From Tiny Acorns........

....grow pieces of artwork. I wish I had taken photos as this piece progressed, but I was working on several things at once (as usual!) and was just flat out too lazy to stop and mess with the camera.

Bad me. I'll take my licks. I am glad I took the shot when I laid the leaves out on the canvas, which if I recall right is about 4" x 8" and a deep gallery wrap. Coats and coats of gesso for texture, of course.

It's sort of fun seeing the before with no color and then the after, with things slightly changed and other elements added. I *think* if you click the photos they should enlarge enough for you to see details....there are some fine elements that don't show too well. I did the leaves the same as the New Orleans piece and had one heck of a time getting that stem to gel down. The cap of the acorn is actually gel medium, acrylic color and Budgie Grit! None of the acorns I collected still had their caps. Necessity is the mother of invention!  ;-) Or maybe it's mess-making.....

A side view, to show some of the texture and paint detailing.....it is also nice because it shows the depth of the pieces on the front.

And on top, from Ces's own words about the set of Oak Awards; "The Quercus Society Of Blogworld". (it's a very nice group to be in!)

And filling the back cavity, a remembrance of one of the oaks who planted many acorns....the rich soil tended with two special vials, Hope and Love. The cap of this acorn is gold German glass glitter.

This was nearly impossible to photograph due to the use of interference paints, which as far as I can tell, throw off the auto-focus. There was a slight glaze of shimmer on the whole inside of the cavity. I wish it showed here. Well, some things you just have to hold in your hands and look at......

Currently, this resides at Ces's house.

Pax....

"Liberty Prevails"

Last evening was the reception for the "America" show at the Honeywell Center in Wabash, Indiana. While I have had this piece for some time, I asked the gallery director if there would be any issue with it being submitted to the show. She was fine with it as it had not hung there before, and it garnered me an Honorable Mention, and was hung directly behind the speakers podium, so yes, there is a microphone kind of visible in the photo!
By the time you are reading this, I will either be on my way to the Imagine Center or still sitting in a dither with coffee, hoping I can hot-foot it to the Imagine Center in time for my appointment!
Thanks to everyone for all the support yesterday. I'm posting this because it was too late when I got in to work, and I was too tired to boot.
You get a bonus post.
Is your day not MADE????? LOL!!!!
I am not sure if the quote on the top of the piece is readable when clicked; worse yet, I am too lazy to go get the quilt to post it here, but basically it thumbs it's nose at terrorism because in every culture blood has been shed in awful manners for liberty, and though Sept. 11th was heinous, we are still here.
We are still a country.
We still love and grieve and have our lives and go about our business and realize even more so now that liberty is a precious and valuable thing; not limited to man made structures but limited to what we allow our hearts and minds to accept and pursue.
Accept love and diversity, wisdom and pondering of such, and pursue the truth.
Always.

Pax.

Corralling *The Little Pirate* (or why mothers turn grey)

(Elinor Frances Stewart Huskey July 31, 1923- August 30, 1990)

Yes, that is me with my poor mother hanging on for dear life. We were on board the U.S.S. Patch, headed for our station in Germany in the mid-sixties. And why is she holding so tightly to that Little Pirate??? Because I had a tendency to run as fast as my fat little legs could go and jump! I had this thing about water (still do, though I swim atrociously!) and if someone didn't nearly have me on a leash, I'd be in it.
And I couldn't swim.
No fear. Or maybe it was no brains. ;-)
Mother spent her life trying to reel me in, all the while I was pulling hard, trying to reel myself out. I think the expression says it all......no smile, no cooperating, no giving in, just pure determination. No wonder she wanted me to join a convent, to keep me out of trouble! And seriously, I considered it for a good while, but it was that *unquestioning obedience* part that steered me away.
I learned a lot from her; cooking, embroidery, we had a few vain attempts at knitting until I taught myself. I remember wash day with the laundry baskets lined with plastic from the cleaners, holding the starched, damp and rolled clothing, awaiting the iron. Everything was so fresh afterwards!
I managed to ruin many dresses with bouquets of dandelions for mother; the milk from the stems leaving a trail of brown dots across the cotton........mom would patiently embroider little Lazy-Daisies on each stain, with French Knots in the middle, thus making the dress fit to wear again.
I thought it was tres cool.......it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized she did this because we did not have the money to buy new clothing at the rate I buzzed through my wardrobe. In fact, I was well protected from the fact that due to monthly military pay, at the end of each month, my folks were counting pennies to make it to the next paycheck.
While I was highly encouraged in art, dance and music by mom, I was crushed and disillusioned when, my senior high school year, ready for college and planning on an art degree, I discovered that it was not happening. My god-parents controlled my college fund and they would only agree to what they chose for me to do. Me? An anchor person on some local news broadcast? Give me a break!!!! (or just take a look at that face in the picture....says it all....)
And so, that was the end of a lot of dreams and hopes and the beginning of a tremendous amount of really bad behaviour and being a rebellious little stink in general.
Maybe that is why there is only one photo with this post---because those were still the happy years, without my aunt and uncle involved in our lives, and mom and I were good friends. Maybe it is normal for a daughter to revolt against her mother at some point, to try and leave the nest. Maybe I just like this sweet memory, and the pic really expresses my disposition du jour, or even now. Too determined, too inflexible. Certain of where I am going despite warning.
No matter...........rest peacefully mother.
I turned out okay...............more or less.

Pax.

My Father; Requiescat In Pace

Coy A. Huskey
January 10, 1921-August 13, 1990

I am posting the day before the anniversary of my fathers death. He passed August 13 of 1990, after a long illness of multiple causes. I was the one who had to make the decision to take him off life support, then tell my mother, home with cancer, that he was gone. I lost her 17 days later. Having no brothers or sisters, the time was overwhelming, and to this day I am not totally healed. I'm as good as I get. I think there are some things from which you never totally recover.
I do not remember him young, nor did I have photos of him from this time period for most of our life together. One of my Aunts was kind enough to send me an assortment of pictures of him as a youth, and a young man.

Had he been given the opportunity to attend university, I am sure he would have excelled. He was exceptionally sharp--brilliant, both with intelligence and an utterly dry, acerbic wit. (from whence mine comes!) There was nothing he could not fix, figure out, make, or make light of! Life was a never ending cornucopia of things to learn.

But it was the '40's, and the nation went to war, and he was called, serving his time in the Pacific Theater--New Guinea and Australia. What he saw, what he experienced, never left him but left permanent scars. He would speak of little of it later in life and though I wondered and would have liked to have shared the knowledge of the real facts of the time, I respected his choice to forget.

And like most service men of the era, he came home, was reassigned to a different station (Fort Knox, the Armored School as an Instructor), met a girl and married. Thus began the part of his life I knew.

A photo of my parents, young, happy....I still have the clock he is holding that was a gift from her. It had in it a bayberry candle. We would only light it during the holidays. The clock was an antique and he frequently had it apart, refurbishing all the tiny pieces, some so small he used a magnifying glass and tweezers to handle them.

Father couldn't ski at all, but he was a complete ham as is his progeny.....

.....this is a much more realistic shot of the day in the Alps, when they were stationed in Vicenza, Italy, where I was born.
Looking back at these photos in bittersweet tears, I realize how very short life is, captured in a few pieces of celluloid, tattered paper and emulsion, fading away and most of what you know is in your heart. You slowly allow the bad to pass and what is left is the stellar portions of the people you loved the most.

May you always have someone you love to walk with, to talk with, to make the most of your days with.
I bid you peace.
I bid you joy.
And a long and loving life.
May it be so.