Je Reviens

As my collection of works has grown over the years, I've often wondered what would become of them when I'm gone...what I want to become of them when I'm gone. I've taken great care to build them to last and I've given every consideration to their survival by using archival materials and glues, gessoing before painting, sealing the glass against bugs and dust, even constructing the dream box/bed box with parts that will unscrew for future transport. Unless there's a natural disaster or accident they will surely outlive me.

Unlike most artists I know, I'm an outsider in the art world. I create for myself and it's my great luxury to be able to wait until the mood strikes. It's my therapy as much as my joy. But, since I don't sell, and without children to pass them down to I often wonder who will care for them and treasure them as I have? Perhaps these are the things everyone contemplates in middle-age. But then again...I'm not a mother...these are my only creations...and so I think of these things.

When I see photographs in flea markets I'm immediately drawn to them - I'm intrigued but also sad. Time marches on - one generation replaces another until, finally, everyone who ever knew you personally is gone. I think of Pere Lachaise cemetary in Paris and all the beautiful crypts with broken doors that have been left unattended, unvisited...for how long?

This piece from 2007 was born from these thoughts. A small monument to friendship...to the women who became my closest friends, and to women I never knew whose portraits I found on a flea market table.

art & photographs (c) C.Andrako All Rights Reserved 

An Artifact for the 18th Century

Box for Catherine Urgon 12 1/2 x 8 1/4 x 3 3/4

1990

In Paris, in 1793, a lacemaker named Catherine Urgon, and other royalist sympathizers would meet in a wine shop in the Rue de la Vannerie at the sign of La Cave des Charbonniers to plan the rescue of Queen Marie-Antoinette as she was being escorted to the guillotine. Two of the principle lieutenants of the conspiracy were locksmiths. I created this box to hang in the back of that wine shop where sympathizers could come and deposit coins to aid in her rescue and subsequent exile from France.

Lace, candles, and dried roses surround the shrine-like box. There is a coin slot in the bottom structure, which is a collection box. A trap door with lock opens underneath. On the back of the box a card with fleur-de-lys and photo of the Dauphin is secured by a pale blue silk ribbon, the reverse of which holds a small envelope made from a Chateau Lafitte label that hides the key for the trap door.

All of the wood used for this box was found in one pile on the side of the road. The catalyst for the work were the two pieces which formed the doors, the knot fitting perfectly into the other piece. I was a collector of things 'Marie' style and had every biography I could find, so she was very much on my mind back then. I was intrigued by the well-documented conspiracy of Catherine Urgon and the idea for this piece took root from there. The wood was nearly petrified...very, very hard. The front of the collection box is exactly as it I found it on the road - a very unusual shape with a deep and curvy miter on the sides. My husband's woodworking skills were invaluable in bringing my vision to life. He meticulously crafted duplicate miters to fit each side, and painstakingly managed to fit everything together into a cohesive whole. There is a coin slot on the top of the box and a trap door underneath. Although it used to hang on my wall, it's now displayed behind glass on a stand made especially for it.

The quote on the back reads:

What makes misfortune unkind for tender souls is a tiny glimmer of hope which sometimes still persists.

  

Please click on to the VIMEO badge on the side to watch the short slide-show I created for this work.

Photographs (c) C. Andrako 2010 All Rights Reserved



Dream Box / Bed Box

Dream Box / Bed Box - 2005 - wood, fabric, net, glass, paper - 23 x 11 x 7

This box - structure holds four dreams I had in the 80's. I sometimes feel compelled to preserve fleeting moments in time - moments in my life as well as obscure moments in history or literature. I don't know where that comes from. A fear of being forgotton? A form of self-preservation? I'm not sure. I prefer not to psychoanalyse. I never really know what thoughts were in my mind until after a piece is finished. That's when I begin to understand.




Four glass viles holding the dreams rest on a white tufted mattress. I removed one for the photo.



Dream - One

I was playing chess with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

My head was resting on Gertrude's fat, bare arm

My chess pieces were carved and polished granite

One was missing

I thought that I would buy one to replace it and present it to them as a gift

We finished playing and decided to go to a Greek restaurant to eat Spanakopita.



The silouette of the bed reminds me of an 18th century pinball machine - if such a thing existed. 



