Savannah 2023 finale - Mannequins!!

 

I've loved mannequins for a long time.  I once had a torso that lit up, which we used as a table lamp.  Once had a full mannequin in the dining room that wore an vintage Mardi Gras costume [she came with it!]  and a Shriner's hat. And I have a wonderful 50's vintage mannequin head who happily lives in my studio at home. So I was especially happy to 'come upon' mannequins on our Savannah rambles.

Moving day appears to be just that; a truck of mannequins on their way to somewhere else.  There wasn't a clothing store or any other kind of shop nearby that might use mannequins.  Perhaps it is a personal collection?

Mannequins On The Move collage - Savannah

This team of mannequins and an array of sewing machines, reside at Number Nine, which houses classrooms for the SCAD School of Fashion.  We came across this diligent woman working by herself one evening. Diligent's fish hat came about in a funny way.  I wanted to add an odd element and had a dream about using fish.  In my collection of fish images, I came across the fish-in-a-cup image I had created some time ago and saw the colors were just right.  As I was positioning-repositioning elements, I made some of the elements in the collage not visible.  When I made them visible again, I discovered that the fish-in-a-cup had positioned itself to perfectly become a hat!!  Serendipity won the day!

Mannequins In Class collage - Savannah

Our Savannah stay is coming to a close. Next time will be from our favorite 'Old Florida' town, Cedar Key, on the Gulf Coast.  

Winter Travels 2020 - Cedar Key - the Nature Coast of Florida

Once again I am a most fortunate person to spend some Winter time in one of my favorite places., Cedar Key - laid back, old-school Florida Gulf coast town.  A place to sit and watch and listen to the Gulf of Mexico from our vacation rental deck, meander the streets of historic Florida cottage architecture, with enough restaurants to please and boasting two art galleries.

Our favorite place for breakfast is the Second Street Cafe. Steamers is our go-to place for lunch and dinner. And Island Arts, now on Dock Street, is where we always bring something home from, especially from potter Frank DiGangi.

And once again, I have fun being inspired by what is around me for collage.  As always, I take my own photos, amplify the colors and alter them and add elements that catch my eye, many of which are extracted from other local photographs. The background images may have a bit of artistic modification, so if you came upon that place, it might look different than my collage. I travel with a hefty supply of images and google is always available to find just what I am looking for - or wasn't looking for!  Art fun.

This year I noticed several of my past Cedar Key collages have become 'historical' as some of the places, especially businesses, are no longer there.

Big Deck - Cedar Key, FL

Dilly Dally Mermaid on Second Street - Cedar Key

This lovely mermaid resides in the Dilly Dally Gally gift shop, in  the painting she is holding. Here she been freed to hang out on Second Street with her armadillo pal.

Cedar Key Circa 1930

Yellow In Cedar Key

Second Street Live Oak - Cedar Key

Cedar Key 2017 - my 'Old Florida' retreat

Cedar Key is a wonderful little town. an island at the end of Route 24 on the Gulf Coast, an area sometimes called the Nature Coast or the Forgotten Coast. We've made it part of our winter retreat for years now. 

Cedar Key is in Central Florida and the nearest city is Gainesville, an hour or so away.  We always make a day trip to Gainesville to the wonderful Harn Museum of Art, with a stop at the Gainesville Artisans Guild gallery, but mostly our time in Cedar Key is being off the grid by the Gulf and walking around town, which boasts two art galleries - The Island Arts Gallery and  Cedar Key Arts Center and a half dozen restaurants, our favorite hang-out is Steamers. 

The "Old Florida' architecture. colorful, vintage with a dash of funky and a smidge of chaos, always inspires me. And being 'off the grid' of doing, creates a wide open space for collage.

Breakfast Lunch - Cedar Key

Snake Plant Cottage - Cedar Key

Carts and Truck - Cedar Key

Live Oak Cottage - Cedar Key

The collages use my own photographs, amplified and altered and many of the elements are also from my photographs, extracted and 'amped', others are found images. The octopi are not from my own photographs - lol, but I do like to use octopi - they're always unexpected.

