I went to greasy breakfast and thrift shopping with a good friend in Ishpeming yesterday, a smaller town about 20 minutes southwest of Marquette. I really can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than eating a big meal and digging through junk with good company. Ishpeming is a strange but sometimes intriguing place to visit – the affects of the rise and decline of the mining industry are much more prominent in certain towns in the Upper Peninsula and Ishpeming is definitely one of them. This is characterized by the typical rows of empty storefronts, leaving the downtown somewhat eerie yet pleasantly quiet. However, there does seem to be an abundance of two things in downtown Ishpeming: bars and antique stores.
We decided to go out wandering through a few of the antique stores after breakfast – I haven’t really been in many places in Ishpeming besides the Salvation Army, Congress Pizza and Da Yoopers Tourist Trap (which I’m proud to say I’ve been to three times in the past 4 months alone). We went into an old theatre-turned-antique store building and I was instantly warmed by it. The entrance still contained the old lobby and the concession stands were still in tact, only covered and filled with the stuff of usual antique stores. Entering the main space through the lobby doors is when I really fell in love with the place: the smell of old combined with the bright but not overbearing lighting, the rows of nooks lining what was once the main seating area (now open and seatless), the white walls, squared off in areas and painted with soft red, flowery decorative icons. It also helped (a lot) that Patsy Cline played from a small radio behind the counter. The entire building, and everything in it and about it had my heart. Alas, i did not have my camera.
But, instead of taking photos, I did something much better. I bought some art. A painting, to be specific. I was perusing the jewelry when I was beckoned over to a wall in a corner, sort of hidden between the entry way and the counter. When he pointed at the painting, I sort of gasped:
I don’t actually own much art. Most of the things I do own are from trading with friends – many of the trades are from when I last lived in Marquette. For some reason I never saw a whole lot of art in grad school that prompted me to inquire about trading. Maybe it was also because I had less physical things to trade for in grad school (“Hey I’d like to own one of your pieces of art. Want to trade? I can tell you all about Bentham’s Panopticon in exchange. Cool?”)
A psychology of barter economics aside, the point is buying a painting, something that would hang in my residence, was sort of a big deal. But just look at this painting! Every color in the rainbow, in various stages of mudied glory, covered by a mysterious island-row of menacing trees. It was the bright bright blue (in what I’m assuming to be more water behind the trees) that won me over – with the lighting the painter was suggesting with the placement of sun, that color would not exist in nature! There would be no highlights on that side of the trees! The reflections of the trees in the water in the foreground are completely mishapen and misproportionate! What is that strip of white? A wave? Snow? What the hell kind of trees are those anyway? Is that some kind of varnish over the trees? A little goopy wax in the corner? Yes! Yes! Yes!
Maybe it’s simply just so bad in a puzzling way that it keeps me interested. I keep looking at it in different light, hanging in my dining/living area. In the daytime it’s bathed in natural light. In the nighttime with artificially produced low lighting, the trees are even more prominent and dark. Painting often doesn’t keep my attention for very long. Maybe I shouldn’t be confessing this, but I often get fidgety around traditional art. Regardless of whether it’s a masterpiece hanging at the Met or a provincial looking scene hanging at a gift shop, I find it hard to focus on what I’m seeing. It has to be really something to make me pause for longer than a minute, and now I have one hanging on my wall. All that for just $15 plus tax.
Many thanks to Marc for pulling me over to that corner and letting me buy his find.