Dream - Two

I was in a museum with a tall, thin man with grey hair and a white beard

We were there together but didn't know each other well

We stood in front of a painting that resembled a Vermeer

It was of a peasant woman wearing a long dress covered by a long white apron

She was grasping a rope that hung from a trap door in the ceiling

As we looked at the painting it came to life

The woman pulled hard on the rope and the trap door opened

Light streamed in and we could see bright blue sky and puffy clouds

People began to come up to my companion and congratulate him on the painting

"Thank you," he said, "it's one of my favorites."

"That is your painting?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "I am Georges Braque."

Dream - Three

I was walking through the woods with three female friends

I stopped to take Christmas ornaments off some low shrubs

My friends called out to me from the top of a hill

They said to hurry; there was a clearing up ahead and an old cottage

I yelled for them to keep going; that I would catch up with them

I put more ornaments into a brown paper bag and then walked up the hill

I entered the abandoned cottage and began to sort through old linens on a shelf

When I turned and looked at my friends they were in different stages of ageing:

The oldest being the first person to enter the cottage

We talked about what I would do in the time that elapsed from their deaths to mine.

On the headboard - an apparition of Boucher's Toilette of Venus



 Dream - Four 

There was a shop on the southeast corner of Broadway and 72nd that sold antique clothes

On the sidewalk in front were wooden shelves with sale items

I picked up a fur hat with a floppy fur brim and a chartreuse hatband and went inside to find a mirror

The shop had many rooms but no merchandise

The wood floor was splattered with paint

In one of the rooms an old man sat at an easel, painting

I told him I wanted to try on the hat and he pointed to a bare wall

I went off to find a mirror

There were many mirrors but they were all either too high or too low and whenever I

tried to look into one my shoes came off

I finally found one the right height. The hat fit perfectly

When I took it off to look at the price tag I dropped it, and just as I caught it it turned into a book with a thick, shiny cover

I opened it and it was an international cookbook and as I turned the pages food spilled out of the book. I stood in a mess of spaghetti, chow mien, and Hungarian dumplings

I wiped off the book and quickly folded it back into a hat so that the man wouldn't know how magical it was and raise the price. It was $25.00

I looked for him. He was in another room now...painting at another easel

"I'll take it," I said.

He examined it inside and out.

"You can have it for twenty," he said.

I left the shop and Keith Richards was standing on the corner.



Back of box is signed and dedicated to Marianna Gambara



       

I dedicated this box to Marianna Gambara, a character in Balzac's short novel, Gambara. I was reading it while I was working on this piece and the description of Giardini's furniture and Marianna's bed reminded me of my creation.

"She had spent the entire morning dusting the strange furniture, the handiwork of Signor Giardini, who had employed his leisure moments making such items out of the scraps of instruments Gambara had discarded. Andrea had never seen anything so peculiar in all his life. In order to preserve the semblance of gravity, he was compelled to look away from the grotesque bed the ingenious chef had fashioned out of the case of an old spinet, and turned instead to Marianna's narrow cot, its simple mattress covered in white muslin, which suggested thoughts at once melancholy and delightful."

Balzac



Boucher's - The Toilette of Venus



Photos, art, text (c) C. Andrako All Rights Reserved 2005, 2011

Chocolate Box II

Box Construction - C. Andrako 2010 - 15 x 91/4 x 5

An advertisement for chocolates, circa 1900, was the inspiration for this work which is one of two chocolate boxes I've made.

The ribbons are untied and the lid with attached frame removed.

Chocolate selections create an ever-changing vitrine display.

When my chocolate supply is finished I fill it with these "chocolates". Recognize them? I thought they were chocolates when I was a child. I loved seeing them in the hardware store.



The Marquise de Sevigne'. The Hotel Carnavelet
in Paris - a museum not to be missed - was her home.



Footnote:

Madame de Sevigne', the charming and brilliant 17th century aristocrat, whose letters to her daughter over a thirty year period reveal an entire era, was by no means a chocolatier. She had no say in this enterprise, no more so than Madame de Pompadour did with the bottles of cherries soaked in brandy that bear her name. 



Edmond Rostand in the official uniform of the Academie Francaise.



It was the poet and dramatist, Edmond Rostand, author of Cyrano de Bergerac, who declared a box of chocolates he received from a chocolatier's daughter to be "A La Marquise de Sevigne" and the moniker took. One of his plays was being performed at the Pavillion Sevigne at the Casino de Vichy at the time.

Photos (c) C. Andrako 2011 All Rights Reserved

Sevigne', letters, Rostand via Wiki

The One She Wants

The One She Wants - C. Andrako 1988 - Box Construction - 16 1/8 x 13 1/4 x 6 1/2

The shop of Monsieur Charpentier - shoemaker to the ladies of the court of Versailles.

