Southern Hospitality

I like to fly by the seat of my pants, do as The Spirit moves me. I had myself a delightful little diversion today that only comes to those who are loosely scheduled at best. 

A couple years ago, my sister & I met The Most Interesting Woman In Charlotte shopping in our favorite thrift store. The three of us stood outside under the unflattering parking lot lights for at least thirty minutes chewing the fat about our works of art, nature and dumpster diving.

We discovered that low these many years, she had a little shop where she made her one of a kind floral arrangements and lived, not 2 miles from where we grew up. Small world indeed! Through the magic of social networking, we have kept in touch and today she suggested I come by her house in Mint Hill and pick up a bunch of silver casserole stands, having remembered that I use them in my jewelry making. Now, it is a Monday and I had planned to go work at the studio, but since I needed to clean up around the house and recover a bit more...I thought, why the Hell not?

I should mention that I am not the most likely visitor you may ever meet; usually I like to be the hostess and my friends come to me. But I come from generations of  "callers", my Granny, my Popaw and my Dad all are the type to drop by friends' places, unannounced for a friendly visit. I've always admired that spontaneous quality and although I may not come by it naturally, it is a quality I wish to cultivate. So off I went!

I am what you might call a "talker" and Paula is too, so I knew it might be a while but having the whole day to do as I please I setted in for a long tour of her grand estate. It was her mother's house and sadly, she passed earlier this year and Paula is doing her best at clearing out. She told me she would be having a tag sale real soon and had lots to get rid of. I asked her what's the difference between a tag sale and a yard sale and she said "It's more expensive" with a sly grin. And boy, what a fine tag sale it will be! She has got wares like you've never seen. It's about like walking through one of the buildings at Scott's Antique Market in Atlanta, just more finery than one can take in all at once.
I was overwhelmed with all the layers of gorgeous things and only had the presence of mind to get just a scarce few shots.
Here is one of her arrangements. I wish I had made a better effort at capturing all the detail. She builds a moss base and painstakingly glues in individual fungi and lichen, many of which she names herself and many of which she knows the Latin name for. She collects and dries her own insects and adds at least one in to everything she makes. This orchid piece includes a cicada, naturally hangin' around on one of the leaves.

 She has a very cute 1950s trailer at the beach-that I can guarantee you is the fanciest one on the NC coast. She went down there with a friend to board it up for the gathering hurricane Irene and while she was at it-just had to go on ahead and rebuild the subfloor and lay out her own herringbone floor. She showed me pictures on her computer, it was all just gorgeous, and sturdy; it weathered the hurricane just fine.  She will go down after a hurricane and take laundry baskets on the beach to collect nature's bounty, she has more horseshoe crabs and every kind of shell and starfish and manner of seaweed than one can shake a stick at. This one here was probably a good 10" long!

 Also like me, she has a weakness for sparkly things. She showed me one walk in closet packed full of intricately hand beaded formal wear, with the familiar thrift store tags still stapled on. Her idea was, maybe she could rent them out to the drag queens, except "they're too big for 'em". The vintage stuff is mostly in smaller sizes. But for $2 to $12 each, they could not be passed up! I told her "If I had come in here when I was a little girl I would have thought I'd died and gone to Heaven!" Actually, I may have said something with more cussing. Paula cusses like a sailor which is one more endearing thing to love about her.

 She'd told me before I got there to just come on in through the garage and find her, and I walked in right in mid disaster! Her plumbing was overflowing and she was shop vac-ing the water off the floors and an exotic bird was greeting the sound of this stranger's voice with an expertly enunciated "Hello" or some such thing to which she would holler "Shut UP!" and when that didn't work "Shut the fuck up!", I couldn't have felt more at home amidst the chaos. She has birds and cats and 55 gallon aquariums and bones and shells and antique Persian rugs and Art deco objets d'art and Mucha prints and vintage millinery all about.
She is talented at upholstery, carpentry, construction, prop making, drawing, painting, gardening, cussing, dumpster diving, animal husbandry, nursing, decorating and God knows what all I'm leaving out. Truly a Jane of all trades and master of many.
Here is a pen & ink she did some time ago.  

 Her mother was a great admirer of the art nuveau artistAlphonse Mucha and my own personal favorite, the art deco artist Erte. She had collected stacks of framed prints of both their work as well as some fine textiles. After she had given me the silver, she then insisted on giving me two Mucha books and a great big gorgeous framed Mucha print, truly an embarasment of riches!

I was probably there for about three hours, not even enough time to scratch the surface. She regaled me with tales of her work, snippets of her childhood in old Charlotte, trials and tribulations of caring for her mother through the end of her life, all while walking me through her mother's grand "fuckin' French Chateau" family compound. All I could think was well, I'm gonna have to become an amateur documentary film maker to capture this National Treasure!  A Southern woman who's skills, charm and generosity of spirit are rivaled only by her uniqueness: she is truly one of a kind.
So...who wants to join me on a project?