I am sharpening this week, in anticipation of upcoming creations. This is my beloved set of Record chisels I got as a Christmas gift at least a dozen years ago. They have seen some action. I usually sharpen in between projects, honing bevels and secondary bevels over sandpaper on glass, then on a Washita stone, then it's over to the speed strop with polishing compound to finish up to a mirror shine.
Yes, I really love polishing. It's one of those tedious, repetitive tasks I enjoy getting lost in that has the added bonus us yielding fabulous results. There is nothing quite like watching thin shavings of wood curl up under the cutting edge of a freshly sharpened chisel. Extremely satisfying.
All 13 of my carving gouges are ready to go. With everything sharpened, the world is my acorn!
On the way to the studio, I detoured through the hood and admired the local sights. I'd love to live in one of these. I can just picture the Green Truck parked out front. It would look right at home next door to this vintage whip.
This is right around the corner from the studio, and it's my dream home. Well, one of my dream homes anyway. I could spend the morning on my balcony, then walk to the studio! Ah, that's the life.

Tomorrow, it's on to the cut list for construction and carving will be soon to follow.
I can hardly wait!

So much ahead in this new year, waiting to be made. I'd almost not know where to begin.
Except I do.
In the shop. Roxi accompanied me today.

It's been a constant stream trickle of tools coming in, filling in the peg board. I love the view!
Roxi is such a home-girl; she is ever-ready to make the return trip. That's why her butt usually gets left at home.
I pass so many things I want to stop and photograph on the way to & from the studio. This church in Concord is just one of many. It was a beautiful overcast day, but the light was flat on my way home. Still I stopped for just one quick shot.
I'm starting on a retablo this week.
Pictures coming soon...

Home

Here is my home, be it ever so-well let's face it-it's adorable!
I've been here five years now, which feels like both ages and an instant, simultaneously. I think of myself as one who likes to stay put. The very thought of moving nearly causes the sensation of a rising panic, starting right about at my heart, but then I remember to breathe.
Breathe Dusti and remember that you will find beauty and make a happy home where ever you go, because you are truly a gypsy at heart.
Breathe and remember "there are other worlds than these", located minutes from your studio. I can make a home so close to the studio so that my daily routine is an effortless flow of work and the daily self-care routine. While I enjoy driving, there is something to be said for the energy & resources sucked up by a daily commute of 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
The entire area surrounding my studio is honestly just dreamy; really a sight for these sore, "Charlotte-y" eyes. I'll be taking so many pictures, visual delights absolutely abound and have me wanting to paint worse than ever.
So, I'm scared to move, but I'll be sucking it up and doing it anyway so I can live on purpose.
The best thing I have going for me is the faith in myself to go forth with the blind courage of those who have nothing to loose.
Just gotta remember to breathe.

Ah, the rail road tracks. God help me, I love this refuge from Charlotte with all her progress, traffic, neighborhood associations and outdoor advertising; strips of peaceful refuge for miles on end where time stands still.
Cloudy days like this one a few days ago are my favorite. The camera just loves those overcast skies.
The November colors are some of my favorite. I love the changes in seasons. Is anything more exciting than watching the world change before your very eyes?
Just look at the miles of gorgeous scenery I try to take in while keeping my feet going where they should each step. Did I make that sound too hard? It's hard because A) the ties are spaced unevenly and cause me to lengthen my stride about fifty percent longer than natural, and B) the scenery and compelling vibe of the CSX right of way is hard for me to tear my eyes from, thus causing me trouble with "A".
This tracks runs east and west but it bends north and south a little over its course. The sun is at my 1 o'clock on my way east and about my 7 o'clock on my way west, back home.
I like taking shots from my hiking viewpoint, even though shooting into the sun isn't photographically ideal. For me, this is what meditation looks like.

CSX has put down a few yards of thick black felt over about 20 feet of tracks, I don't know why. There's some conduit running right beneath, so that's probably why. If I were rich, I'd buy me some miles of tracks and make them carpet it like this, so I could walk & run and not be as concerned about the likelihood of busting my ass...again! Wouldn't that be fancy?
My Mother is perpetually concerned about me falling down, getting knocked unconscious and being run over by the next train. I tried to stay away. I did. But my quality of life suffered greatly without this particular vice. And a girl's got to have her priorities straight.
Sorry Mom;)

And now for something completely different:

