If These Walls Could Talk, They Would Tell You How Boring this Hurricane Is

Hurricane Irene, having yet to make landfall in NYC, has already succeeded in doing one thing for certain. That being, boring the living shit out of me. OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO BE STUCK INSIDE FOR DAYS. Or at least 24-36 hours. And I am already going stir crazy, and am fighting what is surely a losing battle with myself to not start drinking.

Instead, for now at least, I am going to channel my frustrated boredom into something positive, like blogging. And making cream cheese-based dips. But first, blogging.

Since I am going to be doing a lot of staring at my walls over the next two days, I thought that I would share with you exactly what I will be staring at. And that is a lot of thrifted wall art. Operation Sparkle rarely deviates from the fashion side of thrifting, but there are oh so many other categories of material objects that can be exploited at thrift stores. Good wall art is one of my other passionate pursuits, and is one of the holy grails of thrifting, to be sure. It tends to be very hard to come by; especially anything that is actually art, made by an actual person, with any actual artistic talent. My boyfriend J (who particularly enjoys this category of thrifting, and is particularly gifted at it) and I have had some very good luck lately. We will start off with a bang.



J recently found this painting on a thrifting trip in Brooklyn with our friend Elizabeth. The story goes that they were both torn by whether or not to purchase this beauty, with a rather steep price tag of $100. They both passed on it, only to both be tormented by the thought of it over the following days. J cracked, and decided to pull the trigger. Only when he brought it home the next day, did I become aware of the fact that this painting is roughly 4'x5'. And by ' I mean feet. This thing is f-ing humongous.



But very special, to be sure. There are so many ways that the imagery could be interpreted. I like to think it is about pursuing freedom, and leaving your demons behind.

Next up, is what J and I briefly thought was going to be our Antiques Roadshow moment:


For a solid half an hour we thought that this was a real painting by a relatively known watercolor painter, somebody Margulies. It is actually a very high quality print of a watercolor painting by somebody Margulies. But for $10 at the Chelsea Flea Market, it is still a crazy ass deal.

We did still manage to purchase a real painting on that same trip to the Chelsea Flea Market, this hand-painted gouache promotional poster for a Kurt Weill Broadway Medley performance:


The poster advertises that songs from the Weimar opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny are to be performed. The opera tells the tale of the fictional city of Mahagonny, in which everything is legal, as long as you can afford to pay for it. It becomes a nonstop orgy of all fun and bad things. A typhoon approaches the city and threatens to destroy it, and everyone freaks out, until they realize that the citizens of the city are scarier than the typhoon. Think about it.