glass cutting boards

A new image, "Morning Woodland" by Richard Murch, came out beautifully on this brushed glass cutting board or cheese board (dim. 7.5" x 11"). When you're not using it, hang it on your wall or prop it in a window to let the sun shine through claret.

Lear to Tile

Lear, sear, bear, beer, bier, tier, ties, hies, hiss, kiss, kist, kilt, tilt, tile. I invested 2.5 hours in the Trevor Nunn production of King Lear on PBS Wednesday night, and then another hour watching the later rebroadcast before I fell asleep. //I loved the ease with which Ian McKellen portrayed being nudged by his Fool to slip from his heart-bursting torment into soft laughter. Cordelia (Romola Garai) in scene one seemed to assume she and her fatal profession would be received through that same special door shared by Lear & Fool; hence her (to me) surprising chuckle as she walked straight into a storm. //I thought the shot of Edgar-Tom writhing almost naked on his back with limbs flexed like an infant was terrifyingly true to the play's evocation of "unaccommodated man." // The image of Lear (bottom) is a daguerrotype of Edwin Forrest in that role, attributed to Matthew Brady. (Courtesy of the Harvard Theater Collection). We carry a ceramic art tile of a Julia Margaret Cameron Lear albumin photograph (top)--among other Camerons.

Steven Palmer art

Dear valuable creatures

We visited the lovely U and G, and their ba-aad black cat, to view some of the jewelry that will soon be available in Magpie. Lapis lazuli, picture jasper, freshwater pearls, jade, carnelian, pyrite, diamond, gold, silver; earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings. I can't tell the full story (nor the full credentials of U and G) until the reveal is imminent, which should be soon. Meanwhile, Magpie is already full of lapidary and lustrous delights, so come by or "Come Buy" as the goblins sing in Christina Rossetti's poem, "Goblin Market." We want to see you walk in and hear you say:

This room is full of jewels as a mine,--
Dear valuable creatures, how ye shine!
Sometime to-day I must contrive a minute,
If Mercury propitiously incline,
To examine his scutoire, and see what's in it,
For of superfluous diamonds I as well may thin it.

Yes, if you come in quoting this joking piece of Keats, and get all six lines right, free 2" ceramic magnet?

Magpie shop hours, and a location glitch

Our hours are 11-6, Tuesday-Saturday. Wouldn't you know, our address, 108-110 Collegetown Court, Ithaca, NY 14850 pulls up zilch on Mapquest. Because? Because the street name is still on the books or in the databases as Dryden Court. Search on 108-110 Dryden Court, Ithaca, NY, and there we are. Not quite seamless, but there we are.

Yesterday, during the sad quiet of Cornell's Spring Break, we had a Welcome Day open house at Magpie. Only after did it occur to me that we'd in fact thrown a decent party--all thanks to the friends and artists who stopped by and hung out. Despite the prevalence of magpies, no decorations were stolen, only sold: ach, it happens. In the photo, l. to r., Frank Muller, Ursula Richards, Jean Callahan. In the background, off in their own worlds, Proust's Odette de Crecy recreated in paint by the amazing David Richardson of Laguna Beach and imprinted on tile, and a tile mural of Tamara de Lempicka's art deco classic Printemps. Spring!

Name Dropping, part 2

Of the Green Valley Artists group, Magpie has photography by Frank Muller and paintings by Ursula Richards and Ann Parker Bloom. And from Binghamton, Steven Palmer, founder of gagrags ("you gotta be shirtin' me") and wicked painter (acrylic, mixed media, expressionist, sometimes wild...see left, "Van Bleu"), Janet Bunnell (decoupage, Cute n Kinky collages, painted furniture).

Name Dropping part 1

Artists Magpie has on tile or in other media, or both: Amanda Hone ("Abstraction Art," bold colorful imaginative energetic witty acrylics, printed on tile. We will also carry some of her brilliant knitting patterns. Amanda lives in Wales), Richard Murch (of Cleveland, Ohio, works magic with photography and digital art), Gwen Marston (world-renowned quilt designer), Dan Bacich of Syracuse, NY, (autumn leaf paintings that appeal at several levels, including the metaphysical), Chris and Arnie Galin of Rome, NY (photography: flowers, lighthouses, and fantasy), Cornelia Yoder, Vestal, NY (fractal artist extraordinaire), Anne Vis from Amsterdam, the Netherlands (computer artist and designer: things you've never seen!), Paul McMillan of Enfield, NY, but Texan, (western and southwestern landscapes, night paintings, realism-surrealism, local wonders, in oils--and on tile), JD Logan, Massachusetts (American folk art painter, Quaker-influenced New England landscapes)

New Richard Murch tile

A new image by Richard Murch on a 6" x 8" ceramic tile. I needed this color.

Full Disclosure

We aren't the first people to settle on the name "Magpie" for an enterprise involving the collection and hawking of bright, shiny objects. But the Magpie itself has a black glamor, as this snippet from "Birds of Ill Omen" suggests.
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A possible moral: Embrace the danger. Next post, Magpie drops names, those of the working artists whose images adorn/grace/leap off/burn windows through the walls of the gallery shop.

Your destination

A glimpse of what lies in store. Magpie is closed today because it's Monday. So we are going out to procure signage, visibility from Dryden Road, off of which this Court lies.

Steven Palmer of Binghamton designed the logo you see in the window. Many of his marvelous canvases share the wall you see with a gicle of one of Paul McMillan's night paintings: Taughannock Falls at Night.

How to Find Magpie Gallery Shop

You are at the right place at the right time. When is this statement true? Let's immediately shrink the frame of reference way down, as we don't want to be discovered like an asteroid crater thousands of years from now. Magpie is in Ithaca, NY, in Collegetown. 108-110 Collegetown Court, forty paces up from the intersection, around the corner from Big Red Barbershop, across from the Palms bar. Magpie is open 11-6 Monday - Saturday.