Bikes of Philly Photo Contest

Leave a comment under your favorite bike photo on my flickr site and get entered for a chance to win a free bike photo!  

Happy Garden Cards to Die For

I found a set of these cards in a high school classroom I was visiting and had to have them, so I searched Etsy, only finding partial sets until I spotted this one at Bright Wall Studios.  These awesome retro cards has plants and tips on growing them but the surprise is all of the gardening advice from canning, pickling, making terrariums, designing medicinal herb beds and Ready Made-style building projects from outdoor tables, benches, window boxes and kids garden projects. The indoor gardens section is a trip back in time to when folks filled their houses with plants and had stands with grow lights and incorporated plants into their interior designs. It's amazing how relevant the whole set is and how much more plant saturated people's lives were back in the day. I'm in OCD Garden heaven.

Philly Bikes, Reading Terminal Market

I'm going to start posting my newest Bikes of Philly photographs today and throughout the week. I'm leading up to my bike photo show at Fairmount Bicycles on Sunday April 17th from 2-6 pm, for the Arts Crawl in Fairmount. They are at 2014 Fairmount Ave. I'm also showing across the street at Wellpoint Oriental Medicine!

I decided to offer a free print if one of these bikes belongs to you! So far only one person contacted me about their Bike Love bicycles in Northern Liberties.

Check them out and tell me what you think. http://www.etsy.com/shop/allisonostertag

Interview With Collage Artist of Living Feral

Here's my interview with Tracy, the fantastic Vancouver, BC artist behind Living Feral:, the etsy shop where she sells her work.

1) Your images look like they come from old magazines. Do you have a favorite source? Where do you find them?

Yes, I use pieces I cut from vintage magazines, and occasionally books. I prefer material from the 60s and 70s (nothing more recent) because I like the imagery and colors and print quality from that period. I usually find them scouting around thrift stores (one of my favorite activities). I use pretty much anything I can get my hands on, as it’s getting harder to find older materials - particularly magazines, since so many people throw them out.


2) Your titles are fantastic! How do you come up with them?

Thanks! I wish I had a magic formula, because it sometimes takes me longer to come up with the title than the collage (and I work pretty slowly anyway). Then I sit with the piece and play with word combinations until I find the one that makes the most sense to me. Other times though, I start with a word or phrase – a thought I’m having about something, or a fragment of text that’s stuck with me for years – and that will inform the title. Often I’ll work without any set ideas, and the title will come in a flash. My collage “alice and the rabbit – the later years” was like that. I really wanted to use the image of the woman, and the rabbit worked its way into the composition, and then the title just popped.

3)How long have you been making collages? Do you create in other mediums or styles?

I started making the collages again this past spring, though I’ve made them on and off over the years. For a while I was making little books of collages, and I’d like to do that again. I also currently work with photography and drawing, I really like to sew, and I occasionally paint. In the past I’ve enjoyed etching, and I often incorporated collage techniques into that work.

4) I'm really drawn to your collages, especially the following images: "Farewells are Difficult", "She Addressed Herself to the Dark Hearts...", "For Many Years She Fished..." and "Alice and the Rabbit". My grandmom, Alice looked alot like the woman in "Alice"!

I think it’s a lovely bit of serendipity about your grandmom and the woman in “Alice.” I hope she retained a sense of adventure in her later years!


5)Your work recollects retro sci fi book covers (to me). Are you a fan of sci fi or the art covers?

That’s so interesting! Now that you say it I can really see the connection - especially with the sense of the human in the familiar/yet unfamiliar landscape. I’ve always been interested in science, and my dad’s always been a big science fiction fan, so that’s probably where it comes from.

Sweetie's Pie Diner

I can't explain how excited I was to see the words "pie diner" decorating the door of a building being renovated at 19th and Spring Garden streets and they finally opened a couple of weeks ago. The place lives up to the name, they not only are a diner that specializes in pie, but local sourced gourmet pie with the most unusual and delightful combinations. I got a day old sample of an apple cake that was fabulous, then came back later that day with coworkers to taste a lemon pie. They also had plum, chocolate, pumpkin, more kinds of pie than I could remember. It was a memorable experience.

What I also love is that they have items like beet salad, savory pies for lunch, weekend brunch and get their supplies from local farms. It's a pie diner done right and the morning crew is really sweet. I stopped in again last week for coffee and tried a ginger scone. I think this might become a regular stop for me.

Oh, and the prices are so reasonable in comparison to other neighborhood coffee places! $2.25 for a slice of pie!