Hanging Around The House 3: Finishing The Basement

So, remember almost a year ago when I started the “Hanging Around The House” series? The idea was to take some quick digital snapshots to show things I have on the walls around the house, and give me an excuse to talk about them. I did a post on the things hanging in my office, and then another one on things in the guest bedroom.

And then nine months passed somehow.

So, better late than never I guess. This is part three, which will complete the downstairs.

Remember that the images are just quick snaps to give you the ideas of the pieces, not any kind of polished professional shots. There will be glare, and fingerprint, etc.

We’ll start with my copy da Vinci‘s Virtruvian Man. This has recently moved downstairs, and currently is in the hall outside my office, opposite my degree wall. There are two reasons this is appropriate: first, I have framed this in the same style as my Obligation except in gold rather than grey metal, and second because of Systems Man.

You see, I did my undergrad in Systems Design Engineering at University of Waterloo. For the first 2.5 years of this program, everyone basically takes all the same classes, always together. There were around 90 of us, and we spent every lecture and lab hour together for those first couple of years, and the majority of the classes were taught in one of two adjacent lecture rooms. On the back wall of one of these rooms a larger-than-life size version of the Vitruvian Man had been painted: the Systems Man. The image was slightly different than da Vinci’s, with the poor fellow being subject to all kinds of different forces (a weight attached by rope to one limb, pulling it down, a pulley working on another, springs attached to others, torques applied, etc.). Underneath the image was painted this formula, or something very like it:

In first year you take statics–the physics of things that don’t move–and one of the main concepts there is that “the sum of all forces is zero” (this grows out of Newton’s Second Law). The formula painted under our Systems Man, who is being pulled in all different directions by many forces could be read as “the sum of all forces is a Bachelor of Applied Science degree”.

I mention this was painted on the back of one of the room. On the other side of the wall–in the other lecture room we always used–was painted the back side of the image–i.e. the Vitruvian butt-shot.

Apparently Systems Man is not there anymore–he got painted over or something. The end of an era, says I. And what’s worse–I can’t find any images of Systems Man on the web.

Coming out of the hall in front of my office, you come into the large open plan “rec room” area. To one side is my bar area (I inherited the actual bar). While nothing is technically “hanging” here, there are a few artistic points of interest.

First, obviously there’s the easel, which theoretically supports a rotating series of pieces, but which in practice has been holding the Frank Miller print of Nancy from Sin City for a long time.

Also, there is the fabulous shelf and mirror combination on the wall behind the bar. Gorgeous maple burls that Trish got for me. It really breaks up the space nicely between my two “top shelves”.

And, of course, I still consider that keg fridge to be a work of art, even if I haven’t used it in years. Remind me to tell the story sometime about how I “contaminated” a keg of Guinness, and then accidentally made a 50kg Guinnessicle, much to the amusement of Pete, the Guinness tech support guy.

If you were standing behind the bar, facing out, and you looked to your left, you would see this print, the cover of Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean‘s Mr. Punch on the wall. It’s signed by both of them. I haven’t seen Mirrormask yet, but Mr. Punch is my favourite Gaiman/McKean collaboration. I’ve had this for a long time, and it suffers a bit from having been framed when I was very poor–although I’m not sure what I would do with it now that would look better than the simple black metal frame, to be honest.

This shot is what you see looking over the bar from behind. This picture is just to provide a context for all the shots of the individual pieces that follow.

Let’s start with all the little photos that are on the support posts.

This is a photo I took of a staircase inside St. Istvan’s Basilica in Budapest. I used a variant of this shot as the header of the blog in an early incarnation. This one is an 8 x 10 print that I have matted with black velvet, which creates a great “blacker than black” border effect. I am inordinately proud of how this picture turned out.

All the other images inside the entertainment area are related to TV, movies, or music.

A while back Trish got me these publicity photos from the Avengers. She knows of my abiding love of this show, and how my crush on Mrs. Peel (which started while I watched Avengers reruns before I was even 10 years old) has shaped all my ideas about what women should be.

I’ve been a Gene Kelly fan since the first time I saw Inherit the Wind, one of my all-time favourite films. His portrayal of E. K Hornbeck (a.k.a. H.L. Mencken) made me a fan of his, enough that I would even watch the movies that were all about him dancing.

I infected Trish with this fandom, and she has taken it to another level–since she actually enjoys musicals, and recognizes that Gene is a good looking man in a more active way than I do.

So I got her these two photos, which are also positioned on the pillars around the room.

All four of these publicty shots are 8 x 10 in simple clip frames.

Gene shows up again in one of these three movie-related pieces that run along one wall. (The idea here is also that we would be rotating pieces into the positions on this wall–as we found other movie posters, etc, that we want to display. The theory has yet to be put into practice.)

We have simple plaque-mounts of Singing In The Rain and Breakfast At Tiffany’s posters up, as well as a properly framed headshot poster of Audrey.

I had that Audrey headshot in my bedroom when I was single. I’ve been told since that only Big Gay Homosexuals(tm) would have Audrey Hepburn posters in their bedroom. Good thing none of the women who visited my bedroom (including the last one!) knew that.

