Colors Outside the Lines

Doll Collector magazine

2011-05-04T18:38:00.001-05:00

This is a very cool day for me as an artist because the July issue of Doll Collector magazine has a three-page spread on my work. My next goal--a cover!

Cute as a Button

2011-01-19T08:47:00.003-06:00

The idea for these original button-face dolls came to me in a dream. I was walking past the sale bin at a local fabric store when some big, sculptural, sassy German buttons in gorgeous colors started flirting with me. "Sorry, I'm in a committed relationship with a couple thousand other buttons already at my house," I thought. As I turned to go, the last words I heard as the store door closed behind me were a whispery "final clearance." I didn't look back. I woke up the next morning, though, haunted by a dream of those buttons with little polymer clay faces on them. I'd been completely hijacked. I went back to get a couple of the buttons to see if they'd stand up to firing the polymer, like I didn't already know it was fate. And then I went back and bought all the rest of those final clearance buttons, just in case everybody on the planet was going to want their very own button-face doll. I designed the prototype, and as I was working out the kinks in the pattern, the stories started coming into my head. Buttons and stories. Dreams and feathery boas. Beautiful fabric and satin slippers. Art, life, joy.

Walk Across

2011-01-13T16:44:00.007-06:00

The long faces of the mountains are
blue with Sunday stubble,
some old neck’s
twin below in the
rocks, skin sagging
over brushy hollows,
melting along the arroyos and
tendons. Never mind.
Youth is death’s
flimsiest disguise.
On the lake the sun has laid down
silver so thick
you could
walk across to the other side.

Art, art, and more art

2011-01-09T19:05:00.008-06:00

If the weather is a little gray where you are or you're feeling unspired, spend a few minutes checking out the Bridgeman Art archive, http://www.bridgemanart.com/. This is a broad, deep, and completely amazing collection of images of all kinds of art, available for viewing just by registering. It's searchable and easy to use, and it's guaranteed to take you someplace you've never been before. I've used it to research figure types, period costumes, or individual artists-- or just to browse--many times. Prepare to have your socks knocked off by this incredible resource!

Col. Filbert's Time Machine

2011-01-02T17:46:00.000-06:00

Time Travel

2011-01-02T12:57:00.004-06:00

It's my birthday today, at the beginning of a new year, and so, thinking of both the past and the future as we inevitibly do at this point in the calendar, it seems appropriate to post my just completed piece, Col. Filbert's Time Machine. He was made for the Central Texas Art Doll Sculptors' doll-in-a-year challenge and will accompany me to the national meeting of the Original Doll Artists Council of America in Anaheim in July. My fellow CTADS member, artist, and pal, Karin Otto Burfict, took the fab photos. See her incredible work at http://karinottoburfict.com/.

The time machine is made from an antique wooden clock, a belt/tie rack, a silver cruet basket, and an unfinished photo frame. The Colonel is sculpted from polymer clay and has a soft body built over a wire armature. His boots and aviator cap are glove leather, and his navigation system is constructed from a variety of watch/clock parts, scrapbooking ephemera, and metal and wood findings.

Chen Fu's Lovebird

2010-07-22T19:32:00.006-05:00

I made Chen Fu's Lovebird for my final ODACA jury. I'm packing him up tonight to send to the collector who bought him at the meeting in Chicago. He's about 18 inches tall on his base. His face and hands are polymer clay, he has overpainted glass eyes, and his beard, mustache, eyebrows, and queue are mohair. The lovebird is epoxy clay.

The Countess of Checkered Past

2010-07-20T10:23:00.006-05:00

This is the piece that I made for the ODACA second round jury. The full title is "The Countess of Checkered Past Ponders Her Next Move." She is about ten inches tall, seated, and made of polymer clay with a soft body built over a wire armature. I used more than a dozen different fabrics or trims in her costume and stand, from hand-dyed lace to vintage sari silk, and her rollerblades are sculpted from polymer clay. She sits on a column of real checkers, and her hat is a stack of black and red checkers hand-sewn from miniature hat straw. While the Countess clearly has made some interesting choices in her life, she's looking ahead, not back, and she's ready to hit the track again . . . just as soon as she decides which direction to go.

