I suppose you can probably tell by my eternal obsession with dusty seaside taffy palettes and pâtisserie in the family that some of my favorite art is probably also sweet shop inspired...
This is probably one of the saddest things I will ever write, about one of the saddest days I've ever had in my entire life. My dearly beloved constant companion, devoted sidekick, and be-whiskered best friend Maybelle passed away early last week. She had been going through a patch of ill-health since earlier this year, complete with weekly visits to her favorite vet and tons of cuddles, and we knew this day was coming, but it was still way, way, way more heartbreaking than I could ever have possibly imagined. She's been with me for so long that I can't even remember what life was like without her, but I know that it will never be the same.
We've been trying to cheer ourselves up by looking through a million photos, reminiscing about her antics and marveling at how she really was the cutest cat in the world, with her crazy big eyes, freckle face, cleopatra eyeliner and fluffy white boots. These are a few of the last pictures I got to take of her, about a week before she fell ill, when she decided to have a bed-in one day, purring like crazy all the while about the harmonic convergence of two of her all time favorite things, snuggly down blankets and basking in the sun: She also got to enjoy a ton of her all time favorite thing in the world this year, the great outdoors! After years of being an apartment kitty, she was filled with wonder at all the birds and bees and flowers and trees that were to be found in our new backyard and demanded that we hang out there pretty much all of the time, which we gladly obliged: As a firm believer in both ghost stories and cat magic, I'm still waiting (im)patiently to spot visions of her little lion face out of the corner of my eye or hear the pitterpat of tiny ghost paws on the floorboards, but in the meantime, rest in peace Miss Maybelle, we ❤ you!
This is ever-so-slightly belated, but probably one of my faves, which makes it kinda worth posting a month or two late: Hello Spring/Summer-ish Screaming Mimis ad!
Probably one of the things I love the about fashion illustration in general and the Screaming Mimis ads in particular is creating cute imaginary locales for cute imaginary kids to live in, and when in doubt I tend to go for Baroque, thus the French Provincial by way of the 1970s teenage bedroom, which is probably just about what my dream office would look like, given a) a house of my very own to wallpaper to death b) a teeny-tiny budget and c) a couple of summertime weeks of decor scouting roadtrippery!
First on the my wishlist would be this altogether perfect pink and green velveteen number, found whilst scouring the internets for the perfect furniture to draw for this very ad, but sadly already sold for a song:
I also love love love how the ad fit right in with this super adorable editorial which just so happened to be in the very same issue of Paper Magazine: Styled by super cute Los Angeles based Wardrobe Stylist Shirley Kurata and shot at one of my all time favorite places in the history of the world, the Madonna Inn!
Which was also one of our all time favorite photoshoot locales when we lived in LA, as seen in these outtakes from a Gravy Train!!!! album cover shoot from oh-so-many years ago, which also involved smuggling in a carload of stuffed poodles, googly eyed plastic bunnies, big eyed kids and giant furry gonks from ye olde prop library:
If you've never been, I highly recommend you pay a visit to the Madonna Inn immédiatement, if only for a quick slice of Pink Champagne Cake and a mug of pink sugared coffee on your way up or down the California Coast, but one look at the magical rooms and pink vinyl boothed and gold bedecked steakhouse and you'll pretty much have to stay the night:
PS. On a semi-tangentially somewhat related note, see that hair, way back up there, in the ad? That's basically my summer dream hair & any tips on how to achieve such a look would be greatly appreciated! I'm desperately in need of some Spring/Summer hairstyles as I seem to have sprouted a spectacularly unruly and extravagantly overgrown mane of waist length Manson girl hair over the Winter months and need all the help I can get!
Here's a little sneak peek at one of the early drafts for the new Screaming Mimis website: which has since gone live, complete with a mini online shoppe and cuter than cute new blog!
In the midst of the seemingly endless task of inspiration image sorting and filing, I stumbled on a long forgotten but no less magical 'Girls & Deer' folder, home to gems such as this all time flickr favorite, not to mention possibly one of the cutest photos ever taken in the history of the world: Via Von Canon
A few more scans from the vintage archives:
This set of 1966 mini posters screen printed on heavy gold card is one of my very favorite finds by this artist, soon to be properly framed and displayed along with a million other cute ephemeral odds and ends (my very first resolution for 2010!)
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Here are a few scans from my previously semi-secret archives of 60s ephemera:
I've been organizing like crazy for the past few weeks, in advance of a couple of impending super exciting life changes which I can't wait to share! One of the super exciting announcements semi-tangentially involves all of these boxes of cute cards, notes, stationery and paper goods that I've been hauling from coast to coast all of these years, so expect lots more scans from the archives soon!!!
Here's to starting 2010 off with a bang!
xo Fawn
One more holiday favorite from the archives: Also, a tiny query! We have a semi-accidental Xmas tradition of tucking ourselves away for the holiday to feast on red velvet cakes and holiday themed horror films, but seem to have run out of un-previously viewed titles for this year... any suggestions?