After trying on dozens of pairs of exquisite shoes, which now surround her, she sees the one she wants.

She is looking at the purple feather shoe displayed in the birdcage.

Mounted paper cutout of French 18th century woman stands amongst a mound of shoes made of antique ribbons and carved heels. There are thirty pairs, which I made in one eight hour sitting. A bird cage hangs from a chain and contains a shoe of purple feathers and seed pearls that is perched on a pedestal. Paper from a copy of L'Illustration lines the birdcage. Two pillars. Panel of dusty blue point d'esprit makes a separation between woman and back of box.

On back wall - three areas framed in boiserie. Middle section has framed print of angels. The cover of a publication from early 1900's - "Character Sketches". Right panel reads, Romance - Fiction. Left panel reads, Poetry - Drama. Pale blue and green birds attached to boiserie. Two antique lace panels inside top and sides. Old, cracked, and discolored frame. Escutcheon on bottom of frame reads - Maison Charpentier - Chausseurs de La Reine. (sic)

 

Sheet Music on back. Dated 1868


Photographs (c) C. Andrako 2011 All Rights Reserved

The Weight of Roses



The Weight of Roses - Box Construction 2005



The creation of this box took place during a very difficult time in my forties when I'd stopped dancing and was facing the unknown. Because of the many things I learned about myself while building this box, it's the piece I consider to be the most personally significant...if not the strangest. 

There wasn't a story; I simply wanted to create a room to house this Commedia dell'arte-inspired figure I'd made years before. I like to work in an unplanned way leaving room for magical accidents to take place and this piece didn't disappoint: it is filled with surprising associations - mostly of a personal nature. The most notable, or magical, came after I'd completed the piece but had yet to attach the frame. I felt it needed three oranges scattered on the floor as if the figure had been juggling in an earlier act. I don't know why I chose oranges, maybe they just seemed the perfect shot of color. Strangely, I happened to have some small oranges that I'd made for another piece I'd been working on. Years after I'd finished this box I discovered that there was a 1761 Commedia dell'arte play by Gozzi titled, "The Three Oranges" - of which the principle scene held further associations that mirrored my feelings at the time:

Tartaglia, after recovering from a long fit of melancholy, goes in quest of the three oranges preserved in the castle of the fairy Creonta. The fairy summons her dog, and tells him to "Go, bite the thief who stole my oranges:" but the dog replies: "Why should I bite him? He gave me plenty to eat, while you have kept me here for months and years, dying of hunger." The fairy then turns to the rope at the well: "Rope, bind the theif who stole my oranges." But the rope answers: "Why should I bind him who hung me in the sun to dry, while you have left me for months and years to moulder in a corner?" Finally, the fairy bids the iron gate of the castle to "crush the thief who stole my oranges." But, says the gate: "Why should I crush him who has oiled me, while you have left me so long to rust?"



Box is covered with black fabric that drapes like stage curtains.





Antique Jet Bead Tassels





A laughing Pierrot holds an escutcheon announcing the name of the acte



French Ebony Cabinet - Windsor Castle

The decor of the room is based on this theater stage set inside an elaborate French ebony cabinet that is in the state apartments in Windsor Castle. Building mine was extremely problematic for me and it's only through sheer determination that I was able to do it at all. Besides the fact that some of the pieces of wood I was using were not equal in size but needed to look as if they were (any others would have changed the feel of the piece) I discovered that I had some sort of spatial difficulty which meant that I had to make a maquette first in paper and cardboard in order to grasp what it was I needed. My brain was often tied in knots...total confusion.

'The Confessions' by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most influential thinkers of the 18th century, was on my desk. I picked it up and came across three pages in Book Three where he describes the difficulties he experienced while trying to write, converse, or express ideas. I was flabbergasted. Everything he described I had felt, too...especially while working on this piece.

In the passage I put on the back of the box he uses the chaos of a backstage scene at the opera to describe what goes on in his head when he writes and how eventually "all falls into place" and "the long tumult is succeeded by a delightful spectacle."



Rousseau's grave  in the Pantheon. Paris



Photos (c) C. Andrako 2008, 2011 All Rights Reserved. Photo of Rousseau's grave from Wiki. Photo of desk from the book, Extraordinary Furniture, by David Linley, Harry N. Abrams, publisher