My Own Lizzie Siddal

It has been forever since I have posted to my blog!  I have been distracted from my routine and trying to get other projects done and then overwhelmed at how to begin with my blog.  So, I decided to do a short post about someone I love and who has been inspiring me for about 20 years!  This dear sister-friend of mine is my very own "Lizzie Siddal". 

I used to live in NE and she was a fabulous model for my photography, paintings and monotypes.  She is also a photographer, painter and printmaker so we both took turns being each others model.  We also just had a wonderful time being together.  

 There were fun trips to vintage clothing stores all over to find costumes for our photographs and unique(and cheap!) pieces of furniture to make our little ancient apartments into jewel box castles. 

( Look at what she did to my apartment when I was away for a weekend!  She made the outside of it as well as the stairs up to it(all 3 whirling and twirling teeny previously servant quarters stairs of an very old mansion)into an overgrown, enchanted Castle right out of Sleeping Beauty!  This is after I got into her apartment and covered everything with "pixie dust" and posted blown up photographs of her from one Pre-Raphaelite shoot all over our wee village!  Ha!  It was really sad, I kept these up until I moved.  It was extremely hard to take them down.)
 There were also many trips to hear concerts from artists like Loreena McKennitt and the Medieval Baebes.  We climbled lots of mountains and picked blueberries from low growing bushes which we made jams and pies.  We swam in fabulous secret swimming holes where there were beautiful waterfalls . 

 

 We were always cooking, making art, dressing up, taking fun little trips, going to our favourite restaurants and poetry readings, getting ready for art shows, weaving on our bead looms together to get through the long winters and we just really liked to be in each others company.

 Hay Jumps in Western MA!

 Photographs in Enchanted Forests~

 

 The Gorgeous Skies of Fall in NE

 

There are always hilarious sides to these "very serious" photographs!  Love this one! Moving around in this gown when it was wet was crazy, but she wouldn't get out until we had the perfect photo!

( An amazing "Garden" of old trucks circa 1940-gorgeous with Victorian finery!)
  I am not sure what I would be doing now or if I would be doing art now if this sister hadn't kept pushing me and telling me to keep going!  So, I have to thank her a million times over and am always sending her my love still though I am back in the midwest.  

 We still send each other our art, letters, and keep in touch with phone calls.  She will always be my favourite model and muse!  I miss her and all the fun we had together! 

 Grow, Braid, Cut, Repeat...I still have this set of braids-there are quite a few!

  Miss You!  Love you! Ooh, I always loved that coat and I still have that cobalt blue scarf that I wove!