The Sirens
Posted on | September 2, 2010 | Leave A Comment
Memory is my Siren song
blink.
I can’t remember very much from my early childhood. Images flash in my mind and I’m hesitant to claim them as memories, unsure whether or not they’re really mine or sponged up from novels, movies or old photobooks.
blink.
Standing in knee deep swishy grass, an endless sea of golden straw, moving like a great river whichever way the wind blows.
blink.
We are looking for cat tails. There must be a river or stream close by.
blink.
The silhouette of the Rocky Mountains stretches across the horizon, a painterly backdrop.
blink.
That happened. Perhaps. I know our old street outside Boulder, CO butted up against a field where they used to launch hot air balloons.
blink.
I’d like to ride in a hot air balloon one day, if only to match the floating, disembodied sensation I feel in my heart sometimes. It’s got to feel closer to flying than an airplane.
And although it always gives me a sore throat, I’ll smoke a cigarette on the front porch for my dad tomorrow. It’s his death day and although there might be a better way to memorialize him, this one is the truest.
much love,
Sam
Feed your soul…
Posted on | August 31, 2010 | 2 Comments
Need to spruce up your cube? Today my free downloadable art print is up at Indie Fixx.
You’re a winner. Yes, you.
xo,
Sam
Pick your poison…
Posted on | August 30, 2010 | Leave A Comment
I met a new friend since being a vendor at the Brooklyn Flea. She sells there year-round and her job basically consists of vintage/thrift/antique shopping during the week and selling at the Flea on the weekend. It’s a dream job.
She has a steady supply of vintage glass jars and bottles and I’ve started trying out the Silly Faces on them to great success. I kept seeing all these flask shaped glass bottles and got the idea to make a series of skulls on vintage flasks in a turquoise color. The skulls are certifiably cute and not scary skulls and I can’t help but think they’d be fun to use for Halloween decor or for surreptitious placement on a bar cart, next to your bottle of absinthe.
I’ve also made a few new greeting cards:
As you know, I’ve been playing accordion for almost a year (new video coming soon!) and I just got a bike last week, which I’m excited and nervous about, as I’m not the most balanced person. My first ride to the grocery store included a near-miss with a minivan, so we’re off to a dramatic start.
Anyhow, these new items are all available in the shop, should you be so inclined. The skull flasks are a limited edition seasonal item, so I’ll only be making so many of them.
I’ll be at the Brooklyn Flea this Saturday and then again on Saturday, September 25th. Maybe I’ll see you there!
Happy Monday everyone!
xo,
Sam
serger who?
Posted on | August 26, 2010 | 2 Comments
Serger Contest from sam wedelich on Vimeo.
so, there’s a contest running over at the sew mama sew blog. i’ll say honestly that i don’t usually bother with these things, because i’ve only ever won a contest once or twice in my life and i figure the odds are that’s all i get.
the contest is for a viking serger, which if you don’t know is an effing expensive piece of sewing equipment that finishes all your edges for you. it’s genius.
you still have to operate the thing and feed the fabric through, but no more ironing tiny creases and sewing under microscope to make napkins and tea towels.
anyhow, one of the ways to enter was with a video posted on your own blog. so here it is. and now you can all count how many times i say umm (because i didn’t want to write a speech ahead of time and seem rehearsed). you can also join me in obsessing over how one of my canines looks like a vampire fang.
you mean the left one? oh good, you’ve already noticed too.
xo,
sam
Who put the cat in a bag anyway?
Posted on | August 25, 2010 | 5 Comments
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I can post this illustrated portrait.
Which is good, really, since it’s one of my favorite recent projects.
Oh, and thanks to Sarah for instigating such madness.
xo,
Sam
Remember when…
Posted on | August 23, 2010 | Leave A Comment
I’m drawn to moments where I can apprehend a sense of vastness. Wide expanses of sky, littered-glittered with stars and planets… ocean stretching beyond peripheral vision, infinite waves washing on shores. Rooftops with a view. A road that seems to have no end. A swell of cellos and violins, with a low trumpet counter-melody.