I know I said I would be skipping Trish’s stuff and focusing on mine, but I have to comment on this one.

A long time ago Trish had the poster for a particular season at Stratford. The poster was her favourite decoration. It was destroyed in a flood.

It is apparently impossible to replace the poster, so Trish’s brother-in-law painted this reproduction. Isn’t that awesome?

Pretty nice framing job, too.

This is, hands down, the all time best gift I have ever been given.

Allow me to tell a quick story: I used to go every week to see Danny Michel play a quiet gig at the Walper Pub in Kitchener. The pub had several rooms, including the one at the back where musicians played small shows to quiet, attentive audiences. The best part of this room was the framed picture of Miles Davis, the apogee of cool, shushing the room–reminding everyone to be quiet and listen to the music.

At some point they redecorated the room, and Miles was gone. This made me very sad, something I expressed to many people, including Trish.

So the following Christmas Trish found a copy of the Miles print, and had it framed up just like the one that used to hang at the Walper–same mattes, same frame, etc. Awesome.

So now it hangs over my TV, and every time I look at it I can hear Danny (and Paul Macleod, and Mazola Pony’s New Year’s show, and …)

Here’s another context shot, showing the area “behind” the couch.

This is the Ralph Steadman movie mini-poster image from the Criterion Withnail & I DVD. A simple plaque mount–but they did a really good job at hiding the fold lines.

Withnail & I is probably my favourite film. And I have a history of loving Steadman that dates back to his work with Hunter Thompson–not to mention his whiskey images.

Another gift from Trish, this poster is an iconic image of Johnny. It does a good job of capturing the gravitas of Johnny as The Man In Black. I had it mounted to protect it, but haven’t decided yet where it should hang.

This is a cool macro-lens shot of a small garden snake. It’s been really nicely framed.

I’ve named this snake Elvis.

Because, what else would the name be?

This photo is an image of a “King of the Gypsies” (man, do the gadje not understand the Roma). In this image he is at the funeral of his wife.

I almost can’t stand how expressive his face is.

I really like how this looks, floating in the frame, but I wish the mounting point wasn’t visible through the glass at the top. I’ve got to do something about that.

These are two page of original art from the production of some great comics. I have quite a few pages in a portfolio, but I have these two out because they’re awesome. Eventually I will get around to framing them properly, but for the moment they are in the same kind of float as the “Gypsy King”. While they’re not properly framed, they’re just sitting on the ledge–once they’re framed, I’ll get them hung as well.

The first is a Michael Zulli page from the Sandman story “The Wake”. If I keep doing these posts (hopefully in less than another 9 months) we’ll be seeing more Zulli when we get upstairs.

The second is a page from From Hell, art by the inimitable Eddie Campbell. In addition to being one of my favourite comic creators (the Alec books in particular are great, especially the later ones where the autobiographical bits cede somewhat to musings on art and artists) is in the top three on my personal list of “people I’d like to have a drink and a good chat with”. Eddie can pick the wine.

Dominating the back wall of the room is this gigantic piece. This single frame includes the original art from the final four pages of Scott Morse‘s graphic novel Soulwind. I like Scott’s current style a lot, but I think it’s a shame that he’s stopped doing some stuff in this faux-Japanese inkbrush style. These four pages are pretty much perfect.

These two shots are more context, showing the way around the corner and into the staircase.

This piece is a print of The Raft of The Medusa by Gericault. It’s a great piece, with a good story behind it, but I admit that most of the reason that I love it is that is served as the basis for the cover of Rum, Sodomy, and The Lash.

It’s hanging here because certain people (who shall remain Trish) think it’s too depressing to be in the dining room.

This is a piece I made, selecting an appropriate image to marry with lines from Ozymandias. I think it turned out pretty well.

This is a limited edition print used to promote P. Craig Russell‘s adaptation of the Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde. I think I have every adaptation that Russell has done–Wilde, various operas, even Moorcock’s Elric stories.

This is a print of one of Aman Chaudhary‘s illustrations from Antony Johnston‘s book Frightening Curves. It’s my favourite of the illustrations from the book–I just love how Aman captures the whole idea that while she’s working her magic Sharon’s motion suggests one of the multi-armed Indian gods.

These three photos are images from the Carnival in Venice. I didn’t take them, but I did use them to test one of the digital photo-finishing places, and once I had seen how good the finished prints looked I decided that I should really display them. I think the three look great in this triptych arrangement.

This is my candid shot of The Tim Malloys. I have a previous post that explains about this.

These final three items are just resting on the staircase ledge until we adjust the lighting in the stairwell.

The first item is another portrait of Bertrand Russell, albeit a much smaller one than the monster that hangs outside my office. It’s a portrait taken by Karsh–check out some of his other works.

Then come a couple of family photos: Sarah channeling Vin Diesel in Pitch Black (see a better image at Sarah’s photo blog), and one of my brother’s official stat sheets.

And that wraps up the stuff hanging in the basement.