It's Official

2010-07-20T10:04:00.003-05:00

I'm just home from Chicago and so happy to report that I am now officially an Artist Member of Original Doll Artist Council of America (ODACA). This past year's odyssey of creating and critiques has truly been a growth experience, and although I have learned much, I know in my polymer clay bones that I have only begun. As a part of three supportive and amazing groups of artists--CTADS (Central Texas Art Doll Sculptors), TAODA (Texas Association of Original Doll Artists); and now ODACA--I look forward to new work, new friendships, and new adventures. I hope to be posting more regularly, and I also hope you'll be following as I showcase some older pieces as well as works in progress.

Meanwhile, if you're going to be in Houston over the next few weeks, I'll have two pieces in a show, Dolls Now, at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) that opens on July 31. There's also a reception on August 5, if you're able to stop by.

Shelly the Singing Dragon

2010-03-13T15:10:00.006-06:00

Wow, it's been an incredibly long time since I've posted, but a lot has happened in the past 16 months. I haven't been idle, so the next few posts will feature some of the things I've worked on lately. Just over a year ago, I joined an amazing group of talented artists who belong to the organization Central Texas Art Doll Sculptors. I couldn't begin to tell you all I've learned from them, but I'll show you what I made at the first retreat I went to. We were all using an armature for a snail doll, but of course, coloring outside the lines, I decided to make a dragon. Several especially cool things happened to make this piece unique. First, I had taken with me a package of small shells that, as it turned out, seemed ideal for the dragon's spines. Then CTADS member Karin Otto Burfict asked me if I'd like to use her dragon scale tool to finish the skin. I didn't even know there was such a thing! And the glitzy dried stems that Marilynn Huston had brought were the perfect touch to represent the dragon's song. Shelley the Singing Dragon has been waiting almost a year to make her debut. She hopes you like her!

Gray

2008-11-04T11:16:00.001-06:00

Not quite dawn, I am the sleepy no-color of everything. Scrim of fog pierced by rower in silent skiff. Water mimicking sky. Mutable. Inconstant. Blue-gray, gray-green. Trickle and lap of sheen on sand. I am the color of grief and age. Vapor and ashes on the tongue, mildew, arsenic’s sharp tang. Rain-ping on metal roof. Absence. Regret. I am dove’s wing, kitten, violet-lipped shadow. I am the go-between. I am smoke. I am the ragged bellies of clouds. At dusk, all colors seep into me as I spread my cloak for moon kiss, night, my lover. Sun sketches with me. I erase, smudge, obscure. I am circumspect, reflective. The color of contemplation. Sage leaf and soft Lamb’s Ear. I am the memory of green. The price of progress run wild, the blinding glare of commerce and war. Industrial, high-rise, hard. I freeze. I burn. I am stinging sleet and melting ice. I am the viscous core of mountains, the rock ribs of the earth. I am spanner of rivers, skyscraper bone, jet. Listen. I am the keen of flywheels. I am gossip, truck rumble, wet wind, sparrow. Seed, or needle, in your hands. Spade, if you dig with me. Freeway, cobbled street, frostbitten furze on moonlit path, concrete, asphalt, unyielding stone. I am gunmetal-charcoal-pewter-mercury-nickel-platinum-steel. I am goose down. Iron. Fin-flash in quicksilver sea. I am pistol, bullet, corpse, worm. Dark before light, light before dark. I am beautiful. I am the face of death. I am patient. I am what comes after. I am nothing. Call me mirror.

Gold

2008-11-03T11:10:00.010-06:00

On the hike-and-bike trail this morning--light now at 6:30 since the time change--small golden leaves were spiralling down like coins all around the few of us early Monday souls doing penance for a weekend of sugary indulgence. It seems like such an appropriate currency for these times of economic uncertainty. Her gold reserve untarnished by the excesses and deceptions of Wall Street execs, Mother Nature showers blessings on all of us, regardless of our social standing, ethnic background, or political stripe. I hadn't really thought about it before, but there's a certain Mardi Gras feeling to autumn, with the status-leveling masked revels of All Hallows Eve, the vibrantly-colored leaves and fruits of harvest piled up everywhere like parade floats, and lavish, indulgent feasts to celebrate before winter wipes the slate clean for another year.

With Halloween already fading into the photobooks of memory, we're looking toward our season of thanksgiving, and even in the leanest of times, there is still much to be thankful for in America. While many of us may have less in our purses this year, the countryside is unequivocally and inclusively resplendent. We are rich in beauty, and this morning I feel the pockets of my spirit filled to bursting with nature's golden gifts.

