Welcome to my home: Vignette 3
I LOVE a Gallery Wall. It’s one of my favorite things to pull together in a room. It’s a great way to showcase a bunch of different things in an organic way. If you know me, you know I’m a perfect split brain: highly organized as much as I am highly creative. Gallery walls are a great way for me to express my creative side, grouping random shapes and sizes in random patterns. And the best part is, I don’t measure anything…I just start hanging!
All of these items mean something to me. Starting with the large round thing in the upper left corner: that’s a hat! I picked that up at my mom’s and my favorite yearly rummage sale. It’s from Japan and is intricately woven and I’ve never seen anything like it before.
The charcoal painting of the backside of a woman directly below that hat was a gift from a dear girlfriend of mine. Her brother-in-law drew it in an art class and one day when I was at her house she had it stacked against the wall. I complimented it and she said, oh, I’m giving it away, do you want it? Hell yes I want it! I’ve loved it ever since. People often think it is me, but it isn’t. I wish someone would create art of me! How cool would that be?
The picture directly next to that on the left is a photo of an oak tree. I believe this painting belonged to my mom at one point and somehow I managed to acquire it. I have it in my home because it reminds me of the gigantic oak trees I used to see when I lived in South Carolina. I absolutely loved South Carolina and would go back in a heartbeat if I could.
Below the charcoal woman is a simple gold palm leaf that I picked up at Target. No story behind that, other than I loved it!
The painting in the middle of the gallery wall is a large oil painting that I picked up at either a garage sale or thrift store. I loved the neutral colors, the size (bigger is better when it comes to art) and the moodiness of the piece: again with the contrast! It’s not signed or anything, it was probably someone’s art project at one point.
The gold sunburst in the upper right corner is a special treasure my uncle gave to me. He picked it up at some thrift store the last time he was visiting from Los Angeles. He saw it and it reminded him of a few of the pieces in my home and thought I should have it!
The basket below the sunburst was my grandmas. It was a simple woven basket and had random pieces of red and blue and pink fabric throughout. I loved the shape and style of the basket but the fabric didn’t go with my decor. I ended up pulling out all the little fabric pieces and taking a black Sharpie to it to add some black accents. My grandma had a lot of woven goods and I’m not quite sure where she picked them all up. My guess however is that they came from Turkey. I remember being at dinner with her one night and our server was from Turkey. She complimented him on his country and told him how much she loved it there. This basket reminds me of that.
The picture of the little girl below is also very special to me. My cousin, who grew up in Detroit, gave that to me about a year ago when I was helping her mom hang pictures in her new house. This picture is special because it was my cousin’s for many, many years. She said it hung in her apartment in detroit for decades. And the most special thing about it is that the child looks just like my cousin when she was little! Every time I see it, I am reminded of her.