You can see past posts from Cedar Key by just entering Cedar Key in the blog search box.

I

Cedar Key Redux

Cedar Key continues to fill me with color and whimsy.  And although the weather has been a bit cold and windy, it affords me to time to collage while looking out at palm trees and the Gulf.

This collage is a perfect capture of Cedar Key.  The three main elements - the flamingo, the funky Tiki bar sign and the Pirate cottage are all pretty much as you see them.  Of course, I did amplify the overall color of the composite image, but they all started out intensely colorful.  Even the large yellow flower was found painted on a building. Happy.Happy.

Pirate Flamingo Tiki Bar - Oh My

My favorite restaurant in town is Steamers.  They're open every day and have a wide variety of food. We've taken to eating at the bar, hanging in the locals vibe.  The uber-competent and very nice bartender is a joy to watch as she handles drinks, food and more and perfect pours of Guinness.  And it is yet another colorful building.

Steamers

I first started collecting octopi images because my son likes them, but I've developed my own affection for them.  Tentacles add a nice frisson to things.


Far Away Inn provided another wonderfully painted exterior as a background.  Now the repeated image motif is fashion dolls instead of paper dolls. And everyone liked pie.

Admire

Now you just have to be intrigued when you come upon a sign that says "Fine Art & Smoked Mullet."  Following the sign down the road presented me with this great art house trailer, complete with its own Lady on the roof.  Alas, it was not open - and has yet to be open - , so neither fine art nor mullet was to be had.  This is the sign that got my attention, but it is actually on the main road in town.  And the 'sushi' is candy sushi, with a Gummy fish on top.

Fine Art & Smoked Mullet

Smoked Mullet and a dip made from it is a local favorite here.  I purchased some dip at a nearby Winn Dixie.  Very weird.  The dip had pimentos and mayonnaise and eggs in it, so in the end this brand tasted like Pimento cheese spread gone bad.  That's enough fish adventure for me. Better as art.

Smoked Mullet Dip

Dockside Motel at night has a very noir feel to it.  Our mystic guest has left the building.

Dock Side Motel

Cedar Key - Old Florida

Cedar Key is one of my favorite places.  It's a laid-back, funky little island town. friendly, casual, on the Gulf.  Colorful enough to sport two art galleries and award-winning clam chowder.  There is a big clam growing industry here and the Cedar Key clams are the sweetest, most tender I've ever had. A perfect place to chill out, release stress and  just 'be', especially in Winter,  And in that, lots of open-ended time to noodle around with photos and images to my heart's content, especially on cooler, cloudy, windy days.

The view from our screened porch is a wonderful Live Oak and then the Bay.  Perfect.

Live Oak - Cedar Key

There are a lot of colorful buildings here, folk art signage and lawn art - just what inspires me. Happy am I. And although I love the water and marshlands and bird sanctuary, the first thing that caught my eye for a collage was this funky jeep.

JEEP

We pass the Far Away Inn everyday, full of murals, yard art and welcoming rainbow flags.  And yes, the 'Judys" are paper dolls of a young Judy Garland.  The 'Let Us Be - We're Alive sign is also from the Far Away Inn artist.

Far Away Inn Judys

Let Us Be

There's not much of a beach here, but kayacking and boating is popular, The door to beyond featured here is from one of our favorite breakfast joints, Away From the World Cafe.  The name comes from a Dave Matthews song and the only music they play in the place is the Dave Matthews Band. 

Kayacked

Cedar Key has a small airport owned by the county.  Small enough that there is no control tower.  It was built during WWII for air/sea rescue and then given to the county.  Apparently the runway arrow had been recently painted, giving me this stark shot. As usual. all my original photos have been amplified, altered  and the colors saturated.