Liverpool Merman

2008-05-15T10:21:00.012-05:00

I've never been much of a joiner. I'm not antisocial; I just prefer the solitary heaven of my studio. But for the last four years or so, I've had the great pleasure of finding a wealth of like-minded folks with whom to share a variety of forms of creative madness. My Story Circle Network chapter, Wordweavers; a writing/critique group we just call the BGs; and, most recently, an on-line group called Artdollz have enriched my life, creative and otherwise, in so many ways. All of them serve to lure, push, cajole, and drag me out of the various boxes I find myself in.

Some of the things I have most enjoyed about Artdollz in the short time I've been a member are the challenges, round robins, and doll swaps members may participate in throughout the year. These are usually a set of loose parameters and a deadline intended to stimulate us to do something we might not do otherwise and to try out new materials and techniques. I just finished and shipped off my first swap doll, and now I'm eagerly waiting to see what cool doll I'll get back in return, and from whom.

This swap had several requirements. The doll had to be flat-backed so that it could hang on a wall, but it should be three dimensional. It should depict something mythological, either classical, fictional, or from the artist's own mythology. And it had to incorporate a material called Tyvek, which does interesting things when it's heated. You're all probably familiar with Tyvek, even though you may not know it; it's that papery waterproof material that some Fed Ex envelopes and light jackets are made from. I didn't know the material by name, but it had always intrigued me. After a few hints from Artdollz members, I was off. I thought about several possible subjects for this challenge, but I kept coming back to a punk doll I had made at least a decade ago, but was never satisfied with. I played with the Tyvek by ironing it inside a folded Teflon sheet, and as the material morphed, I started to see what I wanted to do with it.

First I disassembled the old doll and trimmed the head off just at the shoulders. I'm posting the technical processes and materials below for anyone who's interested. For those of you who are not, I'll just cut to the chase here. What popped into my mind was a punk merman, with a black/gray color scheme, a neon mohawk "fin" on his head, a ripped shirt, and a tail with chains. I decided to call him Liverpool Merman as a tribute to the British punk scene and because of the play on the word pool where he might hang out. I'm now totally in love with Tyvek and have a head full of ideas about what I'd like to do with it next. I also really liked the way the merman turned out. I hope that whoever gets him in the swap will feel the same.

PROCESS/MATERIALS

The punk bust is Super Sculpey, if I remember correctly. The eyes are painted pin heads, the nose pierce is a cut-off steel dressmaker's pin, and all the other piercings are wire twists inserted into the polymer before curing. The collar is black Fimo with pin heads (like the nose stud), built onto the neck before curing. I secured the bust through the wooden base with Crafter's Choice glue and a regular metal screw through a drilled hole.

The "water" is Tyvek lightly ironed inside a Teflon sheet so the wrinkles are minimal and then painted with Lumiere. I also sprinkled it while wet with some Pearl-X powder and crystal glitter and then muddled everything a bit to simulate water surface and sunlight. I used Sculpey matte glaze as a seal after the paint was dry.

The tail is Creative Paperclay over wire mesh to hold the shape. When the paperclay was dry, I glued more severely distressed, puffy Tyvek around the tail and fin and painted it with Lumiere. The hip wrap is a separate piece of Tyvek, again glued to the form and painted, and "closed" with purchased dyed shells and silver chain. I used more of the same shells hot-glued to the wooden base to brace the doll's neck and ground the upper portion of the piece and to provide some texture to balance the highly-textured tail portion. I added just a bit of drybrushed Lumiere paint (in a couple of coordinating colors) to integrate the colors of the dyed shells into the overall design. In order to assemble the piece, I allowed for the wire mesh to extend a bit beyond the paperclay part of the tail that would show and slipped that through a slit in the "water," with everything (tail and water) securely held in place with Crafter's Choice glue.

The mohawk fin is also Tyvek, subjected to very high heat and severely distressed. It's translucent and very porous, like fan coral. I glued the fin to the doll's head and then used gel medium with fiber to form the doll's original "hair" mohawk into coral-like branches or strands that I gelled to the fin. When the gel medium was dry, I painted the fin with very diluted Lumiere, almost like an ink wash, and added some wash to the tail fin as well, to carry the pink color throughout the doll.

