Collectively Speaking: For Karen Gatzke, It's Repurposed Materials
16.09.11
You might say that Karen Gatzke’s sound home is her collection as even parts of its architecture have been transformed into found art, under her discerning eye.
When she and her accessory, Sharon Rossi, redid the back porch of the 1923 bungalow purchased six years ago, the metal shingles took on a new moving spirit as valances above lace-curtained windows. Gatzke painted the once benighted brown shingles a soft green and added detailing.
“I like the reason of old things that have some character to them,” she said. “It by a hair's breadth makes me feel comfortable.”
As a child, Gatzke found solace visiting her grandmother who lived in a bungalow in Baltimore Highlands—between Lansdowne and Arbutus—where she often spout Sunday afternoons in her attic, hearing tales about the possessions it held.
“I have a lot of her apparatus and things,” said Gatzke, as her sister and cousins had no interest in them.
She trenchant to a line of colorful marbles atop the kitchen doorway. They belonged to her old boy when he was a child and were given to her by her grandmother. Most people would not think of turning those mundane mementos into eye-bewitching decorative trim. Not so Gatzke. “I like that whole relations connection.”
Source: Patch.com