With the arrival of early summer, I am trying to look at my home with fresh eyes – think out of the box, so to speak. I am giving myself permission to arrange things in new and interesting ways. After all, books don’t have to be placed on shelves; they can live on chairs and benches. Prints don’t have to hang on walls; they can sit directly on the mantel or hall table, or even on the floor!

I am also reminding myself that my beloved objects belong everywhere in my home. The things we collect do not have to be put on pedestals or under spotlights. Refusing to accept anybody else’s idea of “where things go,” I put my prizes in niches, on busy shelves, in rooms as utilitarian as the laundry and bath.

After all, when the provenance is love, artwork and objects move effortlessly from room to room.

Flight
Marci Jan Bronstein

As a writer, I’ve always been interested in the way images come to represent and reflect human experience. These associations come from very deep inside and accompany one through life.

Many years ago, when I was recently divorced, I moved to a new city and took a new job, attempting to re-start my life. I was young and broke, with a pile of debt that had to be paid off with my meager salary.

A good friend owned a gallery, and it is there that I bought my first painting. I made a lay-away arrangement with the gallery, paying $50 a month until the piece was paid off. When I finally took it home, I was so proud of my first major art purchase!

The painting was a large abstract of birds in flight. To me, it represented freedom and movement through life with confidence and happiness. At a time in my life when I wanted to stretch my own wings and fly, this image was a talisman that helped carry me forward.

Today, so many years later, this painting lives in my bedroom, greeting me every morning. And, I love all images of birds in flight, as I continue to try and find new ways to stretch my wings.

Flowers Tea Light
Lilach Lotan

Lilach Lotan makes jewelry for the home (otherwise known as lighting). I first saw the work of this young Canadian artist at a show in Philadelphia a few months ago and fell in love with her small, porcelain tea lights. They truly glow in the dark, gracing as well as adorning the spaces they occupy.

How lucky we are that artists today are working with every imaginable material to create lighting! Their designs range from bare bones high tech to sculptural to the consciously ornate. They are creating lighting that stands on the floor, sits on the table, hangs from the ceiling, leans against the wall, is attached to the wall, and everything in between.

I am a self-confessed lamp freak. All of my lamp “treasures” serve to shed light on my activities and inactivities and transform the rooms of my home. Seeing these Lotan tea lights make me realize that I probably need one or two small pieces of lighting jewelry to sit on my piano…