Category Archives: Arts and Culture

What Draws Collectors to Authentic European License Plates

a wall with vintage license plates from different states
Photo by Tuğçe Açıkyürek on Pexels.com

Authentic European license plates attract collectors because each one combines place, time, and public design in a compact object. A plate identifies a country through its colors, lettering, symbols, and registration format, while its wear records years of use.

Collectors also value the research behind a credible piece, including its origin and production details. Those traits turn a small metal sign into a focused historical subject with a clear purpose and documented provenance.

Country Identity in a Compact Format

Collectors often organize plates by country because lettering, color bands, emblems, and registration formats provide clear comparison points. The method also makes gaps easier to spot and keeps purchases tied to a defined theme.
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Creative Remembrances: Meaningful Keepsakes for Honoring Loved Ones

hanging brass bellsImage Credit Unsplash

Objects can carry memories in ways that photographs and stories sometimes can’t. A familiar recipe card, a handwritten note or a small item tied to a shared interest may bring someone’s personality back into focus for a moment. A thoughtful keepsake gives those memories a physical home and can offer comfort long after the first rush of condolences has passed.

The most meaningful remembrance doesn’t need to be expensive or elaborate. It needs a clear connection to the person being honored and enough care in its design to feel personal.
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auruBOROS – Urban Memory and Collective Dream on The High Line

auruboros installation on the high line photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

It’s not easy keeping track of all the pop-ups and limited- time-only happenings the NYC art scene, but when your timing is right, the payoff is excellent. For just ten days in September (the 10th through 20th), something very shiny and decidedly surreal took up residence on NYC’s High Line. auruBOROS — Urban Memory and Collective Dream, a monumental inflatable sculpture commissioned by Bulgari, twisted its way across a section of  the elevated park directly under The Standard hotel, turning an already visually interesting stretch of Manhattan into something that felt otherworldly.

auruboros installation coil detail 1 photo by gail worley

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Modern Art Monday Presents: Cecily Brown, Hangover Square

hangover square by cecily brown photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Rich purples lend lushness to this overstuffed interior, whose piles of clothing and jumble of furnishings suggest the morning after a raucous night of mayhem. The painting’s title, Hangover Square (2005), is a pun on London’s upscale green Hanover Square, one that artist Cecily Brown gladly borrowed from a 1941 novel. With its unabashed clutter, the disarrayed room foreshadows Brown’s return to painting crowded interiors 15 years later, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

 

A Wedding Cake You Could Take Home: Claes Oldenburg’s Wedding Souvenir

claes oldenburg wedding souvenir photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

I’ve seen some pretty unusual works of art in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this: an entire wedding cake made out of pieces of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture.

I spotted this wonderful object while on a tour of  the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Beverly Hills, and admit it does look like an elaborate, slightly lumpy white wedding cake. Look closer though, and you can see the obvious seams. This isn’t one sculpture carved to look like a cake — it is a cake assembled from individual slices of one of Oldenburg’s most delightfully unconventional works, Wedding Souvenir, created in 1966.

And yes, there is an actual wedding story behind it.
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