There’s something awful about it. Something terrifying in the great unknown. I think I can say I am artistically obsessed with the duality of things which are bittersweet, which are both lovely and lonely simultaneously.
I’m trying to avoid the approach of labor day and the memory of my father’s death and the incomprehension that four years of life have passed without him here.
I’m holding more in these days. Learning to trust myself. Learning to look out on everything and dream for something really great.
And I feel less afraid of the pain that’s coming alongside it all.
Thanks for coming along on the journey friends.
Thanks for making this a safe place for exploration and creativity.
I hope that in sharing all my good and all my bad, that I am returning the favor in some small way.
xo,
Sam
p.s. I have good new things to share with everyone this week… new experiments in Silly Face Jars using vintage glass jars and hopefully (fingers crossed) a new tee!
In two acts.
Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 2 Comments
Scrubbing
“It seems to be speeding up,”
she said, reaching forward to fiddle with the dials on the VCR.
He busied himself in opening the battery casing on the remote and spinning the batteries around in place, an effort he knew was useless, but always tried anyway.
The actors on the screen jerked about, like marionettes. The audio grew higher in pitch and verged on screeching. She sighed in impatient frustration and snapped the television set off.
The weird decaying pitch of the vacuum tube lingered on the air, mixing with the lazy smoke ribbon issuing from the cigarette in her hand.
Ghost Town
The day our town died was a hot day. Summer hung heavy in the air, miserable and bloated, like a pregnant woman two weeks past her due date.
The entire population, my family included, had taken to floating on the lake in plastic neon inflatable tubes with cup-holders. Dogs paddled about from group to group and begged for scraps. Night and day we stayed on the water, fingers and toes wrinkled like raisins, waiting for autumn to come.
From above, we looked like so many bobbing polka-dots. Or I imagine we did, to Hereford at least.
No one noticed Hereford Hultney’s absence until we heard the roar of his prop plane. Years of crop-dusting and Texas sun had left the plane bleached out and rusted. It might have been yellow and cobalt blue once. Now the brownish-beige hunk of metal circled slowly overhead, like a giant iron vulture.
He shouted something no one could make out over the engine noise, but we did catch one thing: the glint of the sun off the iron sight of Hereford’s Red Ryder right before it started raining BBs.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Splash.
The bright carcasses of the inner-tubes drifted on the surface of the water and people flapped about, grabbing onto nearby tubes that hadn’t been hit yet. In a moment of panic, someone opened the dam, thinking to drain the lake into a giant wading pool. But instead of getting to walk to safety out of a glorified puddle, as expected, we were all swept unceremoniously down stream into the bayou that eventually feeds into the Gulf of Mexico.
Many caught onto branches along the way, or safety rings tossed in by news teams looking for a good evening feature piece. Many more were never seen again.
We try not to talk about it anymore, as it generally ends in an awkward silence.
Some people say the town is haunted, but no one’s volunteered to go back and check.
Inspiration
Posted on | August 18, 2010 | 11 Comments
I know you guys well enough now to be certain you’ll love this:
Moments from Everynone on Vimeo found via Daily Bits of Beauty.
Once more, with feeling…
Posted on | August 16, 2010 | 5 Comments
Out of the habit
We used to visit every other year or so, strategically taking advantage of the Christmas break or summer holidays. Germany was magical. The Gummi bears perched on my pillow in the guest room when I arrived and a never-ending supply of Brötchen at breakfast kept my mouth busy, but left my eyes wide.
I didn’t speak German fluently until college. My childhood visits allowed me to disappear almost completely beneath the barricade of language and the cigarette haze of mostly adult company. Invisible, I busied myself exploring the neighborhood, never out of the range of my mother’s call, but with more freedom than I was allowed at home.
Ever so often in New York, a spot on the sidewalk, or the stairwell of an old building, or the back of a dusty book shop possesses a confluence of smells that is somehow inexplicably, yet absolutely Germany. My Germany.