Remember Steven King's Cycle Of The Werewolf and the film version Silver Bullet that followed it in 1985? By the way, that was such an awesome year to be a 9 year old, as I was!
I love this movie and rank it among a very short list of movies based on King books that did the stories justice.
I remember renting it from Buck-A-Day video in Laurel Mississippi and watching it in the Orange Room of Mimi's cool, old, haunted house with my own Ka-Tet; Brandi, Karla and Vanessa. We watched more than once and I was captivated by every moment. I didn't read the book for a few more years, which is kind of cool, looking back on it.
There were aspects of the story that really resonated with me; the children taking their silver necklaces to a local reloader who smelted them and cast them into a silver bullet with which they could kill the werewolf. I was raised worshiping at the altar of the smelting pot, looking up into Dad's face through a delicious smelling cloud of molten lead vapor, thin as gossamer. Watching him hold the mold under the pot, filling the perfect bullet shaped voids, tapping the mold on the table then watching the fresh hot bullets tumble out with a rich thud; ah, what a ritual. Also the firecrackers that shot out the werewolf's eye were a mandatory treat on each visit to Mississippi to play with the Hodge sisters, the eye injury the werewolf/Reverend sustained was exactly the type of incident parents warned us against, and I thought of that as we played "bottle rocket wars" with the Hodges & the McGees among the fire ants and mosquitoes out in Jones County Mississippi; it all just felt sweetly familiar to my little 9 yr. old self.
Here was the hero's super cool "Uncle Red" played by the fabulous Mr. Gary Busey! He was everything you'd want out of an uncle, a confidant, partner in crime, parent deflector and whip-ass wheel chair/motorcycle hybrid maker for his "crippled" nephew played by Cory Haim. He even smuggled him some contraband bottle rockets to shoot on the night of the 4th of July!
That's another cool detail about the story; each werewolf attack takes place on a holiday. When I later checked out the book from the library I read in the prologue how yes, King knew that in reality the holidays he referenced didn't each fall exactly a month apart to accommodate a werewolf's biological cycle, but that was what you called "Artistic License". Lighten up, haters!
This guy, The Reverend played by Everett McGill was perfect as the creepy, unwholesome looking town werewolf with the perfect cover; "Who me, a Man of The Cloth, an unholy Hell creature?" His eyepatch was donned after the werewolf tried to chase down Cory Haim as he was trying to shoot off the bottle rockets over a bridge. The jig was up when the boy and his older sister showed up at the Reverend's house the next day, combing the neighborhood for people with fresh eye injuries. He was spine tingling in that scene! Incidentally, I would have loved him at about this age to play Roland Deschain, the hero of Steven King's crown jewel of literary accomplishments, The Gunslinger novels, a.k.a. The Dark Tower Series. All I can do now that he and Clint Eastwood are too old for the part is pray a movie version is never made.
Aw, remember when Cory Haim was still a cute little boy? He was great for a horror movie back then, he had a cute role in The Lost Boys too, as I recall.


I've been revisiting these 80's classics this month. Sadly this is not available on Netflix, so I haven't seen it in decades still. But it's something to look forward to eventually buying off ebay, it's a good one for the ol' collection.
My memories of staying up late in the really cool, but really scary Hillcrest house, Mimi's signature indoor climate-around 60 degrees in the summertime, all us kids snuggled up in blankets, raiding the fridge for Pudding Pops and Cokes and watching "those ol' vulgar movies" as Dad called them, are some of the sweetest little parts of my childhood memories. Grownups all asleep, two pairs of sisters up way past their bedtimes, watching Silver Bullet, Creep Show, Nightmare On Elmstreet, Sleepaway Camp Nightmare and the like in a big orange rose wallpapered room with a high up bed, shag carpet, and heavy drapes covering windows bumpy with condensation from the frigid temps indoors divided by one thin pane of glass from the absolutely muggiest heat outdoors Mississippi has to offer on a summer night.
Ah, that's the stuff dreams are made of! Now, getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom alone in the very scary and very dark house later on required some real courage, combined with a running start to leap back into the tall bed, ensuring your feet stay the requisite 2' minimum safe distance from the bed's edge to avoid capture by the creature who undoubtedly lay in wait for a tender little girl in his under-the-bed lair.
Still, it was a bargain at any price, the whole horror movie watching experience!
And now that I'm as grown as I'm likely to ever get, I can watch them at home alone and I don't even have to get a head start on a running leap to get back in bed! Those monsters would have gotten me by now. Besides, I got tired of living in fear of them and crawled under my bed at home one night, right around that age, just to prove to myself it could be done. As Van Helsing would say, "A moment's courage and it is done."
Thanks for letting my ramble about things I remember that make me feel happy and cozy and nostalgic.
That's just the feeling I want to summon for this much needed and much appreciated rainy October night.
I just know what's good, is all. Besides, a little vulgarity hasn't hurt me much yet, as far as I can tell.

"The Living Keep Moving..."

