Old Halloween Pictures Revisited

I've been playing with old photos my mom took of me at Halloween time.  These have all been hand-tinted, and generally cropped and doctored on Photoshop Elements.  Here we have me in saddle shoes on the far right, and all the older neighborhood kids sitting on the couch in our trailer, probably 1952.  Until I was three and my younger sister was born, my family lived in a trailer in my grandparents' yard.  Mother always liked Halloween, as I do.  It allowed her creativity to shine. She carved pumpkins, sewed costumes, and planned parties for us kids.

Here I am again, holding the paper mache cat lantern, and my sister Patty Sue with the pumpkin lantern.  By the time this picture was taken in about 1955 we had moved out of the trailer and into the old family farm house I think of as my childhood home.  I found both lanterns on eBay last year, and they decorate my sideboard in the dining room now.  I mentioned that Mother liked to sew.  She made these outfits for us girls out of old sheer curtains.  She liked the princess theme, as you will see.

Here we are again with our closest neighbors, Sharri and Curt.  Their mother, Merceda, gave out the best Trick or Treat bags ever, filled with not only wrapped candy, but strawberry ropes, candy cigarettes, wax lips, and peanut butter blossom cookies - the ones made out of peanut butter and a Hershey's kiss. They're still a favorite.  Mom made our princess outfits in this 1957 picture too.  

Halloween has been a favorite for me.  I've always liked reading and telling scary stories, liked scary television programs and movies.  I've always enjoyed dressing up in costumes and wigs, enjoyed using make-up and masks to disguise myself.  As an adult it's not eating the candy so much as it is how much I enjoy seeing children come to the door and being able to give out the treats.  If there are some peanut butter kisses or mini-Snickers left over, so much the better. For several years I enjoyed being a fortune teller at Snap Apple Night for the Rock County Historical Society, though that tradition seemed to have come to an end.  Likewise I used to love telling ghost stories in the park for middle and high schoolers and adults, really scary ones, but the city recreation department decided to go with less scary activities, significantly labeled "not too frightening" for the little tots instead. A tradition my husband and I have is carving pumpkins together.  He actually likes it better than I do, since I am a little nervous of sharp blades.  But he looks forward to carving and lighting the jack-o-lanterns, and he makes salted and roasted pumpkin seeds, so I can't complain. 

One other thing that appeals to me is that participation in Halloween is strictly optional.  If I don't feel like handing out treats, I turn out the porch light. If I don't decorate, send cards, or buy gifts, nobody seems to feel slighted.  Over the past few years merchandising of decorations, costumes and candy has gotten to be a bigger deal, but it certainly doesn't bludgeon me like the December holiday.  Anyway, every day now I'm putting out my autumn decorations, a lighted plastic pumpkin, vintage lanterns, baskets of mums, dried leaves, and scented candles.  I wish Mom was around to see how I'll decorate this year.

Old Mission Light, and a poem

Watercolor in Moleskine journal, Old Mission Light, Michigan

Night Ferry, by Peter Sacks

Blood-drop, lung of fire setting past

the sea bell and wave; why am I separate

from that giant burrowing into further life?

The body breathes and rides

a heavy-netted ocean swollen

by the tide.  Under the half-moon

it's the lighthouse light that turns

the rest of me to early nightfall,

headland, home.  I send it back,

a mirrored flickering across cold waters.

We allow ourselves the crest that breaks

above the surface then re-forms.

We make it human and we call it love.

The wintering is my own and not the world's,

although the world is wintering.

Fall Morning

I finally got out my watercolors today, after having abandoned them since the start of summer. This is a small sketch in my Moleskine, which has been neglected if not abandoned. For me summer was all about traveling, gardening, and taking my pictures to exhibits and then bringing them back home again.  But now I plan to stay home for a while, and gardening will have to do with planting bulbs and cutting back spent plants.  I did go to the garden center and get a purple mum to replace the exhausted pansies that didn't survive August heat.  

It's funny, after all the painting I did from October last year until May this year, I thought I would be able to keep the momentum going.  Now after not being very productive artistically for four months, I feel nervous about sitting down in my studio to begin again.  I have ideas, reference photos I took in summer like the one I used for the little watercolor here, but my old anxiety about doing work I like has returned.  I've temporarily lost my sense that painting is re-creation, as well as creation.  Guess I'll just have to start throwing around some paint and giving myself permission to experiment.

Fall should be a good time to get back into a routine of drawing and painting, since the season is one of transition, and the colors in nature are turning gaudy.  It's a golden time, and one that is irresistible to try to put on paper.