Into The Wild Blue

Collages of Cedar Key, Florida

Last year we discovered the wonderful funky, laid-back 'Old Florida' town of Cedar Key, on the Nature Coast on the Gulf side, north of Clearwater.  A friend who lives near St Petersburg, told us about the fantastic assemblage architecture of the Low Key Hideaway Motel on Cedar Key and off we went. We stayed there and fell in love with Cedar Key itself.  Here's my blog post on that trip, which includes the terrific assemblage Bowling Ball House in Safety Harbor.

We liked it so much that we made plans to spend a month there this winter.  When we planned the trip, we thought we would use Cedar Key as 'home base' and travel in Florida as well.  But that was before our big 'downsizing' sorting, packing, moving cycle and when we got there, we realized that we were tried and happy to just be in Cedar Key, walk about and look at the Gulf and the famous sunsets each day.

Amelia in Cedar Key

So we had a lot of open-ended time and I soon found myself in a collage-making mode. I had brought watercolors and pens and thought I'd try some new things, but an image of Amelia Earhart on a magazine cover really called to me. I photographed it, popped it into Photoshop Elements and I was off. The background is the view from our deck.

I discovered that what really moves me is my response to images. It is in that response is that the creativity begins to flow and this is the same thing I experience with assemblage, responding to the items I come across.  

There is a lot of 'found' art in Cedar Key that caught my eye - signage, assemblage-style lawn art and so on.  I took hundreds of pictures and then began using my photos as backgrounds for collage.  I also extracted key images from the photos and used them.  As is my usual, I amplified and altered the images with effects. I used my favorite online source BeFunky.com.  I especially like their HDR effect [high dynamic range] and various versions of PopArt.  

I didn't have any of my own image collection on the laptop, but Google provided me additional images.  And after awhile, I also downloaded some fun images from Mischief Circus, a fantastic source for collagers.

Cushman

The Cushman  [the oddling vehicle] was in this yard, as well as all the yard art, but I extracted it and repositioned it.  My signature travel motif of my shoes on the right and the yellow 'flowers' are Perrier bottle flowers I saw in the cemetery.

Low-Key Hideaway

The background here is a wall from the Low-Key Hideaway amped.  The retro car is one I photographed in Cedar Key.  Travels shoes and odd elements, including a nice doll head with plant complete the composition.

Hands On

I was intrigued by the fence with the gloves drying.  It is the gate to a clam nursery.  The white boots are fisherman boots and were ubiquitous in this town which is known for its clam production. Doll heads in a box adds an nice oddness note.

Turquoise Cycle

The Turquoise cycle was in this yard and the original photo was amped with HDR.  The pizza is a sign painted on the wall of the local pizza place.  My green travel shoes jump in.

T-Bird Tinas

One day we were walking down the street and suddenly traffic was stopped and about a hundred retro cars came into town.  It was a Mustang Club doing an annual outing to Cedar Key.  This was my favorite car and  I originally called this Mustang Sallies, until my husband pointed out that was car was actually a T-Bird.  The 'tough girls' were in a blog post from MessyNessyChic.com about, you guessed it, tough girls.  Something of their energy reminded me of my best-friend Jan and I back in Philly many years ago.  At 13, though, one can only aspire to be 'tough'.

Away From The World

Away From The World is our favorite breakfast place in Cedar Key, on Dock Street, up the stairs. The name comes from a Dave Mathews song and the only soundtrack in the place is DMB.  It's painted as colorfully as here [although the image is amped] and the inside is filled with colorful art as well.

Art House By The Sea

We did do a side-trip south to Dunedin and Safety Harbor, both near Clearwater, where we met up with Donna, who first told us about Cedar Key and Safety Harbor.  The background here is a painted house near the evolving Safety Harbor Art & Music Center, founded by the Bowling Ball House creators.  It is this colorful but again, I amped the image. The retro seaside babes are images from Mischief Circus, as well as the tentacles.

