The Art of My Men

I'm very fortunate that my family supports my quilting, and I think that's partly because we all have a pretty good appreciation for art. Here in Sacramento, we have something called Second Saturday when many of the art galleries and venues premier showings and art exhibits, and my husband and I have gone several times. My son and his girlfriend also like to go and look. One of my favorite stops is the studio of Merle Axelrad Serlin, who constructs amazing, large landscape pieces, quite often for public spaces. Although her art isn't the traditional quilt, she employs many of the same techniques we quilters use. The picture above is one of her creations. Check her out by clicking on her name and go to her gallery.

But that's not really what I intended to talk about tonight. I wanted to talk about how creative my husband and my son are. My son is very interested in graphic-style art, similar to street or tagger art, although he doesn't go around spray painting buildings, thank goodness! LOL! He often carries with him a sketch pad and pens and works on his creations during quiet times (like when he's brought a month's worth of laundry over to mom's house and has nothing to do until it's done). It's hard to explain, but many of his pieces depict the word "ghost," which is the name he uses. He's very good at drawing other things but keeps coming back to variations on "ghost"--shading, angles, perspective. The photo below is of one of his pieces--perhaps if you look closely, you can see the word, but it's pretty well hidden.






Here's another sample of his doodles. The center bottom image again says "ghost":


My husband is also creative, but in a different way. He works in fits and starts, sometimes going for some months without creating anything and then he'll work on whatever it is for several days in a row. He's happy puttering away in the garage, looking at all the cast off "junk" and letting his imagination transform it into something rather clever. I'd guess about 95 percent of his time is spent in the imagination and planning stages. Last year he made "Pot Man" and it sits proudly on our patio.





This year, when he was sorting and packing things away after Halloween, he came up with the idea for "Frankenfly," who now also graces our patio.
My husband's creations tickle me because they're so offbeat and unique. A couple years ago, we HAD to invest in a globe from a street light when we visited Hippo Hardware up in Portland, and that's his next project. More than anything else, though, I'm glad he has an outlet for his creativity. We all need that, don't we?!