There is a perfect line, Madam, and it is not a simple one. I’ve seen Madeline draw it for the first time long ago. She sat at our hand-me-down kitchen table with a pencil and artist’s sketch-pad and drew it perfectly. It flowed into an image, a bit of curtain and window, a bit of table and chair, a bit of enameled porcelain and silver, and it came from memories long before as a child. It came from the impact of French New Orleans on a wrought iron veranda, the laughter of Acadians through the wall, as her aunt Rhetta tucked her in with a down-comforter and a kiss that tasted of crème brûlée and a baby coke.
She saw that line as she placed a setting, in the painting she studied while falling asleep, in the starched lace collar she steamed, and cups of hot tea served at the kitchen table in fine china. It was thought to have been first found on the sunlit pattern across white doilies, and rainbow sparks from leaded glass that danced like ballerinas on the gold-stucco walls of late afternoon. There, a cut crystal goblet holding white carnations and fern were reflected in mercury glass and manifested by crystallized childhood memories, magical atmospheres of reminiscent clarity, and it surrounds her like an indomitable aura to this very day.
Madeline reflects these effects, of lines she has drawn and manifested in her time. She has given it life, animation, …a tapestry woven deliberately, refined and developed as it matured.
Some consider these lines somewhat magical in nature, and stand in virtual awe of her handiwork. They glimpse her passion in obscure corners of her shop, LeMarche’, and take pause. It is a knot of polished burl, waxed to a luster and found in a garden of Provence grape vines, sunlit bumble bees, and painted porcelain fountains. It seeps into their soul like the cry of some forgotten song, or the whiff of fresh-baked bread, raw honey, and warm milk.
It is a place where pixies play in the midst of a Country French morning as they try to cross the line into the kingdom of men, and it is found deep in Madeline’s heart and mind. These elements, created by Country French artisans long before tungsten lighting, before electric drills or circular saws, where creations made by the hand of love, skill, patience, and hard work.
This quest, in the midst of lost antiques, some weathered and forgotten, some continually treasured yet well-hidden… Maddy brings them to light. She identifies them all by a singular recognition, an exacting line drawn in her life of both memory and dream.
