Lazy Girl, Episode 7, Season 2, Yard Sale Fever

No Early Birds!!
N.E.B. No Early Birds.  That's what the ad in the Suffolk Times announced for the yard sale at 1125 Seawood Drive in Southold. They also boasted that it would be the Last Yard Sale of the Decade and that they would have free coffee. They said it would be W.Y.W. Worth Your While.

But when my brother, David Markel, and I pulled up a little before 8, the lady in the driveway was looking at her cell phone and yelled out, "We're not ready yet." And the sale looked really lame. Only a lawnmower and a few dining chairs were set out. We were outta there.

Lazy Girl usually features one of David's house sales on Femme et Fleur, but this year, it just so happened that Dave did not have a big sale in August. So he suggested that we go Yard Sailing instead.

 First stop on the Yard Sale Trail: The Country Store

for the Suffolk Times with Saturday's Yard Sale listings.

Here, Tom Foster and Dave hold the paper.

Note that the Dolphins are back!
(The cetacaen mammal, not the sports team.)

We used to see the Dolphins swim by our cottage on
Long Island Sound when we were kids.

There they are. The Yard/Tag Sales!

 Our first stop was 805 Navy Street in Orient.
This is chatska heaven.

 Some of the goods displayed on a washer/dryer set. 

 These little grads were just prime stuff.
John graduated in 1971.

Dave got this plaster Jesus.
He is doing an art project with them.

Dave demonstrating how to dumpster dive.

 Steamy romance novels.
Here are some Yard Sale Acronyms developed by
Jeanne and David Markel:
DB - Drive By
DBQ - Drive By Quick
DBS - Drive By Slow
WGC - Wild Goose Chase
OTW - On the Way

 Yard Sailors:
Lazy Girl, Dee, Dave and Richie.

 Liquidation of garden tools.

This lady is in charge, that's obvious.

 This pull-toy doggie is from a classy sale in Greenport.
The homeowners are artists and yard sailors themselves.
Therefore, they have some well-edited merch.

 This is stylish Cara, one of the homeowners
giving the sale.

 Nice Display.
Tip: If a good sale is not open yet,
you can "Set up camp" and wait.

Distressed chair with books and postcards.

Deciding.
Sometimes "Yard Sale Fever" takes over
and you buy something that you
really don't want or need.
Then you have a yard sale to get rid of it.

 Last sale --on Sunday, of course.
The Temple.

 My sister, Susan, waits on line
for the sale to open.
Advertised as Tons of Treasures.

Dave kept us entertained while we waited.

The wind knocked out of our Yard Sails,
we recover at Aldo's with a chocolate croissant
and a cafe latte.

I bought this little portrait at Cara's sale.
I love it.

À Bientôt!

Lazy Girl, Episode 6, Season 2: Artful Orient

Two Artists in Orient
She got her first camera for her eighth birthday and dreamed of traveling to Africa to photograph elephants. As a child, he did proficient drawings of sailing ships and village houses. This year the lives of these two artists converged in the village of Orient on the North Fork of Long Island.

William Steeple Davis was born in 1884. He spent his life in the village of Orient, leaving to travel abroad only after his mother, who he cared for in her old age, died in 1950. He was a self-taught artist and supported himself through commercial art work. But his passion was fine art. He was a painter of landscapes, seascapes and village scenes of the North Fork.

Childhood drawings by William Steeple Davis
Courtesy Oysterponds Historical Society

Sarah Prescott grew up in Paoli, Pennsylvania. She is also a self-taught artist. In 2014 she received The William Steeple Davis Residency, established in the will of Mr. Davis, which has allowed her to live and work in his Orient home and studio for the past year. 

Sarah Prescott with a tattoo of

an elephant on her arm.

This summer in Orient, I got to meet Sarah and also to see a show of the work of William Steeple Davis at the Oysterponds Historical Society. Although Sarah's work is abstract photography, there are similar elements in their work, and while there is no need to compare, I do find it poetic to draw a line of connection between Sarah and William.

Artist Sarah Prescott on the steps
of the Davis studio.

When Sarah rented a house in Greenport in 2006, she sought a way to heal from health issues and the death of her mother. She found solace in her vegetable and flower garden, and also found a new direction for her art in a Greenport shipyard. She began to photograph the sides of a rusty tugboat covered in barnacles. This work became her "Rust in Bloom" series.

A work in Sarah's "Rust in Bloom" series.

Limited edition fine art print.

"In my dreams I'm a painter, in reality I'm a photographer who paints with my camera." Sarah Prescott

Sarah has had to pursue her creative work in the face of dire health issues. In 2011 she had surgery to remove a brain tumor. She returned to Greenport once again, to recover and find strength. She began to photograph reflections on water using the angle of the sun and adjacent colors that might be on the hull of a boat, to create abstract works.

