Friday, March 2, 2012

Status Quo

You can either buy clothes or buy pictures. It's that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both. Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, as he remembered it in, A Moveable Feast

Better get used to some old Eddie Bauer; I bought my first painting the other day. It's from Lily Stockman, the Jersey girl educated in Cambridge, though I bet she'd tell you Harvard becasue there's no need to be evasive when you're talking to grown-ups.

It might not seem so from her website, but she's done some painting, at least once, I can prove it, and she spent a year in India on one of those things that I'm never quite sure where they come from or how one gets one, but that everybody calls grants. She picked up a love of good sugar from there, in addition to some textiles and a little Delhi belly, but most importantly, for Baleen and me, she did some paintings. 12 of them, it seems, called The Industrial Grain Storage Facilities of India. Can you put an emerging market on a canvas? You can, but it's not elephants next to BMWs, as you might think. It's Agro Pop. as Lily calls it, pink grain elevators. That's India.

I found the painting the same way I found Baleen: through Abigail's aunt, though Abigail's mom and dad might say, ahem, I think we had a little something to do with that*. I was reading her blog, then reading the comments on her blog, then reading the blogs that the people who comment on her blog follow. Which brought me to Lily, which brought me to Status Quo, which makes me think of Baleen and our Indian honeymoon. xo



*Dario's dad, reading this, is probably saying, what about me?!, thinking that he must have had something to do with it, though not remembering what it was so I'll have to tell him. Baleen gave her business card to you, Dario's dad, and I got Baleen's email address from that card and emailed her the next day. So you're right, DD. Take a bow.


4 comments:

Lizzie said...

Hellz yeah! Finally some respekt, Mr. Hopz.

Baleen & Hopalong said...

Some much deserved respect. (or I'm running out of content.)

Groomzilla said...

I'm glad I wasn't left out!

bigBANG studio said...

HOORAY! So delighted to see it up on your wall! Thanks for the love, you two! xo