Coffee, cigarettes, hot chocolate with whipped cream.
The ink from tabloid newspapers.
Stale seltzer water.
Bread.
There are more, but they pass out of the realm of words and being, therefore, all the more sacred, cannot be subjected to my efforts to write them down. I grasp at the empty air, wanting badly to possess the smells that do more to awaken the long-buried feelings in my soul than good music, better novels, or the well-intentioned religious fervor of my youth ever could.
I haven’t been back since 2004.
Where the buck stops. Here.
It should never have been such a strong connection perhaps. We visited Oma and family. The thread of lineage stretched across an ocean from Nürnberg to Houston and we held on until the day it snapped.
Now it feels like an odd drifting sensation. Like sitting in a boat you thought was safely moored, only to find you’ve been carried out to sea.
Picking up stitches
When knitting, sometimes a stitch slips off the needles unnoticed. Many rows later, a hole shapes itself against tidy rows and gapes deformed. Progress halts. Steady and careful hands trace back through the rows to find the lost sheep, and slowly, carefully weave it back into the fold.
Homeless
An unidentified craving for something, I couldn’t have told you I missed Germany until I saw someone else’s pictures on Flickr. Christkindlesmarkt, the Christmas market, with twinkle-lights strung up over the square and be-mittened hands cupping mugs of steaming Glühwein. Rosy cheeks, smiles and fachwerk Häusern in the background.
I’m afraid of what I miss. I can’t tell if it’s the loss of place or the loss of people. If I miss the smells and memories and invisibility of some of my favorite childhood memories or if I actually miss the country, and the sense of roots there. I think I miss home. Home, that mythical place where everything is safe, warm, smells faintly of vanilla and you are perfectly loved.
I get the sense that the pattern is destined to have holes in it.
Where the heart is
What my memory constructs, I am rational enough to admit never fully existed. There are too many holes. Too many wounds. The bits and pieces point to something that never manifested. It doesn’t change the longing, or its intensity, but home, as in the most possible full sense of the word imaginable, has yet to exist for me.
The other side of my brain offers that it’s possible all the holes and wounds are necessary to shaping good people. People with boundaries and a sense of conscience. People who love well.
I read that somewhere last week… that in the end, it’s about how well we love.
Going home
It’s what I fear least about death. Despite my many questions and the unquestionable awfulness that is grieving, I believe in an afterlife.
I’m going to do everything I can to get myself back to Germany in the next year or two, but I’m preparing myself for the change. I don’t know that it will feel the same.
It probably won’t. And in the end, probably shouldn’t.
Time moves us all forward, all the time.
No one knits a sweater by pulling out all the stitches and re-rolling the skein.
Me? I’m knitting an anchor and tow line, so I can always find my way back.
Liebe Grüße,
Sam
I love New York. And Bloggers.
Posted on | August 12, 2010 | 2 Comments
Okay, so mine is the lo-fi photo version of this event, but I would be remiss in not mentioning what an amazing time I had at the Mighty Meetup last Saturday night. When I was getting ready to go, I was all nerves and stomach butterflies. Would I get kicked out because I’m too silly? Or too serious? Or too weird in general?? I never in a million years would have imagined I’d end the night trailing along after a fantastic group of bloggers wearing KISS makeup in Times Square.
I got to meet so many people in person, that I’ve admired for a long time online. and Zan was there!!
To be completely cheesy, I realized something that night…..
The (well-known to many) resounding life lesson was: You’re not the only one.
EVER.
I’ve learned it from blogging and sharing my grief and depression and fear and family dysfunction with an online community who never fails to respond with support and similar stories. And I’m learning it in person, that everyone feels as nervous and awkward as you do, but everyone also wants to have a good time and feel accepted.
So, cheers to universal insecurity.
And a special hello and thanks for you blog-friends.
Your presence is real, even if it’s technically virtual.
xo,
Sam