugged her shoulders, so I decided to name it.