This guy can hang on the wall by his punk safety pin hanger, but he prefers to sit on a table or shelf.

Doris and Kandinsky

2008-05-12T09:35:00.007-05:00

I wrote this piece nearly five years ago for my mother, and it was originally published in the Story Circle Network newsletter. When I gave it to her, she loved it, but she couldn't resist reminding me that I "forgot about the matching hairbands." Some of you have seen it, but it's still one of my favorites. Today is my beautiful mother's 86th birthday, so Mom, this one's for you . . . again.

DORIS AND KANDINSKY

The way I see it, he might have just been mental, or a Roaring Twenties avant garde blowhard, merely claiming to hear sounds when he saw colors. But the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky swore by his synesthesia. For him, yellow was the high brass, all trumpets and fanfares. Crimson red, a drum-roll, or the horns. Violet, a bagpipe. Orange, the middle bells of the church or a strong contralto voice. Every canvas also a choir.

Kandinsky's colors were always singing, and I half believe him today, walking down this island street with its brightly painted row houses in full chorus. They're a tropical marimba of heliotrope, orchid, pomegranate, mustard and mango, sage green with magenta trim, clotted cream and colonial blue and spicy shrimp creole all cobbled together in an eye-boggling cascade of the happiest dwellings I've ever seen. The ones facing the ocean are upscale, of course--pristine and promiscuous at the same time, parading themselves before the monochrome sea and the cloud-pocked sky with French doll house façades, fancy-work doors, and second-story gardens in flagrant bloom. Farther into the city, the houses are dingy--patched and peeling; it's a sadder song there, about life in a different key.

I think of my mother, Doris, born in 1922, the year Kandinsky began painting his Bauhaus series, Kleine Welte (Small World). She would be a beautiful woman, with dark hair and blue-gray eyes and luminous skin, but her tall frame and big feet embarrassed even a family of farmers. Her teen-age years coincided with the Great Depression, and in her high school pictures, she's wearing homemade dresses and too-small shoes. In that faded time, she hoarded her gifts--a voice always hungry for music, and a color memory so accurate, she could match something precisely months or even years later, after having seen it only once.

In a fairer world, she could have turned either one of her talents into a million bucks. Instead, she spent them on me. An older friend made her learn to sew when I was a baby, and from that moment on, I was her anti-Depression billboard. We were always looking for, in her words, "something a little more unusual."

Instead of the gray suede penny loafers I wanted--just like everybody else's--she bought me robin's egg blue, spool-heeled leather shoes, with cutwork and grosgrain ribbon ties. They matched the linen A-line Easter dress she designed when I was a sophomore in high school. Hand crafted, not homemade. My junior year, it was an avocado silk blouse with black polka dots, a black raw silk jumper, and matching hat, a Mr. John Jr. straw roller. To the football games, I wore hand-pleated plaid wool skirts with perfectly coordinated sweaters and high heels. I had the same custom-made dress as all the other girls in my vocal group, but my edge was underwear, royal blue, dyed to match. I was my mother's Barbie, her ikebana, her work of art.

Today, if you walked out of your house in this rich port town, my mother could pick you out a pair of pumps the exact shade of the flowers spilling off your balcony. Later, when you looked out over the railing in the early evening light to call down to your friend in the street below, wearing your new shoes and leaning way over to the side so the bougainvillea wouldn't scratch you, with your forearms resting on the balcony rail and all your weight on your right leg, your left leg cocked a little flirtatiously behind, and the fuschia shoe half off and dangling from your left foot like a decorative counterweight--at that moment, it would appear to any passerby that you and the shoe and the flowers had been painted by the same hand, by Kandinsky, the man who could hear purple, or by my mother, who could match it tone for tone.

That Old Thing?

2008-05-08T13:56:00.001-05:00

The question isn’t why I hang on to one old thing. It’s why I have trouble throwing anything away. I’m working on that, feeling more and more burdened by the crush of things in my life, but the problem is that the tendency is partly learned and partly the function of being a maker. At the risk of appearing to argue for what would seem to be a clear-cut case of hoarding behavior, it’s not quite as dysfunctional as it looks, first-glance.

