My Old Friend (Florence Arnold)

This weird piece of modern art has a lot of sentimental value for me (I'm a very unsentimental person). It belonged to my grandparents, who gave it to my mom. I can remember falling asleep on the couch, staring at it, when I was younger than kindergarten-age. My mom gave it to me when I was fifteen and moving out of her house, and it's been everywhere from my college dorm room to the apartment I share now with my partner. It fell down in the Northridge, California earthquake in 1994 (I lived in Northridge at the time), the glass shattered, ripping part of the paper, and it was the one thing I carried out of that apartment when the fire department and cops escorted the residents in for ten minutes - we had ten minutes to salvage any valuables or documents!

The artist's name is Florence Arnold. Her style is called hard edge, or California hard-edge. I have two other lithographs and a sculpture also made by her. My grandpa and she were friends, so there's a lot of her artwork floating around the homes of my aunts and uncles, but I don't think anyone actually likes the art but me. They should give it all to me! I love mid-century modern! I love Florence Arnold's work, and I love this piece especially. My mom and I irreverently call it "the toilet bowl" because that's what I said it looked like when I was just a wee brat.


See it in context.
See the other two pieces.