..."And The Dead Lie Still" was what my Grandaddy Pearson used to say. We all always loved that one.
Gorgeous Mississippi Pines
The day after we buried Pop, we went to Hattiesburg to be at Grandad Pearsons' side during his passing. It was purely coincidental timing, if you believe in such a thing as coincidence.
I do not, sir.
The odds of me, both my parents and my sister all four being down there at the same time are pretty slim. The odds of someone actually dieing at the moment that you are there by their side are slimmer yet. It was my family and my Aunt Charme, Dad's little sister, who were all 5 holding hands in a circle around him as he went on to the hereafter. I'm really at a loss for words in trying to write it justice.
I have to say though, that it was very similar to being present for a birth; intense, being hyper-aware of each moment in the present, feeling a soul moving into or out of the world right in front of you. There are a lot of similarities between birth and death. I picture it as dropping into this physical world and then dropping back out, into the Universe, the collective unconscious, Heaven, or whatever label of your choosing.
Wilbur Buckner Pearson would undoubtedly choose Heaven. And if that experience didn't bring every one of us to Jesus, nothin' would!
He had been a fine woodworker, a problem solver, architect, aeronautical engineer, tinkerer and builder, whistler, gardener, cat trainer, ice cream eater, coffee drinker and a most devout Christian. He also loved miniatures and had handmade from scratch an exact replica of Napoleon's coach that was about the size of a loaf of bread and was complete with velvet button tucked interior and little brass hardware. He'd carved the whole thing from wood and it sat with museum quality presence in their living room, I was forbidden to touch it. I would sneak in when everyone in the house were all napping in the hot Mississippi afternoon and creep up to it, hold my breath and open that little tiny side door, peering inside to that magically opulent, miniature world. I'd really need a picture of it to do it justice.
Another of my favorite things he made that I got to grow up with was the hand carved wooden cameo that's probably about 10" tall he carved of my Mom. It is so soft and perfect, lovingly and skillfully capturing her classic beauty. A perfect bas relief of the lovely contours of her young face, I spent lots of time standing beneath it where it hung in out hallway, reaching up and feeling the landscape of her profile rendered in wood from an old apple crate and marvel that such could be done. His level of craftsmanship is what I will always aspire to. That's probably the biggest mark he left on me; setting a very high standard for doing things the right way, paticularly in woodworking, and having that yardstick to measure everything by.
Between funerals and deaths we all camped out at my Mimi's house and sat around eating peas and cornbread and telling old stories! Oral history is one of the tenets of the Pearson/Caldwell clan.
Here we are setting around Mimi's living room, decompressing after a long day. Laughs came freely and easily in this crowd!

Here is Brandi, Aunt Charme, me and Dad the day after, about to go our separate ways.
I brought back an embarrassment of buckeyes from my great Granny Jefcoats tree. You carry one in your pocket and they bring good luck. They are such things of great beauty! Such a sight to behold all this abundance gathered in one spot. They're my memento from a long and highly spiritually charged visit to the Deep, mysterious South.
What a week!
As for me, I'm about to lie still as the dead for hopefully ten hours or so, to get back to all the moving I've got to resume tomorrow.
I plan to rest in great peace.

Mr Caldwell has left The Building

I woke up on October 7th to Mom calling to tell me her father died. She was on her way down to Mississippi to see him as his health had taken a turn for the worse, but got the call early that, as his grieving widow phrased it "Your Daddy has gone to Heaven."
Red Caldwell a.k.a. "Popaw" was nothing if not a legend in his own time; enigmatic with a reputation shrouded in mystery and tales of redneck mafia type activity.
Suffice it to say, our little branch were the only ones in the family to still speak to him.
But, the line for visitation went out the door, many from "The Community" showed up to pay their respects and chit chat to those whom they would normally dare not speak to.
At "Memory Chapel" fanciness abounded.

Bran & I put the fun back in funeral, sneaking back into the coffin showroom so I could sneak a few pics and to afford us the opportunity to poke fun at the industry in general.
Care to be laid to rest in a mauve polyester prairie gown with contrasting white lace bib? We got you covered.

There's a Devil on my shoulder prodding me to tell about how his grieving widow behaved while touring the coffin gallery. She may have been a tad theatrical, but my good Southern Upbringing forbids me from posting those intimacies here online.
Now if we were shooting the breeze face to face I'd go into a full impersonation, accent, mannerisms and all...
This is not the coffin she chose. This is the one Bran & I wanted, it was navy blue with a powder blue liner and this killer ocean scene with seagulls and the words "Going Home." I could have airbrushed his shrimp boat "Lady C" in there and customized it right on up! It reminds one of the Popaw uniform: light blue pant/jeans, shiny white leather loafers with tassels, a thin short sleeved button up and a trucker hat with some kind of gold filigree-naval-looking things on the front.
The place had some cool bricks on the floor with a plaque dating them back to 1922. So don't say this post is all tacky vulgarity. Here's your culture right here.
From left: Me, my little cousin Grant, Mimi (Moms mother, Pop's EX-wife), Brandi and Mom.
After driving way out to Smith County Mississippi to plant him in the very soil he so hated, (he grew up there and hated every inch of that place), we met Mimi (who was most certainly not in the funeral procession) closer to home for a big lunch. It was really wonderful getting to see so much family.
My Dad, (Pops X-son-in-law) was one of the pallbearers , and the funeral was on October 10, Dad's birthday. That was weird. But the weirdness continued until it reached miraculous proportions.
Would that I could tell all.
Details in the post to follow...