Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Bear's Mill set up

On this lovely spring day, I took a large load of my handmade rustic willow furniture to Bear's Mill. On the way, frogs were singing and buzzards were flying everywhere. It is always a kind of psychic experience to see the shadow of a buzzard pass over you. It happens to me every year and it always gives me pause.

I recently was contacted by Marti Goetz, the new director, about being the 3D artist with Barbara Easley who is a watercolor artist. After a lovely drive across Eastern Indiana, it was very nice to pull up next to the familiar front of Bear's Mill on a lovely Spring day after such a long bleak winter.

Marti was professional enough to visit my shop recently and the Indiana Artisan Marketplace and has become very familiar with my work. She also had a Beck's beer waiting for me after I set up. Priceless.

Set up went very smoothly. I am so flattered to have my handmade rustic willow furniture again in this wonderful space. My buddy John Bundy will have his duck decoys on the tops of the tables on which we have collaborated. We are looking forward to the opening April 10, from 6-9. It will be a lovely night.

On the way back, I slid by Summit lake and saw hundreds of scaups and ring necks,several swans, lots of buffleheads and more cormorants than I have ever seen there. The light was good and it was great to see the lovely waterfowl is such ideal conditions.

Of course, it goes without saying that I stopped at Sparky's Dog House in Mt. Summit for a couple of their wonderful ham sandwiches.

On the way back, I took a little extra time to follow back roads west and was treated to the sights of Amish homes with colorful laundry drying on clotheslines, black buggies with sleepy horses waiting in the spring sunshine. I saw a few buggies raising dust down the dirt roads and horse manure in the road. The well kept farms contrasted sharply with the tumbledown small villages inhabited by hoarders. Each little town seemed to have an intersection with ruined deserted buildings that once seemed to be the centers of commerce. Former auto repair garages filled with the abandoned detritus of past prosperity. Evidence of former railroad lines removed and grown up with scrub.

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