Telephone Tablet

Back in my This Too Shall Pass series, there was a phone tile, with an embedded dial peeking out from the flat screens of newer phones:

 Tablets show more information, and there are so many telephone images:

The phones....

,,,and phone booths, for private conversations or to quickly change into your superhero costume.

AT&T: American telephone and telegraph...back when people still sent telegraphs.

Take a close look at the dial on the bottom left. The number is OL4-6753. From the 1920s until the 1960s, telephone numbers contained an exchange name. The first two letters of the name were used - KLondike 3-7753 or MUrray Hill 4-8864 - which made them easier to remember.   When I was a kid there was a Marvin Gaye/Gladys Horton song, "Beechwood 4-5789" ...which will now be stuck in my head all day. Then came area codes and 10-digit numbers.

Anyhow, I took this  wealth of images and tried to combine them into a workable composition:

 

Added the word 'telephone' and painted in the dye....

This one is mounted on a stack of gray wool, like the Printing Tablet seen last week.

Now, in the past, you've seen several tablets which had to be printed and painted twice, when the colored image just didn't work. This time, I waited until I had sewn it before thinking "well, I don't know if this is exactly right"

...and I re-designed, printed and dye painted another version.

Which I haven't sewn because....hem..haw...um.....OK, the truth is, I don't like the first one (a crowded composition, just a clutter, and the colors are ..questionable (a brown phone? A brown flip-phone?)  and the second one has some really good features (using the yellow pages as the background, echoing the red color of the British phonebox with the reddish wall phone), but the composition is still too cluttered. It's just not singing, at least not enough for me to sew it.

 At some point, if I find myself with a shortage of ideas for tablets, maybe I'll go back and try a third design. Maybe this dissatisfaction is my inner artist telling me to stop plunging ahead with new work and STAY with one piece until I get it exactly right.

For now, the telephone is going to wait.  

But... Next week we get to the new tablets! Finally!

Meanwhile, email me at dianesavona@aol.com with whatever is on your mind...