Mom's Opening

Mom's big opening for her collage work was at the Braunstein/Quay Gallery the evening of January 7th. The event was a huge success. There was an enormous turnout of family and friends. Almost everyone from both sides of the family came down to see her work. All of my Mom's siblings and their families came, and my Dad's siblings were there except for the ones that live in other parts of the country. My great aunt Peggy and her husband Martin even made the journey from Naples Florida to come to the show. Mom was even willing to pose for a few photographs.

Mom's collage work is primarily made with old wood blocks prints from the early part of the 20th century. She spends countless hours painstakingly cutting out images from the paper and then arranging them into pieces. Most of the themes have to do with nature. Recently she has been creating pieces with lots of small squares with a mini collage in each square. She has also started illustrating dictionary pages. On a page that says bead, she has attached hundreds of beads. She also has one with buttons and one with snaps. One of the best pieces in my opinion is an old set of 25 encyclopedias in which she did one page from each one following the entry on that page. She did China in the C book. Electricity in the E book, etc... You can see some of her pieces up close on this page.

The show has been a huge success and mom sold two pieces that first night. She also recently found out that she sold the encyclopedia piece which was the biggest and most expensive piece in the show! We are all very proud of her!!!

After the opening the assembled mass of family members made our way over to Lulu's, which is a nice restaurant nearby. There were about 18 of us for dinner and we all had a wonderful time. As usual, the younger cousins took over one end of the table, dragged me into it, and we proceeded to have more fun than everyone else combined. Emma and Daisy (pictured) provide me with the latest and most important information about pop culture today.

My trip to California ended the next morning when I flew back out to Hawaii to resume my normal life...