The lineup so far consists 100% of this amaaazing 1979 Kate Bush Christmas Special:
ello everyone! Sorry it has been, as per usual, approximately one million years since my last post here. We've been pleasantly caught up in a whirl of tiny visits with faraway friends on the way to and from far-flung family fêtes, hibernating with mugs of cocoa and whipped cream, and most exciting of all, running away to the woods for a self guided fairy tale mushroom tour!
We decided to skip town late Thanksgiving eve for lack of anything better to do, eventually winding up in a perfectly beautifully ghostly deserted Astoria, dining on a Thanksgiving feast of convenience store wine, cheese and chocolate (Not having considered that everything would be closed!), thankfully finding room for the night at the cute new Commodore Hotel, and set out first thing in the a.m. for the magically silent woods, where I'm still beyond excited to have seen my very first amanitas in the wild!
We spotted these:
and so many more! I posted a few more cute mushroom clusters on my flickr and hope to capture oh so many more when we go back soon for a real Park Ranger guided tour, where we will also hopefully learn how to spot things that we can actually eat!
A few quick shots of some recent works in progress, ten 10" x 10" pieces for an upcoming holiday show in Australia: Full details and more updates soon, I promise!
I'm quite pleased to say that not only have I finally sorted out the international shipping options for ye olde One Stop Backstock Pop Up Shoppe but have also been adding some paintings to the mix: With hopefully lots more to follow after the holiday rush! And maybe most importantly, I also figured out how to add DISCOUNT CODES! From this very moment through December 1st, just enter the code LAFORETNOIRE at checkout for an instant 20% off!!! Hurrah! Happy almost-the-holidays everyone! &hearts Fawn
Sorry for the lack of posts here lately, I've been swept up in a flurry of Fall leaves, ringing in the season so far by picnic-ing at dusk with Vaux’s Swifts, racing around the Oregon countryside meeting cute alpacas, and starting to hibernate just a little, which will hopefully mean lots of progress on lots of projects soon... For now, here's a mini preview of my latest ad for Screaming Mimis, due out any day now: This one was so, so, so fun to draw, partly because I got to create the imaginary forest backdrop of my dreams, and partly because all I needed in the way of inspiration was to take a quick peek into my own closet: which has been kind of an explosion of plaids and tweeds and woolens as of late and admittedly kind of out of control (as in, how many brown tweed blazers does one girl need?) but have I mentioned all of the cute vintage Pendleton still kicking around thrift stores all over the Pacific Northwest? It's kind of impossible to resist. As much as I can't wait to wear every single one of these coats, the mustard plaid medieval toggle coat that got me through last winter has already fallen back into heavy rotation and will probably always be my favorite: Kind of hard to top that, right?
PS. Drawing this ad also got me re-acquainted with my semi-dormant ceramic mushroom obsession. Oops. Here are a few possible candidates for new additions to the collection:
I lost the most amazing 60s deco revival papier-mâché bust on eBay a few months ago and am still kicking myself for not bidding just a teeny tiny bit more... The combination of dusky grass green and just ever-so-slightly day-glo pink with the deep avocado green of her hair is nothing short of absolutely perfect!
One of my favorite things about Fashion Week is when a designers inspiration for their collection parallels an inspiration of my own, and every tiny detail becomes a secret signifier of a favorite element of a favorite thing. Karen Walker has always been one of those designers, which explains why I spent all afternoon scouring the internets for the first sign of her 'The Village' collection, inspired by the 60s British television series 'The Prisoner', which I spent many an hour on the clock obsessing over during a youthful stint as a cult video store employee. The sets and costume design are 100 percent amazing and super over the top, and coincidentally something I had also obsessed over turning into a clothing collection once upon time, so of course I had visions dancing in my head of a carnivalesque production of canopied penny farthings, pointy parasols and patchwork capes, an imaginary army of awning stripes, schoolboy suits and rugby striped shirtdresses: The real collection, while super cute and starring the requisite piped blazer, is actually not at all like any of that (which is probably for the best) but does still perfectly capture that 60s seaside meets Edwardian holiday camp look that I so adore, and also features one of my favorite Karen Walker prints since the lollipop trees and puppies of yore... Nautical flags!!!
I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who knows my work or reads my blog that I love, love LOVE historical kitsch (though I am kind of loathe to use the term kitsch in all but the most academic of senses) so it will probably come as no surprise that I'm totally obsessed with the work of artist/designer/architect/genius Richard Woods:
His signature pop faux bois MDF panels have turned up on on many a design blog and graced many a gallery floor, but you kind of have to see the rest of his work too! Called "architectural interventions" by Frieze Magazine, his installations are one part tongue-in-cheek tribute to/pastiche of English vernacular architecture and one part pure unadulterated whimsy.
