2012 calendar

A calendar....last moment, what else is new! 
Now if I can just get some printed.

Perfecto

...boxing day bargain...
my partner in all things finds a rode bike
and dreams of the tour begin to bubble in his fevered brain. 

Lingueforma pacifica

Trollinglures lingueforma pacifica

the Trollinglure in bloom

PEACE...and a good book

our  mailbox offers up a card or two this time of year...from stalwart friends and family members. Thank you...and while we have never really been big on sending cards for the holidays we do think of you and wish you the best...so here's to your very great health, a wealth of friends and family, a fever of creative curiosity for the new year...the stamina to pursue your interests and time to curl up with a good book this winter. May your firewood all be dry, your socks warm and your main squeeze close at hand. 

Owls between us...owls around us

 owls hid in the forest...middle of the day

nebulosus, nebulosa, nebulosum

TAKE ME TO THE GALLERY of JUNKYARD OWLS

Frost...lost and found

A wreath from the waste land

An annual tradition...
and wishes for
Peace in the Hood
(for our own very little hood and for the great big hood we all share)

Island Gallery show & Farmers Market

In the Ringside market


also....
FARMERS & ARTISANS MARKET
SATURDAY DECEMBER 17 th
11 am - 2 pm
Community Hall

We present a brief exhibit of lilliputian offerings
  to kick off the holidays.
Small is Beautiful. 

Where did it go? Rory and Boon

Now that the Christmas faire is over I have had some time ... so here is a piece for Rory and Boon....among others.
Things I have found (and put in here)...at the Free Store:

I found our own green door, a doll or two, René Discard...the scarecrow, kids gumboots, lots of coloured pencils, pressed glass salt cellar, an enormous teddy bear, figurine, cowboy boots, parasol, remote control, electric hot plate, one red hightop, a tennis ball and a beaded velvet bag.
One doll...central or south american, a water bottle, garden hose, a mask in grass, oven dial, bike wheel, bike seat, Hoover logo, salt shaker, bald eagle, two bears, some bikes in snow, water tank paint, a typewriter keyboard, flower pots, bike hubs and piano strings.bicycles, audio ports, school pencils and a raven.
 Signal generator dial?, a car tire in snow, the vandalism sucks sign, early bird book, propane tank wall, Doug's old stereo, a dolls head, bottles, paper mache fruit & vegies, figurine/doll, swim flipper, a few dinner plates, the moth & butterfly book (with pressed moth),....I am sure to be forgetting some thing in here.
 Propeller blades, typewriter keys, ceramic bowl, bike helmet, boy on bike, model train tracks, the hoodies sign, the Atlas owl, wooden cat, a blue lantern, 2010 calendar, little toy train flashlight,  unknown game racquet, somebodys triceratops, a doll, the most wonderful hat, brooms and the old sole moth, of course.
Rather fancy cowboy boots, a ridable carousel horse, very handy fly swatter, bike wheels, wooden spoons, this toy guitar, a basket ball, painted cat and one bower byrd. 
Also a  trike, some stove pipe, another chicken, 1950's airplane diagram, some monopoly money, the TV head guy (alarm clock, incense burner, TV, dragon shield, skis, pencils, action doll hands (gloves), more bike frames, hot water bottles & bike reflectors), a life size life jacket, one small puma gourd, sunflower yellow gumboots, scissors,  pencils, don't be making a mess sign and a couple of crockatoos made of candy & drink wrappers...
 Shiny sunglasses and a blue shovel, a rickety chair with a  teddy bear...a  keyboard and a dart board, knife, spoon and fork, more coloured pencils, basket ball, racquet, dobro (or brodo), small boy* with bow, toy...a tennis racquet, egg beater,and one more chicken (made of kitchen bits and bobs). 
I found a brake light, this ceramic captains head, more sunglasses, a great worm menu*, many beautiful buttons, three artichokes, one trunk, free store sign, very old plug, a big blue pencil, blue bike drop out and more model train tracks...and the dubCrow, of course.


**the little boy is from a collection of found photos from elsewhere and here is the worm  menu, found secured inside an old book.

The free store, with its ever changing array of discarded, exchanged, reinvented, pieced out toys, books, dolls, garments, jewelry and unidentified goods is a fantasy shop where no money is exchanged and the kid in all of us imagines a reincarnation...we stagger home under arm loads of potential. 


Thanks once more to the volunteers and staff at the Recycling Depot and the Free Store who make so much joy possible. Especially those who must see the same articles rotate through their stations week after week before the perfect match is made between the possible and the realization. 

our flower child of the plastics:

Over a period of about six years I photographed this figure sitting upon the plastics sorting table at the recycling depot. Since I never saw anyone touch her and I never did, myself, I was mystified by her transformations from Sunday to Sunday. 
She became a bit of an altar for the scavengers and fringe dwellers...oddments of adornment and fanciful haberdashery were visited upon her...yet if I asked about her no one knew what I was referring to. Sweet mystery.

