Style Imitating Art: “Taking in the Laundry” by Grandma Moses

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Terri of Meadow Tree Style, and Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as presenter, selects an inspiration image that they will each post on their blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfits to the presenter by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the presenter will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join either! In fact, you don’t even have to join but you can still use the art to inspire an outfit just for the sake of trying something different. If you want to share your inspired outfit, we invite you do so on Instagram or any other social media platform that you prefer. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Terri, and Shelbee or use #TeamLOTSStyle and #StyleImitatingArt so the hosts know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the SIA challenge next week!

This Week’s Presenter

The inspiration artwork was chosen by me because hanging laundry is my favorite household chore!

The Artwork

“Taking in the Laundry” by Grandma Moses

About the Artist: Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson Moses was a self taught American folk artist born in Greenwich, New York, on September 7, 1860. She was the third of ten children born to Margaret Shanahan Robertson and Russell King Robertson. Her father was a farmer and ran a flax mill which allowed Anna to briefly attend a one-room schoolhouse, which is now the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont, home of the largest collection of Grandma Moses’s works.

Anna took art lessons as a young child which inspired her passion for painting. During her youth, she used lemon and grape juice to produce the colors for her “landscapes” and also incorporated ground ocher, grass, flour paste, slacked lime, and sawdust into her juvenile works. When she was 12 years old, she left home to work for a wealthy neighboring family. For the next 15 years, she performed various farm and household chores for prosperous families in her area. One family who employed Anna, the Whitesides, noticed her interest in their Currier and Ives prints and gifted her chalks and wax crayons.

At the age of 27, Anna met Thomas Salmon Moses, a “hired man” on the farm where she was employed. After they were married, the Moses family moved to Staunton, Virginia, where they would live for the next 20 years working on a total of 5 different farms. To supplement the family income, Anna purchased a cow with her savings and then made and sold churned butter and potato chips.

In January 1901, the couple purchased their own farm near Verona, Virginia, called Mount Airy. They lived in this first home until September 1902 and eventually moved to Eagle Bridge, New York, in 1905. Anna and Thomas had ten children together but only five survived infancy. In 1927, at the age of 67, Thomas Moses died from a heart attack, leaving Anna a widow at the age of 60. Her son Forrest stepped in to help with the farm until Anna retired in 1936 and moved in with one of her daughters. She never again married.

Anna’s creativity blossomed early and continued into her young married life where she used various decorative arts, or hobby arts, in her home decor. In fact, these hobby arts, such as embroidery and quilting, were her preferred creative mediums until she developed severe arthritis at the age of 76. Her sister Celestia suggested painting as a creative outlet that would be less painful for her hands. This gentle prompting launched Anna’s painting career in her late 70s at which point she became known as “Mother Moses”. The press later nicknamed her “Grandma Moses” which stuck for the next quarter of a century until her death on December 13, 1961, at the age of 101. During her years as a painter, she created over 1,500 works.

Grandma Moses has been awarded various honors including the Women’s National Press Club Award from President Harry S. Truman in 1949. And in 1960, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller declared her 100th birthday “Grandma Moses Day.”

In her autobiography, My Life’s History, published in 1952, Grandma Moses wrote,

“I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.”

About the Art: “Taking in the Laundry”

Taking in the Laundry is a 1951 oil painting on wood that measures 43.2 x 55.2 cm (17 x 21.6 in). It is currently part of an unknown private collection. The work is done in her trademark primitive style illustrating a traditional scene from rural New York life. She shows us two neighboring farm houses on laundry day. You can see the wind blowing the laundry and creating a rustic feeling of nostalgia that makes me yearn for simpler times.

I cannot find any other information about this painting, probably because it is in someone’s private collection. But I love this painting nonetheless! And I do love laundry day.

References/Resource:

• Grandma Moses: Wikipedia
• Taking in the Laundry: Wikiart
• Bennington Museum: Wikipedia
• Bennington Museum
• Folk Art: Wikipedia

About My Outfit

I am so excited to share about my outfit today! Not only did I forget about this amazingly cute tie dye dress that I purchased last year and never wore but I made a really super special ruana/wrap to wear with my newly rediscovered dress. And since the wrap very much resembles sheets blowing in the wind on laundry day, it was the perfect thing to showcase for this Style Imitating Art challenge.

The blue tie dye of the dress makes me think of partly cloudy skies, the best weather for laundry day, in my opinion. When it is too sunny, I need to wear a brimmed hat to hang the laundry or else I risk sun blindness. So I wore a brimmed hat with this outfit for that reason and because y’all know how I love my hats!

But let me waste no more time talking about the things you can clearly just see in the photos. I want to tell you about my wrap. It is really special to me. Many, many years ago, in the late 1990s, one of my dear college roommates, Meg, joined the Peace Corps and headed off to Tanzania for the next few years. She sent me these two separate cotton sarongs with Swahili sayings on them.

I loved these pieces from the moment I received them but I never really wore them because I don’t really wear sarongs and they are an inadequate length to wear as scarves. But I always kept them because they were special to me.

They became even more special to me in 2013 when Meg tragically died in a paragliding accident in Colorado. While we had grown apart in our adult years, we were still close enough that her death effected me more profoundly than I anticipated, and I continue to miss her beautiful presence in this world. She was one of the really, really good ones.

When I got my new sewing machine a few weeks ago and started sewing things together, I figured I could turn my unworn sentimental sarongs into something that I would actually wear and love. And so I stitched the two large pieces of fabric together in the back and then I sewed in some arm holes and wrapped myself up in a giant Meg hug.

I love my new “Meg” wrap so much for so many reasons! I can feel her spirit around me when I put it on and it brings me so much joy. And joy is the very thing I chase every day when I get dressed…as we all should…because life can be so very short sometimes.

Meg had translated these Swahili sayings for me when she sent me the sarongs, but I cannot remember what they meant. So I used Google translate and this is what I got…

So how did I do with this challenge? Have you created an outfit inspired by laundry day? If you want to join us and be featured in my gallery post on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, please send your photos to me at shelbeeontheedge@gmail.com by Tuesday, June 6, 2023, at 10:00 p.m. EST and then check back for the group gallery of art inspired looks. In the meantime, be sure to check out Salazar’s interpretation as well as Terri’s take on it.

Happy styling! 

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee

Linking up with these Fabulous Link Parties.

Outfit Details: Dress and Belt-Torrid / Boots-Durango / Necklace-Michal Golan / Earrings-Thrifted / Hat-Wona Trading / Meg Wrap-Upcycled by me from two sarongs