Works on Sarah's studio wall in the

reflections series.

Sarah's book, a frank look at her health issues,

struggles to make art, and creative journey.

Sarah in her studio with her 24" Epsom printer.

The William Davis Steeple Davis studio as

painted by Davis.

Creativity and love of art transcends the

generations.

Courtesy Oysterponds Historical Society.

Detail of a William Steeple Davis painting.

This is where I draw the comparison between Sarah and William.

The element of water....

Two artists living on the tip of Long Island

 surrounded by the sea.

Detail, William Steeple Davis seascape.

Courtesy Oysterponds Historical Society

To learn more about Sarah Prescott and

her work, look here.

À Bientôt!

Lazy Girl, Episode 5, Season 2- The Old Orchard Farm Store

Un Petit Magazin de Ferme
It's been around for ages, a fixture on Village Lane in Orient. Eons ago, when we were teens in the 60s, which was when our family first started coming to the North Fork of Long Island, we would sometimes come to Orient from Southold, where our Blue Cottage on the Sound was, and walk the Lane, Village Lane. Usually that meant stopping at the Country Store for turkey sandwiches on rye, with a little lettuce and a little salt, and Orangina and a package of Hostess Cupcakes. These we would take down to the cement dock at the foot of Poquatuck Park, and have a little picnic

After our picnic, we walked back up Village Lane and passed the Old Orchard Farm Store. At that time it was a mysterious little establishment selling herbs, and jams and various farmy style things. I really cannot recall exactly what, because we did not go in so very often.

Then for years, the store lay dormant, neglected by someone, who? It was a mystery to me. I had my usual fantasies about it. The most recent one being that I would open a flower shop called Les Fleurs and sell bouquets from my own flower garden which would be anything but les fleurs ordinaires like the dahlias and zinnias sold at Latham's Farm Stand up on the North Road.

In some ways, having the store be revived with antiques and art is emblematic of other changes in Orient, like the Four and Twenty Pie Shop with pies imported from Brooklyn, and the Dutch bicycles painted in luscious colors like aqua and cream and parked outside the Country Store.

 The Old Orchard Farm Store today.

Mystery solved. The owners were away for 30 years

in Pennsylvania, working and raising a family.

 Leslie and Bob Black have revived the

moribund store and

filled it with charming objects

redolent of the sea and farm.

 A featured artist is Alan Bull, who paints

the local scene with poetic delicacy.

 An Alan Bull beach scape.

 This diminutive oil reminds me

of something I might have done as a teen

in Southold.

 Selfie in Lola sun bonnet

with pink ribbon.

A neighbor of the store watering

her garden. She is 95.

She finds joy in tending her garden.

À Bientôt!

Lazy Girl, Episode 4, Season 2: Sag Harbor

The Shopping is Always Better
on the South Fork
Ostensibly, we were going to Sag Harbor for dinner and a musical. But I always have a hidden agenda, and that agenda usually involves shopping. So I was delighted to find myself in French caftan central -- Sag Harbor, a bonafide style destination of Hampton-like quality, even though the town likes to call itself the "Un-Hamptons".

This means there will be fat pickings for summer frocks, sarongs from the Riviera, eclectic jewelry, white straw Fedoras (and no, I do not need another one) all at nice, fat prices. Expect your wallet to get nicked, albeit not fatally wounded if you are careful and avoid the boutiques like Marie Eiffel which have their obvious Frenchified pretensions.

But I get ahead of myself. Early for our show, our gang first stopped at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum which was built in 1845 as the home of Benjamin Huntting II, an owner of whaling ships.

I am framed in the entrance by two

gigantic whale molars. 

Richard Conrad Cramer, Richard Charles Cramer,

random statue, Dianna Cramer and Michael Miller

The Whaling Museum had a whale of good

show of paintings too. Here is an Alfonso Ossorio assemblage, 1960. 
Ossorio worked in the 30's and 40's
inspired by the Surrealists, and in the 50's in the
circle of the abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock.
In 1960 he started to create assemblages of found materials.
He called these works "Congregations".
You never know where you will find inspiration, even in a
whaling museum.

Dianna and I in an Ossirio Reverie.

The Whaling Museum has a unique collection

of oddities. Their handmade labels

look like they were scratched out with

a croquil pen by an old baleen hunter.

 You can see the long distance we

travelled from Orient to Sag Harbor.

Imagine a hold full of starving sea turtles.

The Main Street of Sag Harbor has this

great old theater.

 I came across a shop called Matta.

I admired these scarves edged in pom-poms.

This bag was a stunner.
Matta products are crafted by skilled artisans.
There's a mini branch in ABC Home and Carpet in NYC.

An unusual beaded necklace.

I bought this dress at Matta.
I love the pom-pom trim.

À Bientôt!