In the beginning, altho obviously well aged she wore red, red lips but by the time this was taken they had fallen from her face...leaving her a bit more blue...Out of work actor.

We never knew who made her or who it was that left her here but Annie took it upon herself to give her a seat at the table and there she reigned until the years, the damp and the wind spoiled her beyond any propping up. Still we were loathe to see her go. 
The loneliness of a pole sitter. 

I lost track of the different hats she wore...we called her the flower child. Here she is a bit more sober than she was the next week when a wig was added, off kilter and screaming "help". 
This is taken before Annie had to tie her head up so she did not fall over. Dignity.

This mask probably would have given me the willies if I had not seen it first upon the flower child...
with that touch of basket couture it seemed perfect.
I have several hundred photos of the flower child...perhaps I'll make another set one day, showing some of the fabulous offerings she was given and a few of the strange bedfellows that came and went over depot time. Friends from the wild wood.

Byker byrds...small prints

Some of the small prints for this years Christmas Faires...
these prints are 4.5" x 6.5" (finished with mat 8" x 10")

Umbrellicus palm

The umbrellicus palm ...
at summers end the wind ripped, sun bleached umbrellas litter the depot tarmac, lay in heaps and molding mounds...beyond repair, heavily pruned. 
Shutters stained and sundered. Rusty hinges no longer swing, in breezes no longer gentle. Train tracks reduced to static, oxidized calligraphy on a field of embossed memories...the skin soft end page of an empty photo album impressed by shadows and the silent characters of sign language from long ago. Also called the mourning (or mournful) palm.
GALLERY of TREES...please

Pumpkins I forgot

Pumpkinishka
and the stories they could tell...

the Steppe Beyond...Frost visits and remembers

Maples and blackberries limned with frost.

This is one of my travelers from the Steppe Beyond, a collection of illustrations for some transformation tales of the circumpolar regions. The face is from the drawings...the collage is digital.

...and another illustration from the Steppe Beyond....
from the tale of the Khan Kulyoog.

DubCrow: a Pictorial History

My corvid 'family' at the bottom are: Left to right: Uncle Saroyan (William Saroyan - author), Old Man Eiseley (Loren Eiseley...just read him!), Atticus (Finch of course), Irene - dobro player (from 'good night Irene'...one of the songs my father offered up of an evening), Annabel Lee (see Edgar Allen Poe), Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), Phyllis...(my aunt, artist and inspiration... murdered and madly mourned), Cousin Thornton (Burgess...whose anthropomorphic styling so tickled me in childhood...Animals just like me. Playful, curious, grubby, rude, hungry.  Hanging out in the 'hood with friends and family. Small town critters.


An old Wild West book showed up at the depot...musty and very familiar... We had a much loved copy in our bookshelves back home. The photo of little Britches was one of my favourites...

ReBoot-remembering

a seasonal rip in the fragile fabric of canine sanity

This is my first photo collage, created for a digital photography art show called ReBoot...includes boots from the depot, the madonna sculpture, Dimitrius the Armadillo, Shoon creatures, sand painting "a seasonal rip in the fragile fabric of canine sanity", mask of Ganesha, depot propane tank wall...plus bikes, trikes, drop outs, old metal, piano keys and an assortment of personal images. Made in 9 squares so it would be large in effect but each section small enough to print on my little printer.

Fall Fair 2011 posters

thought this might answer a few of the questions at my market booth...not sure whether it was entirely successful or not.

Poster design for the fall fair....5 variations...each  featuring one of the 'sunflowers'.
found to be...botanical curiosities of the waste-land...regrowth & recycle

Sunflowers

Shoon Flower Maior
Theme for this years Fall Faire is...
the sunflower!!! 

the Treasure of the Humble

The Treasure of the Humble is a collection of thirteen mystical essays 
by Belgian Nobel Laureate Maurice Maeterlinck.  1897 edition

found treasure...used for foliage (see image above)

Shoon-boot Flower~sun gums 

Helianthus steamerii
"There is nothing normal about nature" Loren Eiseley

Domestic sunflowers found
Newt Kash Hollow, Kentucky (ca 1162 BC)

GALLERY of BOTANICAL CURIOSITIES

DubCrow cards

the DubCrow with the Brodo...and friends

the DubCrow with the Brodo...playing with lightning

Lefty, the DubCrow with the Brodo plus 3

the DubCrow with the Brodo...will play for pulled pork

the DubCrow with the Brodo....junkyard byrds

the DubCrow with the Brodo...unplugged