Hardware Store = Art Gallery

Several months back, a revered old hardware store here in Utica, Doyle's Hardware, closed its doors forever. I was very sad. Doyle's was the perfect place to get all sorts of hardware, including old fashioned screws and parts for lamps that are otherwise hard to find. They originally had five stores throughout Utica, but as those had closed, they had consolidated all their stock into the huge, three story brick store down by the train station. So, the store had all sorts of old things with nice old prices on them. As they were getting ready to close their doors, prices, already low, got slashed. I picked up three of these old brushes for 30% off of $2.65! I picked them up just because I really liked how they looked, and because right off they struck me as having a certain sculptural quality. For a while, they were just piled up on a table in my living room. I really liked how the orange worked with my greenish blue walls. But I knew that I really wanted to hang them on those blue walls, so after I finally got around to painting my stairwell, I found just the right spot for them under the windows on my landing. By then I had already decided that I was going to paint my stair risers a color other than the off-white I use for all my trim and woodwork. So, I hit upon the idea of painting the risers the same orange. I took a brush to J-Kay, where Sam Rudolph (who has been incredibly helpful with many a paint color dilemma) mixed up a quart of paint in that very same orange. The color adds a bit of punch to a color scheme that I sometimes worry heads a little in a conservative direction. The morale of this little story is that you can find art in unexpected places!