Westbeth Flea Market
Surprising Finds

Westbeth Flea Market-to-me market;
Surprising ‘finds’ while hunting for bargains
November 30, 2021
By Jaimee Kosanke

“….I moved the hangers left to right, left to right. Left to…oh! A short-sleeved, pink satin, jeweled button-down, with palm trees on the pocket, reared its perfectly ugly self. She was $3 and the right blend of my past and present. She looked comfortable, slightly never-in-style, half ready-to-wear, half ready-for-bed. This Daytona-retirement-party-piece was the art I had been looking for. I internalized my “so cute” and “I love it.” Sold.

On my way out, I spotted something else.

A painting on white canvas. There were two suspicious men in suits, holding ropes and dancing on a tree branch like a highwire. Two happy squirrels lived beneath. It felt undone. As if the artist was still working something out. There were two worlds meshing and a facade of normalcy. It felt current to me.

The man working the booth told me the artist, Edith Isaac-Rose, had titled it “Springtime” and had previously lived in Westbeth. Isaac-Rose was known for expressing her politics through her art, most popular for her “Daily Rage” series, which drew “inspiration from the daily newspaper…that depicted our nation’s corrupt upper class and its victims.”

Read what happens next in the The Village Sun