My favorite is probably the candy colored Stone Clad Cottages at Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, though I do have a soft spot for half-timbering and love that he once transformed Deitch Projects (along with a handful of collectors homes) into a Mock Tudor:
It's practically sweater weather now in Portland, and though I'll be super excited to access the 99.9% of my wardrobe that is made up of tweeds and heavy wool and sweater vests, I will be sad to see our weekly outdoor expeditions fall by the wayside until next year. I was kind of just getting the hang of this nature thing again! Last weekend we went on an epic stroll in the Columbia River Gorge that should have led to a super secret swimming hole which we never quite found. Along the way we were menaced by a tiny hissy silver snake, and, at one point, I could be found quite comically clinging to a mossy rock for dear life in knee deep rapids... But, the trail through old growth redwoods was insanely beautiful and dotted with a couple of cute little campsites tucked into the foliage that we swore to pay another visit to before the rains start for a couple of nights around a fire with toasted marshmallows and owl calls...
But first, the task of figuring out how and where to acquire the makings of a cute camp! As someone who is both secretly mortified of modern day sporting gear and not so secretly a fan of historic re-enactments, I'm kind of hooked on the idea of strictly vintage camping gear, and actually have a folder full of reference photos and ebay searches but absolutely no idea where to start! Wandervogel lutes and a cute 60s campstove, anyone?
I do know exaaactly where I would acquire my very first tent if I could so afford it, however!
For as long as I've had the internet, I've been obsessed with Past Tents, home of ridiculously adorable historically accurate vintage reproduction stripey tents; medieval, napoleonic, civil war, tudor and yes, even teepees, if you so desire!
My imaginary shopping cart is forever full of the pavilion tent in all sizes, in every combination of every sherbet-y shade in the book:
This is basically the campsite of my dreams: By Etrusia UK via Flickr.
Oh hello camping dreamland! It really doesn't get much more picturesque than candy colored tents set up inside crumbling castle walls, which is what I imagine it would have looked like if I had made it to Tapestry Goes West last year, which fell on both my birthday and the super cosmic date of 08/08/08, was going to be held in the deer park of a castle in Wales, with Circulus headlining, but was sadly semi-cancelled at the last minute! Not that I had cobbled together quite enough pocket change to get there anyway... maybe next time?
On a slightly different note, with a slightly more modern day stripey tent, how cute are these pictures of 60s car camping in Germany, avec perfectly put together outfits, comfy chairs and lots of reading materials? Both from one of many amazing sets of family vacation photos taken all over Europe by photographer Harald Haeusler, also by way of Flickr.
I'm cleaning out my "archives" and set up a little temporary online shoppe for all of the goods here!
Duplicates, triplicates, long lost production samples, alternate colorways and all sorts of sometimes one of a kind odds and ends are up for grabs, through the month of September only!
The address again? http://fawn.bigcartel.com
Also, new ebay listings ending tomorrow! Farewell cute 60s floral corduroy suits, hello off the grid treehouse (Maybe? Unless my beloved Portland would like to produce some exciting projects for me to toil away at? Soonish?)
Here are a few more shots from the weekend: Mostly spent tooling around Sauvie Island, skipping from farm to farm in a u-pick flower frenzy, collecting more dahlias, zinnias, mums and gerber daisies than we could ever possibly display, even after filling practically every glass, mug, tiny novelty vase and empty bottle in the house! And of course I couldn't help but obsess over the colorsssss, collecting and photographing every perfect electric salmon pink and insanely rich velvety blood red! We were originally planning to pick a few baskets of blackberries too, but found a heaping platter of them outside or front door just a few days earlier, a sneaky gift from our next door neighbor who has one of the most beautiful urban gardens we've ever seen! Have I mentioned lately how much I love Portland in the summertime? A few more Sauvie Island photos can be found at my flickr, along with a few more recent odds and ends, including this guy: who may just be our new favorite Portland street cat ever!
Fawn Gehweiler's signature character based paintings, installations and works on paper have exhibited in galleries around the world and appear in a number of prominent private collections. Originally from Hawaii and currently based in the Pacific Northwest, her work combines the influence of a bohemian upbringing, sartorial escapism, and her own family tree.
Once described by The Face magazine as "the visual equivalent of candyfloss peppered with broken glass, delicious yet dangerous" and widely considered
a major influence in the recent explosion of young feminine art in the United States, her work hinges on a delicate balance of past and present, building obsessive narratives through personal artifacts that reflect the imaginary worlds of little girls, treading the fine line between wide eyed innocence and dark fairy tales.
Posts
ello everyone! Sorry it has been, as per usual, approximately one million years since my last post here. We've been pleasantly caught up in a whirl of tiny visits with faraway friends on the way to and from far-flung family fêtes, hibernating with mugs of cocoa and whipped cream, and most exciting of all, running away to the woods for a self guided fairy tale mushroom tour!
