Captain’s Letter | 002

What belongs together: pop art & the past.

My great grandmother’s end table is in my dining room. It’s small, it wobbles a little/lot, and it once held a rotary phone. Now, depending on the day, it it holds a resin-slicked pop art piece I made last season, a coffee maker because the kitchen got a little crowded, or even a stack of materials for nautical flags in acid pink and bay blue I want to make!

That table doesn’t mind. In fact, I think it likes the company.

I live in a house built in 1706. The floorboards talk back when you walk across them. There are nails in the walls from art rotated in and out for over 300 years. And yet every time I hang something new, especially something bold and graphic, it feels like I’m continuing the conversation, not disrupting it.

That’s the thing no one tells you about pop art: it doesn’t need a white cube gallery or minimalist loft. It thrives in spaces that have lived a little. It belongs next to your father’s second-grade class photo and your mother’s vintage postcards. It doesn’t replace the past, it refreshes it.

My work is full of color, yes, and plenty of cheek. But it’s also made with an eye toward history. Yours, mine, our coastal histories. Pop art in a home like this one isn’t rebellion, it’s rhythm. It’s how we tell stories across generations, one image at a time. At one time a camera was pretty shocking new technology, as were new colors, new design movements, really new anything.

So if you’ve ever wondered whether something that bright or that bold could live alongside your grandmother’s oil painting or that tiny sailboat trophy your mother-in-law gave you when she was cleaning out your husband’s stuff she saved, the answer is yes. Not only can it live there, it just might make everything else sing a little louder.

Captain’s Orders:

Mix the old and the new this week.

Rehang a wall. Restyle a shelf. Let your history and your humor share space. Snap a photo if you do, I’d love to see how you live with it. Be sure to tag me on instagram @ashley_lippincott so I can see it!