new painting abandoned: lambertville high school

so, from our last adventure, here's my new painting.
Abandoned: Lambertville High School



see my last blog for more details and click the link above to see the listing in my etsy shop.
thanks for looking!
cheers!!!

the next adventure

yesterday was a pretty nice day. almost spring-like :)

i collected my husband and kid and we went for a ride out to lambertville, nj which is not too far from us and only over the bridge from new hope, pa. it's really lovely out that way, and they are both quaint little towns for shopping and gallery browsing.

however, i had a mission...a new adventure!

lambertville high school was erected in 1854. there was a fire there in 1926, which is rumored to have killed 150 students. i still have to find out how true that is...
there was another fire not sure when. there are different stories, but maybe sometime in the 70's. i'm also not sure when, exactly, it was abandoned.

it is featured in the book weird n.j..
there is a lot of talk of hauntings and creepy things, including some really cool chalkboard paintings (engravings?) these are from the weird n.j. link. i've read that they were spray painted on (why???). we didn't find them while we were there, unfortunately. maybe they are gone?








so, we went. the place seems to have gotten worse since what i had investigated online, and it did not seem safe enough to go inside anywhere...especially with my kid in tow (even though he is now bigger than me), i didn't want to risk it.
but it was a great time and it was fun looking around.
we took a lot of pics and some video.





afterward, we parked over in the cute little town of lambertville and decided to have a walk down by the canal. there is the deleware river that separates lambertville from new hope pa, and each town has a canal. mules used to pull barges through there...

i had been along the canal many times in new hope, but never in lambertville, and to my happy surprize, i looked up to see this!



i was so excited! i had to get over to the other side. but because my husband wouldn't dream of walking all the way back to cross over the regular bridge, we walked on to the old train bridge ahead. we were getting over there no matter what!


seeing that the train tracks were so overgrown from the other side, that bridge hasn't been used for a gazillion years!!!! it was sooo scary walking over it. some of the planks were missing and little scraps of wood that someone nailed down were all we had to walk on...that, or the rails themselves, but i would have surely fallen.

i squeezed the bejeezus out of my husband's poor hand while my son skipped over the thing without a fear in him.

i made it!!!

and we investigated the old train.

this was the side we could see from the other side of the canal...

then we went around...

it was all colourful and bright!

there was absolutely nothing inside except for a few empty paint cans and paint splattered on the walls like some bad 80's t-shirt. jackson pollack style...





what a great day!
i wonder what's next!?!

adventures of a cellar dwellar....

so!
i have found a new interest and something to do that doesn't involve me always being in the basement! about time for me! haha...

a few weeks back, a friend and i were discussing old abandoned places...i think stemming from my train paintings and some old photos i had taken from eastern state penitentiary back in the early 90's.





he told me about a place called pennhurst that sounded like a pretty cool place to check out.
that started it all...



pennhurst has got to have over 20 buildings grouped together...all abandoned since 1987. it was originally made a school and hospital for the "feeble minded and epileptic" it was built in 1908. it gradually gained more and more patients, so that it was overcrowded, and understaffed...many problems resulted from that, which caused it to be closed down in 1987 for neglect and abuse of patients. it is privately owned and you're not supposed to be there at all, but we decided to risk a few photos. i'm glad i did. it was a great experience. since then, i have read so much about the place from el peecho's link above, and in writing to him, he gave me permission to use some documents he had on his website in a painting that i did...


the listing is here...it is in my new shop:
Abandoned: Pennhurst


now, i have been looking into other places to discover and make new art from.
my feeling is that i'm having the experience of being at the place, learning history about the place, and having some connection to it...making the paintings are like keeping a piece of something that may soon be gone with out a trace...

...but i was there....

momentum

some artist friend once told me "momentum is everything". i think she has a point there.

i'm trying to keep up my momentum, but quickly running out of supplies

i have some new things to show you though!!!

muscles of the face



this was inspired by both duchenne's photographs and the mutter museum in philadelphia.

also new is the counting of the crows


i love the little counting thing...i have to learn me the magpie one too!
was just experimenting with stuff in this one

and finally, himself i had been working on this here and there for a while now. thought it was about time i finished it!

these are all listed in my new etsy shop http://SusanMoloney.etsy.com
i hope you like!
cheers!
xo