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Text by Tony DiMartino •
Styled by Kathy Curotto
Karen Silver Bloom's Studio, tucked into the basement of her cozy home in
Westport, Connecticut, used to be the kids' playroom. "They had fun here,"
says Karen, a former professional illustrator. "Now, I get to have some
fun!"
And so do the people who own her whimsically detailed shadowboxes,
full of objects plucked from flea markets, antiques stores, and tag sales.
With gleeful abandon and artistic precision, she artfully arranges tiny
toys, game pieces, souvenir postcards, vacation memorabilia, and other curios
to tell a tale, sometimes adding watercolor embellishments or
pen-and-ink drawings to the mix. The party-in-a-box extends to the frames,
which are often crackle-finished, découpaged, adorned with toys, or backed
with fabric. "I see the boxes as three-dimensional illustrations," she
explains.
"Each one has a theme and tells a story."
She sees her home the
same way. "Everyone says that this place is just like one of my boxes, only
lifesize, "she says. It's true: both show a sense of humor and a fine eye
for color and proportion, and both brim with the vintage treasures that Karen
loves.
(a) Karen, amidst sunny fabrics and jars of cookie cutters and millinery
fruit, which she uses in her work. "I often put a recipe from an old
cookbook on the back of a kitchen-themed shadowbox, or even a piece of
vintage flour sack or dishtowel. You can't see it once it's hanging on the
wall, but the owner knows it's there--and so do I." (b) Karen's kitchen-themed boxes, featuring miniature appliances, are
her
most popular.
(c) "Old English pine is great when you're raising
kids--it's so banged up that another nick doesn't matter." Above
the sideboard, "Greetings From New York" features souvenir postcards and
baseball memorabilia over an old city map. Karen cut pictures of
skyscrapers from old postcards and mounted them for a 3-D effect. The
story spills over onto the crackled frame, adorned with a tin yellow
cab.
TOYS R MUSTS
"Everything I love eventually ends up in my boxes." Karen
shows off a flurry of snow globes inside a battered red cabinet lined
with sheet music (d). She found the wobbly chair in Maine. "No one
can sit in it but me." White shelves in the family room highlight,
top to bottom: gaily painted skittles (pins from an old bowling game);
a circus box with a handpainted background, "one of my earliest pieces
and absolutely not for sale"; bits and pieces from long-ago board games;
a pressed paper house from Germany tucked behind a tramp art
box.
Bloom where you're Planted page
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