Tuesday, March 4, 2014 (1 of 2)

John Cynar and Jon Parlangeli worked at Sans Souci hanging art (indoors) in the near zero degree weather today! Clicking on photos enlarges them. 

As readers know, I try to answer all questions asked about Icelandic Sheepdogs, the care and feeding, breeding, raising puppies, training, etc. on my blog. I try to do that in a non-judgmental way and without casting aspersions on others.

This non-dog question came today, “Hello and WOW, it looks like the new place is really coming along. The ART is hung! I have a question about that. Do you try to plan it ahead of time, this would look good here, this best there or do you start hanging, then move it around?”

I did not hang the art. I took two friends up north to help me hang the art, but that didn’t happen. They hung the art and I, like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence, was forced to watch. Watching Jon and John work together was AMAZING. It would have taken me three or four weeks to do what they did in a day.

I have known Jon Parlangeli and his multi talented wife Tracy for decades, how many decades I’m not sure. Three? I have followed his evolution as an artist over many, many years very closely; I have many of his works. If you look closely at the photos Jon took as they were working, you can see many pieces he painted. I have perhaps the largest collection of Parlangelis in the world. (I should ask Jon and Tracy about that over wine once the house is done and I’m living up there.) If you look back through my blog, you will find photos of the pole barn that is hung with many early Parlangelis.

John Cynar has been an exhibitions curator for nonprofits like the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center in Birmingham and the Paint Creek Center for the Arts in Rochester. His own gallery, the Start Gallery, was in downtown Birmingham. He led a coalition of four galleries: - Detroit Artists Market, Detroit Contemporary, Paint Creek, and Meadow Brook Art Gallery and showed local contemporary art at all four spaces.

As an artist John has produced digital photographs, sculpture, collages, and multimedia art and has had recent showings at the Detroit Artists Market, the Scarab Club, Eastern Michigan University the Museum of New Art, the Emergence Theater, the Metropolis, the Masonic Temple, the Birmingham Community House, the District Arts Gallery, the Museum of New Art, the Henry Ford Estate, Detroit Contemporary, the Paint Creek Center for the Arts, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art. (Continued after the photos.)

So - - -  watching them work was interesting. John and Jon took time and looked at the art placed all around leaning against the walls, the kitchen cupboards, the range, fridge, dishwasher, the fireplace. It seemed like their minds, the minds of artists, were cataloging, comparing, contrasting what there was to work with. Then like two whirling dervishes, Jon and John started to work. The first wall turned out to be John's favorite one - can you guess which one that was? 

They did the cubby, the hearth-room, the bedroom, the hall, the laundry, the basement steps. The bathroom is not done. We still have pieces left: some will end up in the bathroom, some will be over the closets, some will go to the garage - yes, they will be hung in the garage; others will join works in the pole barn.

People have asked me how and where I've acquired my art. A lot of my art is second hand art that I've bought at the Royal Oak Farmers' Market which has produce on Fridays and Saturdays and a flea market every Sunday. I only buy what I really like and I pay about $20-40 on the pieces I pick up there. I've been going through the Farmers Market since junior high - it was on the way from my house to both junior and senior high schools and I could buy apples on the way to classes on days it was open.

I also have good friends and relatives who have produced a fair percentage of my art.

Some of my art I've had for 50 years or more. All of my art evokes memories for me. I love being surrounded by lovely memories.