Thank You

Creativity certainly runs deep in my family, we all just chose our own medium.  It all started when I was little watching my dad create these huge redwood signs for people  This was before the time of fancy computers and programable machines.  His tools consisted of a small one car garage converted into a wood shop, a couple saws, hand held router, paint brushes, a few sets of stencils for letting and Mom’s encouragement and salesmanship.  He used to hand draw, hand space every letter, then rout, paint, and finish to perfections signs of all shapes and sizes.  There are a lot of them still around.  Even our wedding present of a 8×8 foot redwood sign that still stands at the end of our driveway.  Then when he decided the sign business was turning into more work than fun he phased it out.  About the time, I left home he started teaching himself how to wood carve western figurines, while waiting for fuel to offload from his truck.  His work is amazing!

After several years of just carving for himself and us kids, Mom started pushing him to show off his work at wood carving shows and competitions.  He was so reluctant to do that.  He had been to craft shows with us girls for years while I had my sewing business Kites-N-Things and hated the idea steeling, competitive  attitude that we faced at them.   But the woodcarving crowd was an entirely different atmosphere.  They were always sharing ideas and teaching each other new things.  Being the only girl and loving to get away with my folks for a few days at a time, I started tagging along and helping the drive and haul totes for his shows.  Mom was the table designer, idea maker and his biggest cheerleader. 

I quickly found myself sitting in these huge rooms being the youngest by at least 20 years with nothing to do but visit with people.  I just could not get the concept of taking a piece of blank wood, carving pieces out of it to make a cowboy, horse, dog or many of the other items he created.  But one couple watched me at a couple shows and soon had me learning how to weave pine needles.  I was hooked from day one.  I couldn’t get enough of them.  My creative juices were flowing out of the banks.  I couldn’t wait to get home from the office everyday so I could work on another project.  Soon I was competing at the same shows as dad and doing very well.  That turned into a few orders here and there, then AW Prairie Art was formed. 

I was so excited.  Mom and Dad would go with me to a few craft shows where I would put up to 50 hours of work in certain pieces and cell for way less than they were worth.  It would take me months to make enough items to fill 2 tables in a 10×10 booth.  So I added a little bit of wood burning projects, but found it hard to find a place to work on them without stinking up the entire house.  

A year or so later while on a panel hauling trip with my Husband I have a half finished pine needle bowl laying on the dash of the pickup when we pulled into a feedlot we were helping rebuild.  The owner told me he had a 50 gallon trash can of old used lariat ropes he would just give me if I could do something creative with them.  I soon found out that the 50+ ropes he sent home were all Hard or extra Hard ropes, which meant they were like working with cable.  So the self-teaching began again.