Vintage Blooms

Mom called a few days ago and said I want you to bring your camera over here and get a picture of "Grandma's flower". I knew immediately which plant she was referring to, because this particular plant has been around for a long time. It has seen quite a lot of family history. As close as we can determine it is over ninety years old--not a parent of this plant--this particular plant itself!

When my Pappaw Laws was a young boy his mother, Cordie Black Laws, babied this plant, coaxing it to produce blooms. Many years later when his father. Nathan Laws, died he brought his mother home to live with him and my Mammaw. When my great uncle Jesse moved Grandma Cordie from her little house on Straight Creek in Bell County, KY to my grandparents house in nearby Wallsend, this plant was carefully transported along with the few other things she chose to keep. After she died Mammaw also cared for the plant, often to be rewarded with a sheath of glorious blooms. When my grandmother died in the mid 70's, my mom, now 79 herself, received the plant and it was again moved, this time from southeastern Kentucky to the mountains of western North Carolina. Every so often it has gifted us with a bloom or two. This year it has been especially generous, producing eight buds that unfurled into this gorgeous display. We all get excited when it blooms...I just wish it could talk as well...what stories it could tell!

Father's Day #2--Daddy

    thirty seven years

    tagging along

    trying to keep up

    wanting to be just like him

    match my steps to his

    stretching my stride

    struggling to follow his lead

    mirroring his moves

    his likes his words his deeds

    he was my role model

    gone sixteen years

    still trying to walk

    in the paths he made

    always struggling

    to match my steps to his

Photo taken in 1955, the year my parents were married. Daddy has been gone sixteen years, his face is still as vivid in my memory as it was five minutes after he walked out the door on the way to work when I was a kid. He was a small man but cast a big shadow. I am still mindful of the lessons he taught, especially those learned by example during his eight year battle with leukemia. His dignity and grace during his illness, and his gratitude for anything we did to ease his suffering were humbling. A wonderful father and grandfather, a remarkable husband, a good neighbor, a friend in need and deed, both a sheep and a shepherd, a role model worthy of the title....

Fathers' Day #1

As Fathers' Day (it is plural in my book!) approaches I would like to honor some of the Dad's who are/have been special in my own life and in those I love. As I write, my father-in-law, Pappaw Jack to my children and just Pappaw to my grandchildren, toils alongside the wonderful son,dad, big brother,father-in-law,pappa he brought into the world. Jack has always been special to me; from day one he welcomed me, making me one of his own. After my own dad died he became even more of a treasure as I realized treasure can be lost. He is one of the most caring and giving men I have ever known, forever expending his abundant love and energy to those around him. One of his greatest pleasures in life is to help others. When he comes home to the mountains he usually brings a mental list of chores he want to help Harold accomplish before he returns to his less rural daily routine. Having grown up on the farm, this pruning of trees, repairing of outbuildings, vaccination of animals, refurbishing of equipment...are just fun to him, taking him back to past times when he made his life from the land. Today, by the sweat of their brows and the strength of their backs, Jack and Harold are building pasture fence, extending the pasture to the other side of the creek, not because we need more pasture, but because the other side of the creek needs to be groomed by the goats.
The image above is a digital collage containing images of Jack, Mamma and Pappa Williams (his parents), Grandma May Roberts (Mamma's mother), Uncle Weaver and Aunt Ruth (brother and sister to Jack). The background image is a closeup photo of rusty peeling paint of the fender on an old farm trailer he made from a pickup truck bed.

Completed Ten o'Clock Scholar + Story

Ten o'Clock Scholar has been finished for a while, but I have been so limited in time I have not had a chance to post the final image--or the story behind it. The young boys in the image are Willie Williams, aka Papa, my husband's paternal grandfather and his brother Milt. The photo was taken when Papa was around seven or eight. Somewhere around this age he left school and never returned. The story goes that the one room school he attended was divided into younger and older classrooms by a curtain. One day during class Papa, who was seated near the curtain, was stuck with a hat pin by an older boy on the other side of the curtain. When Papa yelled out he was punished for disturbing class while the culprit with the pin "got off scot-free". Papa told his parents what had happened and that he didn't want to go back to school--and so he didn't. Despite his lack of "schooling" he was an extremely intelligent man and frequently outwitted his "more educated" peers! Notice that he has a bruise on his forehead; this was the result of getting hit in the head with a rock thrown by one of his siblings while the family was hoeing corn.

The substrate for this piece is a couple of pages from an old reader published in 1899, and would likely have been in use about the time of the hat pin incident. The handwritten nursery rhymes feature Papa's name and are somewhat relevant to his personality. The hat pin, now that you know the story, has obvious connections. This image includes photo transfers, painting, and drawing. Media include ephemera, acrylic paint, pencil, gel pen, and photo transfer.

Photoshop Planning/Pondering

new image in the planning, pondering stage...old pages...old images...old story...more to follow

Latta House

This is the latest image from my grad school class. The substrate is some muslin fabric that I rust dyed. I began the image by doing solvent transfers of the crow and a photo of some bare tree tops. This phase of the image stood in my dining room for a couple of weeks trying to decide what it wanted to become. I downloaded a 1920 census document from my Ancestry.com account (the family featured are my husband's great grandparents; his grandmother is 11 months old at this time) and flipped it horizontally so it would read correctly when transferred. After printing I went to the photocopier and fiddled with the sizing and then did a solvent transfer of the copy. I love the name of the township--Tally Ho.
The house image is from a photo of one of the tenant farms (also in Granville Co) that my mother-in-law, daughter of the Annie in the census record, lived on when she was a child. At the time the photo was taken the house had been vacant for many years. The old oak tree was cropped in the original photo, so I reconstructed a top for it in Photoshop. I also eliminated some of the extraneous farm stuff around the house to simplify the image. This image was printed on my inkjet and transferred using the water method. After the transfers were done I again "lived with" the image for a couple of days mulling over where it wanted to go. I began to think about the similarities between roots and branches, both in real trees and in family trees (also explored in the Roots Cellar piece), and decided to manipulate the image to emphasize that connection. Acrylic paints, Pitt Pens, and gel pens were used to draw/paint into the trees, entwining the roots of the oak with the branches of the trees at the bottom and side of the piece and with the text of the document. The house at the top seemed too dominant making the piece feel out of balance so I used some transparency sheets to play around with drawn text on the right side of the image to give it better balance. Once I decided on the size, I drew the lettering on a sheet of paper and used the lightbox to transfer it onto the fabric, adding color with my Pitt Pens. Below are details of the house and the bottom right corner of the image.




The finished piece is 11 x 14 in. I stretched the fabric over a canvas panel and taped it to the back so I could move it around and have a stable surface to work on.
The siennas of the rust are complemented nicely by the touches of blue. While the piece is pretty complex I don't think it is too busy. I really like the linear qualities added by the branches, roots, and document. I am pretty well satisfied with this piece.