Jun 20 2020
Things Around my House: Vintage Art Thing
This morning, I had my Howard Jones t-shirt in my hand, ready to shove an arm through a sleeve, when I decided to wear a tank top instead. Then, 25 minutes later, I was in CVS (YES, I WAS WEARING A MASK, I’M NOT A FUCKING NINNY) and as soon as I walked in, “No One Is To Blame” came on?! I rarely have wardrobe rejects as bad as the one I had this morning. Ugh.
I know, I know: “What does this have to do with the vintage art thing in your house, Erin?”
WELL, LET ME TELL YOU.
After I returned home from CVS, I went on a brief Howard Jones kick on YouTube, and it brought back the fondest memories of the time Janna and I went to see him perform in a freaking cathedral in Cleveland. It was pure bliss! That whole one-day trip was a blast, but one of the best parts was when I took Janna to my favorite CLE vintage shop so we could try on weird hats and whatnot, and I found this…(Mexican? South American? There is nothing on the back of the picture to help me out and I don’t want to wrongly assume and offend anyone!) totally pretty piece of art that is totally my style and it of course came home with me:
It’s right off to the side of the TV, so I see it every day and it makes me so happy! Here is the blog post from the day I bought it!
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This was such a crazy throwback weekend: first I saw Mike + the Mechanics on Friday and then Janna and I were in Cleveland on Saturday to see Howard Jones; two childhood dreams come true in one weekend. My unpredictable navigational skills got us there with just enough time to squeeze in a quick lunch, staring at a disgustingly frozen Lake Erie, and, keeping with the theme of Retro Weekend, a necessary and apropos perusal of Flower Child. SPOILER ALERT: this blog post is going to be just about Flower Child. I will drone on as nauseum about all that other stuff later in the week because I love doing things out of order. All the times I’ve been to Clevelend, I never knew this place existed until my friend Jason took us there in 2011 and I bought a glorious light-up/holographic Jesus picture which made Henry grit his teeth.
Just like he probably grit his teeth yesterday when I began texting him pictures of $$$ swag lamps, alerting him to the fact that I had arrived at the place that wants all of my hard-earned monies.
Some of the sexiest Jesuses ever reside in the basement.
I have to touch everything when I’m in there, like I’m inviting midcentury spirits to enter my body through my fingertips and then everyone will be like why is Erin having uncontrollable fits of the Pony? And Janna will be like, “Because she touched some sequined boot and now she has a dead gogo dancer living inside of her, no big deal.”
I don’t think it’s very surprising that my heart belongs to mid-century interior design, considering I was raised in a house with shag carpet and foiled wallpaper. The yellow/burnt orange/brown color palette is instantly comforting to me and brings back memories of every afghan that ever covered the back of a couch in our house when I was a kid.
Luckily for Henry, I didn’t buy any murder weapons disguised as ash trays or 1960s prom dresses, but instead settled for this factory of happy thoughts:
It’s actually made out of paper mâché and the colors are just like SMILE OR I WILL PUNCH YOUR DUMB FACE. When Henry saw it yesterday, he did a slow exhale of relief that it wasn’t an Iron Maiden to go with my Devil rug. And since I’m going out of order here, before Flower Child we stopped int Big Fun, which was having a going out of business sale, so I snagged this Diane Keaton “Clown Paintings” book for $5!
When I posted this on Facebook, one of my friends said, “I feel like, visually, my day is ruined.” So then I posted this collage of some of my other clown memorabilia, because I’m a Little Miss Sweetheart like that:
There’s more Cleveland fun here!
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