The learned part is a legacy from my Depression-era mom who grew up hearing the grandmother who raised her say things like, “Don't throw away that old coat. We may need to cut it down for the kids, come winter.” It was a waste-not, want-not mentality that is beginning to find itself reinvented in our uncertain economic times. With a shed full of hand-made and thrift store garments, a studio room crammed top to bottom with fabric and trims, and racks of vintage (read: “old”) clothes in my house, all remnants of my decade as a theatre costumer, I’m well-placed to ride the wave of recycle and re-use nostalgia currently manifesting in a lifestyle/fashion movement called Steampunk. At least that’s my story today. And if global warming, in its unpredictable mix of hot and cold, throws us a particularly nasty winter curveball, I can take care of the kids’ coat crisis all by myself. I think I’ll hang on to that stuff for at least one more season.

The maker conundrum is even more insidious. Makers are, by necessity, pack rats, because in order to make something new, we have to have stuff, supplies, materials, inspirational stashes of fabric and paper and glitter and buttons and zippers and trim and brass tubing and wire and . . . well, you get the idea. There’s nothing worse than sitting straight up in bed in the middle of the night with a crystal clear vision of the solution to that design problem that’s been vexing you and realizing that you can’t do a blasted thing about it because the craft and fabric stores don’t open until 10 a.m. Writing it down or drawing it in your journal won’t help. You need to do while it’s fresh on your mind, and you can’t do without the right stuff. And what if the brilliant solution you saw in your dream depends on something exactly like those plastic florist tubes (both the green pointy ones and the snub-nose clear ones) that you’ve been saving in the kitchen drawer for the last seven years? Problem solved. Smart me. I’ve got a life-time supply that didn’t cost me a penny, and I can get right to work.

The reason it’s so hard to address “maker syndrome” is something called random reinforcement. If you run a laboratory rat through a maze toward a dispenser button and, every once in a while in a totally random sequence, reward it with food pellets when it presses the button, it will just keep running the maze and pressing the button regardless of whether it gets any more food or not. Because sometime in the past the behavior worked and, bon appétit, there was lunch. Now I’m not saying I’m a lab rat (despite a few other other distinctly rodent-like qualities) but let’s face it. If I solved a problem using stuff I’d saved for just such an occasion, doesn’t that encourage me to keep identifying said useful-looking stuff and socking it away? That’s both the beauty and the horror of random reinforcement. What are the odds there’s going to be large-scale de-accessioning of interesting and/or useful-looking stuff at my house when just this week I managed to use a wasp nest, a rock, some honeycomb-cut packing paper, and a thrift store candlestick in one of my dolls? You just never know when you might need, metaphorically speaking, to cut that old coat down for the kiddies.

I haven’t taken to disassembling non-working appliances to strip them for parts and wire yet, and I’ve actually made a healthy number of Goodwill and Salvation Army donations over the years, but it’s the tip of the iceberg, folks. Plus, I already regret letting go of a few of those items. Anybody up for a Savers run? Thursday’s the day they mark down a brand new batch of really cool stuff!

Brown

2008-05-01T22:29:00.001-05:00

Ask a dozen people at random what their favorite color is and the odds are excellent that not a single one of them will choose brown. Ask those same people about dessert, and chocolate--rich, beloved, brown chocolate--stands a good chance of topping the list. Go figure.

What is it about unassuming brown that makes it so easy to overlook? Perhaps it's simply ubiquity. Just glancing up from my keyboard I see countless shades and hues of brown: wood furniture, shelves, and light fixtures. The chair I'm sitting in is upholstered in brown. There are brown cardboard cartons on the floor, and the drapes are striped in brown. Outside, the soil is brown, as are the tree trunks and plant stems and rocks and buildings. We brown our steaks and our cakes and our bread. We drink brown tea and coffee, although we call it black. In fact, our world is permeated with browns, so much so that perhaps we simply take them for granted.

I'm such a color freak that I can hardly ever choose a favorite, but I love the richness of mahogany, the variegated browns of baskets, the hatched brown and gray bark of the white crepe myrtle trees outside in the yard, oak's golden glow, the elegant calligraphy of dark brown trunks against masses of bright leaves in season or drawn starkly against the sky in winter, my husband's strong beautiful hands, my daughter's eyes. Brown is logs burning in the fireplace, home, food, dogs, horses, the earth.

