adding painted details
Climate Action KC commission, in limbo due to the pandemic
old pharmacy bottles from Mary's great aunt and grandfather (Rosa Nigro & Brother), cleaned up, refilled with my 'meds' - marbles, springs, ball bearings, rubber balls, dice, Christmas lights & secular light bulbs, dominoes, chess pieces, tiny screws, pencil stubs, crayons, matchbox cars, golfball cores, and more - some original contents remain: hundred-year-old cinnamon, elm root, caraway seeds, fennel, and tincture of rhubarb root
glass labels, hand-painted on the reverse, in abbreviated, sometimes misspelled Latin, lids that didn't come off without a fight, but might reward with handwritten notations of the price per ounce around their rims. the cinnamon (PULV. CINNAM. 20¢ per oz.) still smelled fresh, and its dust escaped in thin genii-like arabesques
the fresh scent of hundred-year-old anise was like a time machine, connecting Mary to a grandfather she never knew - the pharmacist in his Italian immigrant community during the last pandemic as she's a school nurse during this one
yet more shelf supports standing in for car fins - I wanted to make it look rusty and my son Sam suggested "teal"
red thread, red zipper
zipper/fly, GET IT?!
more shelf supports and wood scraps no sane person would have saved
two airplanes from a hotel hanger
the goat head on this walking stick started years ago, the eyes and nose placement determined by knots, resulting in the nose pointing one way, eyes looking another
an electric drill (from brother Jim), a solid workbench (from brother Mike), an anvil (crafted from a piece of railway iron - from brother Jerry), a handsaw (from neighbor, Ellen Palmgren), a "Rotozip" (from brother Tom), and some carving knives (bought 'em myself)...
my tools are minimal. skills, even more so
these first entries on this new (thanks to nephews Paddy & Conor McGee!) site are what I'm calling my pandemic portfolio - working from home has allowed time-gaps to complete old projects and start new work
this aero-plane started with a scrap from an upright piano and some shelf supports - the body and wings
