Star-spangled shorts

A short tale of star-spangled shorts, a painting deconstructed, and self reunion.

The star-spangled shorts

One day I was flipping through a photo album from the summer of '91 and one of the things that stood out to me were these star-spangled shorts that seemed to have been a staple in my wardrobe.   Mismatched capriciously with a variety of button down shirts, they appear in countless photos.

My best friend and I got these shorts together the last summer we spent together before I moved to the USA from Poland, and we loved them.  She was able to come visit me that year and hand in hand we took our fashion statement to the streets of Boonton, NJ, Philadelphia and later Disney World.

A painting deconstructed

In the photo I’m hanging from bars at a playground, in the painting only my lower self is rendered, keeping the focus on the shorts, the garment that marked the biggest even of my life up to that point.  My older upper self sits in the background each eye with two pupils. Looking to the past and the future, perhaps.  To the left rests Nell, my childhood Newfoundland, the love of my life. All this drama  atop a blue linen tablecloth embroidered for my mother by one of my favorite aunts, it’s older than I am.

Self reunion

I did not preconceive this painting, it came together intuitively over a period of few weeks, and it was only when I dug deeper for the purpose of this post that I realized that these pieces of me hold my story and my past.  Memories reunited in a painting, two half selves that through art, found a way to become one again.

"Those shorts"