quirky from way back…
When I was growing up, other kids wanted to be ballerinas, actors, astronauts, firefighters, doctors and the like. Not me. I wanted to be an artist. I just loved to make things. Pens & pencils, paper & scissors, cloth & thread— it was all good. Just give me some materials and let me go at it! And go at it I did, trying out all manner of media throughout my life, but it was in a college foundry class that I found my true love. Up to my elbows in clay, trying to coax from it a form to be cast in bronze, I was transported to my grandmother’s backyard making mudpies in the sticky Mississippi summer. I was hooked.
Actually it was that same grandmother who inspired my latest line of work. Being a true Southern lady, she was at once kind, demure, charming, hilarious… and she cussed like a sailor. “Well shit” was one of her favorite sayings, muttered just under her breath when she burned the cornbread, aphids got her tomato plants, or the slot machine she so carefully scouted out wasn’t hitting at the riverboat casino. I try to carry with me that same sense of humor and kindness spiked with a hefty dose of her Southern spunk & sass. It always helps me through those “well shit” moments. Hopefully my work will do the same for you…