Casa Voudou

Location, Location, Location

The Oiseaux Sisters

We have installed in our home a shrine of commitment to change. As in the improvised altars we have seen in Mexico, Thailand and Bali, all sorts of kitchen and work basket paraphernalia have been pressed into service. These objects of entreaty are variable and rearrange-able, but their encoded text is a constant refrain. We stitch and wind. We wind and stitch. We scratch, we stamp. we wax and print. As we embroider the little metal houses and wrap entreaties about our Broker Associates, we turn our worries into wishes and encode the mantras so well known to all of us engaged in the exhilarating task of changing abode: "Buy my house. Sell me yours".

Stitched and painted canvas house, wooden shelf, carved, painted, stitched, waxed, paper and metal houses and saint/brokers.

$3,500 plus shipping and handling.

You Will Walk On the Soil of Many Lands
Shoe Timeline

A True Story by the Oiseaux Sisters.

This piece combines things we love: shoes, yarn, maps, charms and time lines. It tells the story of our whereabouts for the last half century or so. We are sisters, separated at birth, one growing up amidst the sky blue waters of Minnesota, the other in the lush green countryside of Connecticut. You see here our two pairs of sensible ladies¹ walking shoes. The laces are timelines, color coded umbilical cords mapping the story of our journeys from birth to the present. We traveled our separate paths (at 2 º" per year) for forty years, accumulating astonishingly similar urgencies and intentions. At 90 inches, we came together, almost strangers, initially to build The Garden of Eden at Art Park in Lewiston, NY, and then to buy a joint studio in upstate, NY. Thereafter, we evolved a migratory lifestyle as the Oiseaux Sisters For the past 14 years (the last 29 ‡ inches of cord) we have traveled seasonally between northern and southern studios. As traveling companions and co-conspirators, we work at both ends of the road creating art and community about local history, domestic harmony, and the garden. Our sporadic research expeditions to Maine, Mexico, Asia and beyond, loom large in our memory. Hence the attachments and embellishments. The cord continues.

So Ladies! The moral of this story is choose your shoes carefully. Are they capable of large strides? Standing in market queues? Undeterred by dusty roads? Easily shed at temple thresholds? In the valise below there are colors and countries yet to be claimed. As you can see, our bags are always packedþ

Media: Cast paper shoes, cord- wrapped with thread floss and yarn, embellished with stamped brass text & found materials; painted wooden valise. $1400. plus postage