Back To Work

I'm refreshed after my vacation time and ready to get back to work. In fact, June's collage blocks will be ready ASAP! We took a road trip to visit family in Georgia and Alabama (Patrick & Lizzie's home state....I'm the oddball Yankee). Took this fishy snapshot at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. You can see other images from our trip here. By the way, if you're ever passing through Montgomery and in need of a good lunch you gotta try Gail's Down The Street Cafe. The sweet tea, cornbread, greens, squash casserole, fried green tomatoes and blackberry cobbler is to die for!! I'm trying to be disciplined after all the good eats but it's hard 'cuz Patrick's grandpa gifted him a well-seasoned cast iron skillet and he made an awesome frittata for breakfast today....burp.

Feathered Fun

Patrick brought home some feathered Mardi Gras masks for us on a recent trip to New Orleans and we've been having loads of silly fun with 'em. Lizzie was born in Mobile, Alabama which is also the birthplace of Mardi Gras on this continent. She attended many a parade as a wee thing and one of these days we've gotta take her back to experience the festivities. When we first moved to Alabama, I did a short stint working as an Mardi Gras float artist which you can read all about here. Happy Fat Tuesday y'all!

 

Mardi Gras Day

Today is Mardi Gras Day, also known as Fat Tuesday, and this is one of the cultural traditions I miss from the years we lived in Mobile, Alabama. Just a few weeks after moving to the Gulf Coast in the fall of 2003 I responded to an "Artist's Wanted" newspaper ad. Days later I found myself immersed in the "behind the scenes" of Mardi Gras culture working for a float building company. It is a year round endeavor to build, craft, sculpt, paint and decorate the floats used by local Krewes during the weeks of celebration. The floats are housed in large warehouses along the Mobile Bay and working inside these buildings the hot days seemed hotter and the cold seemed colder! My stint at this company lasted only one season, around 9 months, but I have many lasting memories.

My very first assignment was to sculpt the faces for a barber shop quartet themed float.

Getting the hats on these guys was quite annoying, it involved some precarious ladder situations!

First painting assignment was to help paint a Willy Wonka float.


Detail of one of the many seagulls I sculpted for this float.


Airbrushing this lady from a ladder was tricky.


A daytime parade with a Dr. Suess theme.


Painting Horton was a ton of fun. All the water below was not.

And that's it for now folks!
Happy Mardi Gras Day--go eat a moon pie!!