Form and color on a grey day

I work with artists. There are over 100 of them in our building. We have craftsman woodworkers and cabinetmakers, designers, engravers, painters, seamstresses and artists that work with wire and metal. Only these artists will truly understand when I say that during our work week we collectively spend our time seizing the day, living life to the fullest, cherishing family and frequently respecting others, eating good food and of course, sharing. Every now and then we kiss the cook, take walks, hike the dunes and (don't tell anyone) but a few years ago, every now and then we'd make time for...........

..........well, our artists will know what I mean.

Anyway.

When the work day is over our artists lay down their work pencils, burners, brushes and leave the recognizable style of our company's product line inside the building. Many of them go straight home and pick up the tools of their own art work. They paint, they draw, they sculpt and compose. They write. Sometimes they exhibit their work.

This afternoon I enjoyed talking with Jacquie and Holly about their art as I took a few photographs at a show running through the month of March in a nice, big space with several other artists that also work for our company.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

First, Jacquie's work. Many of her pieces were a study of roses. She uses a variety of materials and has incorporated some interesting textures into the backgrounds of her pieces. Old text, pieces of lace. Tissue. The kind of textures that make you want to touch the painting.

I love all the variations of neutral colors.

Holly's are fun, colorful pieces with alot of detail, long trails of words and comical little images that remind me of what a busy persons thinking process might look like if you saw it collected on paper or canvas. Her work is really playful.

Meeoooowwwwwwwwwwww

Holly loves birds. She also enlisted the creative talents of some children to help her with characters and shapes.

I would love to look at this piece with my little granddaughter and see how she reacts to all the characters and color. She'd love the little birds!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I saw alot of other interesting art at the show, too. It's great fun to see what your coworkers do in their free time and many of our artists are quite successful in their own right, beyond what they do for our company when they're on the clock. Each of their styles is different but I think the collective creative energy that they eexperience during the work week benefits all of them when they go home and do their own thing.

The diversity of styles and personal vision is very cool thing to experience.

Thanks for the invite, girls.

Gotta Love a Good Snail Joke

A guy hear's a knock on his front door.
He opens the door and sees that a snail has come to visit.
The guy beats the crap out the snail, picks him up and throws him wayyyyy out into the yard and slams the door.

Three weeks later there is a knock at the guys front door.
He opens it and it's the snail who says, "So what the hell was THAT all about!!!????"

And then there was this other snail.
He's going down the street when he gets beat up by a gang of turtles. The cops arrive and they say to the snail, "Ok, tell us what happened."


"I don't know," said the snail. "It all happened so fast........"

A Magic House

It's a little house that I thought only lived in my mind, a place I conjured up there as I listened to childhood fairy tales with their requisite quaint little cottages in the woods. You might remember these cottages too. They were freshly painted, secret places where dwarfs adopted lost princesses, happy bears ate porridge and poor peasant families sent hooded children off into the forest with baskets of goodies for a sick Grandma. Remember? They were magic and make believe.

Or so I thought.
Then my friend invited me to come see the little place she was renting on a big University campus. The directions went something like this: Turn left on University, right on Race Street and park near the corner. In between the two big houses you'll see a clump of bushes. Push them aside and there will be a path that leads to the front door..............and I'll be darned, there it was.....a rocky little path that led to a small cottage tucked beneath the trees somewhere no one would ever think to look.

Here. Let me show you.......

The cool thing is that everything you see in these photos came straight from a second-hand store, right down to the English Country Garden sorts of slipcovers on the sofa that my friend Judy stitched up from someones old bedspread. The dishes, the lamp shades, the pillows and chairs and every single book on the cozy shelves - gently used, all of it. The house is a teensy, tiny place but last Friday when she hosted a group of six of us in for wine and snacks in her little cottage under the trees, we all learned a valuable lesson. Hospitality has everything to do with how you make your guests feel, not about the size or grandeur of your house.

Judy's house is very real. It is definitely not make believe.

But it's undeniably magic.

I spent Saturday mornings with the King of the Cowboys and wanted to be a cowgirl when I grew up. Sally Sue Brady, my older and wiser 8-year old neighbor told me that cowboys didn't have long curls so I let her cut mine off when I was in Kindergarten. Sally Sue was hell-on-wheels-wicked with a pair of round-tip school scissors but she persevered and my neck was cold that whole next winter.

Roy clinked when he walked. Spurs, you know. Beat up lots of bad guys as I recall. But his shirt was always nice and tidy and he was mannerly to Dale Evans, Queen of the West, when he stopped by her diner for some lunch. She had great boots, too. And a gentle horse named Buttermilk. No wonder every little girl back in the 50's wanted a horse of her own.

Offscreen Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were married for many many years and raised a huge family. I don't recall the specific details but I remember a book at my Grandmas house called "Angel Unaware". I read it over and over. It was Dale's story about one of their children, a little girl that died when she was very very young. Sad stuff happens, even to The King of the Cowboys and The Queen of the West.

If you ate jelly toast in your jammies on Saturday mornings and watched Roy and Pat Brady chase down the bad guys too, you'll love these clips:

Here is how the show opened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-r6A7TzvUI

Roy told us that little buckaroos and cowgirls should be good and always follow what he called.....

The Cowyboy Code

Be neat and clean.

Be courteous and polite.

Always obey your parents.

Protect the weak and help them.

Be brave.

Study hard and learn all you can.

Be kind to animals and care for them.

Eat all your food and never waste any.

Love God and go to Sunday School regularly.

Always respect our flag and our country.

Pretty simple.

Pretty good advice.

As you swept the crumbs off your plate onto the hardwood floor and wiped the milk moustache from your mouth after that final breakfast slurp, I'll bet you were singing along, just like me, as Roy and Dale rode side by side out through the gates of the Double Bar R Ranch:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVq9-GtlvLU#

It's a LONG drive across Nebraksa

Great friends are a good reason to drive across Nebraska for the weekend.

This is my dear friend and mentor Judy,

the undisputed Queen of Hospitality

Little Miss Birthday Girl.

Tina says EVERY girl should have a pair of rose-colored glasses.

And we should wear them often.

Gary, me and Chris.
We met a few years back in South Carolina, they honored me with their attendance at MY 50th birthday a couple of years ago and now I see them whenever I'm in Denver. Gary is originally from Waterloo. Chris spent a few months in Paris before they moved to Colorado.
Don't try to figure it all out. Just know they are some of my favorite people in the whole world.

Here's that whole birthday thing again!!!
Hey, how many days is one officially supposed to celebrate turning 50 anyway????
The answer to that question is: as long as the Birthday Girl pleases.
Here Tina gets some help from Jada on the birthday candle thing.
After multiple cakes over a period of 30 days or so, I think
she was kind of short of breathe.
And I think Jada likes cake!


My best friend since I was 16.
If her baby sister turned 50 last month, you know what that makes us..........

Yup. STILL older and wiser.
Here the girls catch one last hug before we........

....scrape off Mother Nature's way of saying "I ain't done with y'all yet...."
And drive home. Oh Lord, here comes Nebraska again....

Clean cars go faster

Don't forget to wash behind your side mirrors.