The magickal quote in the collage is part of a mosaic Moon at the Bowling Ball House guest house.  The lady is from Mischief Circus, amped, the background is a wall at Low-Key Hideaway and the signs are amped extracts of real signs from Cedar Key.

Everything is Possible

And finally, after a couple gray, windy and rainy days, I played around a bit off the Cedar Key theme. I think the dark weather got to me.  Should I worry? 

Grimmies

Cedar Key supports two art galleries and is home to many artists and writers.  We met some special people there, especially Sonja and Joe, art and music lovers extraordinaire, Bev Ringenberg, Fused Glass artist, at Island Arts Cedar Key and Jennie Pinto at Nature Coast Realty who was so helpful to us.  Check out all about Cedar Key here .

A bit of whimsy

You know I have a fascination with all things altered - especially altered houses and cars and such.  My trip to Florida this winter was a feast of altered buildings - The Bowling Ball house in Safety Harbor and the Low Key Hideaway motel in Cedar Key.  Alas, altering my house isn't an option [yet! lol] but I did have some fun altering a model house.  

This little house was sold as an unfinished bird house at Michael's craft stores.  And I've been saving the bathing beauty [who once was a souvenier pen topper!] for years.  I just had a bit of fun with this.  I also bought a small dollhouse kit for a future altered house.  I love all these Florida colors but think a 'dark' house will be fun too.  After all, I do have heaps of doll heads and such which might be nice on the side of a house. 

Safety Harbor altered house 10"x9"x6"

I also noticed that the same colors seem to speak to me when Florida is in the background of a piece. Without plan the Safety Harbor house ended up to an older piece, Numeral Girls in St Petersburg.  Yay sea blue, pink and orange.

Of course, if I lived in Florida I might be moved to change my styles, since altered everything and anything is quite abundant there.  Not to worry in any event as what evolves will do just that, evolve.

Travels and Found Art

The month of February my husband and I had a lovely meandering trip through Florida, heading off via Savannah, Georgia.   My eye is always drawn to signage, murals and other found art wherever I go.  This trip, though, I actually had two destinations in the itinerary because of their art.

My old pal Donna, who lives in Florida, sent me an article about off-the-beaten-path places which included a piece on the Low-Key Hideaway motel in Cedar Key.  This is a funky, old 50's 5 room motel that the owners have transformed into a magical place.  Pat Bonish transformed the outside and grounds with an explosion of assemblage, including bottle walls, bicycles on the roof, dolls on the walls and the amazing Tiki Bar.  Cindy Bonish decorated the rooms with a comfortable eclectic mix.  For me, it was a wonderful stay in an art installation! Everyday I discovered one thing after another. I had found some great black & white dotted shoes in a 2nd hand store in Savannah and made some photo set-ups with them here, as it seemed the perfect place to do that.  

Cedar Key itself, by the way, is a great 'old Florida' town that, although it has its touristy aspect, is wonderfully laid back and still has a clam and fishing industry. Some of my own photos are below, but you can check it all out online at http://www.lowkeyhideaway.com/   By the way, we liked the Low Key Hideaway and Cedar Key so much that we went back for a 2nd visit during our trip.

   

  

In a book called 'Weird Florida' [and yes, it is a whole series of books about weirdness through the U.S.] I found out about The Bowling Ball House in Safety Harbor,  so this became another destination. Todd and Kiaralinda began this art house 20 years ago after discovering some free bowling balls.  They now have this house creation and garden, a guest house across the street, art cars and are just about to open an art center in downtown Safety Harbor.  When we were there, Kiaralinda and three women were making mosaic panels which will cover the exterior walls of the new center.  She also told me that they had just been filmed by HGTV and eventually their segment will appear on Extreme Homes.  Their garden has previously been featured on Outrageous Backyards.  I purchased their children's book about their art for my granddaughter and made a photobook of my own photos for her as well. Check it all out, including their art, restaurant design and more at http://www.kiaralinda.com/

Crazy art and signage is everywhere and I am always catching it in photos.  Travel is great.  Life is good. Art is alive.