Tag fashion illustration

Festivities of Fashion: a trip to the 60’s fashion exhibit at Allentown Art Museum and the Threads of Fashion Exhibit at the Banana Factory

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Even before the month went off the rails, Gayle and I made plans to visit the fashion exhibits at two of our local Lehigh Valley art centers: the Allentown Art Museum and the Banana Factory. The teenager’s work schedule allowed her to join us, and she had been to neither spot in probably a dozen or more years.

Her father and I once held memberships at both the Lehigh Valley Zoo and the art museum– as both are great places to entertain a preschooler.

Gayle wanted to see the art museum exhibit because she had some of those clothes from the Sixties, and I wanted to see it because I love post-World War II history and I have a minor obsession of fashion in the artistic sense. If you’ve read my Fashion and Fiends novels, this makes sense.

I took sooooooo many photos and honestly– hey, Joan, take note: I’d like to go back and bring a sketch book and some implements. And if I had a camera…

Our first stop had to be the Frank Lloyd Wright library. The Teenager has always loved it, and today proved no exception. She had a magnificent time pointing out how all the details fit together and complemented each other in clean, minimal design.

I am always drawn to certain items: the Tiffany glass, the writing set, the painting of the tall man with many eyes that hangs in the stairs, the man with the pipe that makes me think of Pablo Picasso, and the woman with cigar.

But then came the fashion…

I think I might wear these.
Sixties profiles, note the white leather
classic black pleats and burgundy boots that really accent
A dress with see-through pants and bold gold jewelry
men’s paisley pants that I adore
hosiery from Hess’s (What color!)
So simple.
I love boots.
How far we’ve come.
colors, patterns galore
I gasped in delight when I saw these
what delightful patterns
I can’t even. Clown shoes.
First glance: Kangaroo? Then, notice the lines, the overlapping necklines, how the zipper aligns with the ties

So much to explore. Colors and patterns vibrating through the room.

And since the museum no longer charges admission, I bought a very bold umbrella at the gift shop.

Next, we headed to South Bethlehem’s Banana Factory. At their exhibit, featuring the work of local designer Barbara Kavchok. The work blew my mind, and the paintings and fashion illustrations that accompanied the dresses… well, if I wasn’t losing my job I would have inquired how to obtain one or two. The flowers. The ruffles. The lines. All just flabbergasting.

I had to stop in the bathroom, where I paused to take photos of the paint stains in the sink.

I had been trying to eat healthy all day, and all day my blood pressure was low and my body wobbly (to use the teen’s words) and hands shaky. So I got a chicken sandwich at Wendy’s.

Every day I find myself more ashamed of my weight and my food choices– and every day I make more excuses. It has to stop. It just has to change. My body can’t take the extra pounds.

Photography and musings on the visual arts

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

I admire artists. I have several friends who have the visual arts among their gifts, as does the teenager’s dad and his family. They have « the music » too. Well, the teenager’s dad has a pretty good ear for music, but he doesn’t make any. But visual arts is a language he speaks. And he almost went to Pratt Art Institute instead of Moravian College.

Me, I have always loved all of the arts but I have an absolute tin ear for music—it’s just an alien language I cannot speak or hear as those who are fluent do—and I struggle with visual arts.

I practiced for years to learn the basics of fashion drawing and every time I stop doing it I have to get out the books and magazines and teach myself all over again.

I commissioned a fashion illustration from Renie Hanna that still hangs in my living room.

Original commission by Renie Hanna

I love the Impressionists— Berthe Morisot is my favorite and my favorite museum is the Musée D’Orsay in Paris.

My friend Rachel has given us watercolor paintings, which I hang with pride. We need new glass for one, the strange one, which is slated for a new home in the living room.

And the only painting I ever saw that I HAD to have was one by Heather Pasqualino Weirich— and it has hung in my “entry hall” for about a decade and still mesmerizes me with it’s vibrancy and simplicity.

Heather Pasqualino Fine Art

Interestingly, the two paintings in my bedroom were done by me and my step mom in those “any idiot can paint” classes. I love them, but I know they are relatively crude and awful.

How anyone can pull a picture out of their head and see the details to replicate on paper is a great mystery to me.

That is why I love photography. It captures moments that are happening. It freezes time. There are two great tricks to photography: 1. To take a lot of photos so you don’t miss anything and 2. To sense when a real moment is about to happen and not miss it.

My daughter’s latest iPhone has a camera way better than my iPhoneX and it has given her a chance to explore photography. Perhaps when she rouses from her bed on this rainy Sunday, I can convince her to pick a series of her favorites and host a show here on my blog.

But she took these photos of me yesterday, and I want to share them with you because they capture so much… We went to pick up her dress at The Attic clothes in Bethlehem. They are hosting online sales via Instagram and Facebook.

She asked to surprise her grandparents (her father’s parents) who live a few blocks away.

I said sure.

Now, my husband and I have lived apart for 10 months. We haven’t started divorce proceedings yet probably because it’s a new process and neither one of us likes to do new things that make us uncomfortable. There’s a whole lot of practical things that don’t impede our daily lives that we need to untangle. And we just haven’t.

So I always feel a little awkward showing up at his parents’ house. Especially unannounced as I have no reason to be there.

But I had a lovely conversation with my father-in-law and my mother-in-law fed us the leftovers her husband didn’t want to eat and she told the teenager stories.

Cabbage and noodles with the teen

And we compared the teenager to her paternal great grandfather who died before she was born. Pappy Buss was a farmer, a master carpenter who did some work for Martin Guitar, a pure-hearted Christian man who embodied everything a good person should be, and a mischievous prankster.

His first language was Pennsylvania Dutch and he played trumpet, unless I have my facts wrong.

But every since the day my daughter was born, I felt she had a piece of Pappy in her. And it gets stronger as she ages. Of course, she doesn’t have Pappy’s quiet demeanor.

So, here are the photos the teenager took of me at her grandmother’s kitchen table, eating angel food cake.

Angel eating angel food cake

Good doesn’t matter

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Like any human, I have good days and bad. This weekend was hard for me. Blame hormones. A sick cat. Family members who don’t see eye to eye with me. Whatever you like. Reality is… Such is life.

I have been focusing a lot of time and energy on diet and exercise recently, but today (and yesterday) I couldn’t bring myself to lift my weights or go for a walk. Instead, I went to Dunkin Donuts. Had a 250+ calorie iced coffee and not one but two donuts. Some people get drunk, I prefer a sugar high. It didn’t work.

So I talked to some friends. Thanks to them, I felt more myself. My family challenged me to the first day’s training session from the app “Couch to 5K” (C25K). We did it. As a family. Now I can eat something small for dinner and not feel badly.

Looking over some of my notes from today I am reminded once again that the things that make you feel accomplished are those achievements outside your comfort zone: going for a run when you don’t think you have the physical strength, tap dancing when you’re really awful at it…

Or for me, even fashion illustration. And sharing it with the world. My fiction manuscripts are set in the high fashion world (and oddly enough, Francophone Africa). I have always designed dresses and clothes for the characters.

I am not an artist. But, while feeling poorly today, I designed the dress in the photograph. It’s worn by a French woman who marries a half-French, half Issa-Somali Muslim man from Djibouti. She’s a trouble maker who lost her left leg (and some other body parts) to an IED in Afghanistan.

Doughnuts might not be good for me. I might not draw well. I must look like an idiot running around my local park. But today, these things soothed me.IMG_1262.JPG