This week I finished two dolls, both for friends and both brown. The friar's brown robe is a traditional statement of modesty and humility and a vow of poverty and service. Teddy's brown fur is a promise of comfort and unconditional, completely non-judgmental love. Not too shabby for a color that's nobody's first choice. Maybe I'll look back on this as the beginning of my Brown Period. And maybe next time somebody asks you what your favorite color is, you'll pause for a second, just to look around and silently acknowledge burnt umber, sienna, caramel, cinnamon, teak, chestnut, mink, bay, sorrel, taupe, terracotta, and the rest of brown's gorgeous children, before making the safe choice . . . blue.

Cheap Motel Neon

2008-04-20T00:38:00.001-05:00

EYE CANDY: Outside my kitchen window last week, the sky was Egyptian faience blue behind a pack of ridiculous poodle clouds hurrying by. My neighbor's tin roof, jewelry-quality silver after a brief shower, sported a single gem--a lime green chameleon puffing out his bright red throat sac.

Today I set up shop at my first doll show in more than a decade. It was a fascinating experience, but successful only because my faithful friends showed up to offer support in countless ways. I am grateful to all of them for continuing to encourage me in this new adventure.

It's impossible to be in a great space filled with dolls and doll lovers without thinking about why dolls are so important to us. A recent New York Times article talked about how we are fascinated with anything that looks like us, and the author of that article would have had a field day where I was. Innate narcissism, I guess. But it's more than that, I think, given the hyper-realistic baby dolls that so many girls and women were cooing over and cradling in their arms. I couldn't help thinking of my niece and a good friend, each of whom is expecting her first child. One's in her twenties and the other's in her forties, and that's completely irrelevant.

Mother Nature is gorgeous, but she's not terribly subtle. That chameleon with his cheap motel neon neck is just a reminder that every spring, we're all getting the same text message from the universe: "make more, make more, make more." For some of us, the response is new babies. For others, it's dolls.

Stay tuned here for what's new at my house.

Beginnings

2008-04-04T01:40:00.001-05:00

I didn't always color outside the lines. As a kid, I was a careful artist. Meticulous. Persnickity, even. Those were the old days when color names were just colors, not pop culture icons. If you were looking for something exotic, and you had the big box of crayons, you'd go for burnt umber or raw sienna or periwinkle. We had serious colors, and they meant something.

While I got all kinds of art-type encouragement from my family, I think it was my Granny May who really started me down the "color outside the lines" path. She'd started painting late in her life, and she flung her lifetime of "can'ts, shouldn'ts, and don'ts" at those hapless canvasses. She never progressed beyond "primitive," but she told me something I'll never forget: it takes a lot of skill even to make a bad painting.

We used to watch the John Nagy art show on the little black-and-white TV in her apartment, and one Christmas she bought me his special art kit. I was undone. I now owned an official sketchpad, charcoal, an instructional book, a paper stump for blending the charcoal on the paper, a sandpaper board for sharpening the pencils, and--the most incredible thing of all--a kneaded eraser. I'd venture to say that I was probably the only person in our little town of Crosbyton, Texas, all 2000 of us, who had both a blending stump and a kneaded eraser in the 1950s.

I like to think that our shared art gave Granny and me a bit of distance from the small town mindset. Eventually I moved on, with Granny's backing, to making oil paintings, too, and, like hers, mine weren't ever destined to hang in the Louvre. In retrospect, though, I think the most important things I learned from her were that it's never too late to start something you're passionate about and that it's okay, in fact it's necessary, to color outside the lines if you ever want to do anything new.

I have a birthday every year at the beginning of January, but this year's was important. The big Six-O, kick-off for a decade. I celebrated with my family and friends, had way too many treats, went to Vegas to see the Cirque de Soleil, and will make my first trip to Italy in June with my daughter, Kate. But, to me, the most amazing thing about this year is what, at the dawning of this late-ish period in my life, I find myself having the opportunity to do. Already in these few months of 2008, I've launched a new enterprise as a doll maker. My husband Juan Miranda and my daughter and friends are indulging me, as always, in my current obsession. My good friends Donna and Kirk, owners of Bazzirk, and their designer Kyle are building me a totally cool website that will launch within a few days. And I, confirmed luddite, am blogging!

I refuse to be anything but optimistic in the face of such reckless encouragement. And if my Granny May were with us today, she'd recognize herself here, sailing into uncharted waters at sixty, harvesting the fruit of all those seeds she planted in me half a century ago and every single day joyfully, blissfully, with abandon, coloring outside the lines.