# 21 Rolled Pleasure

Walking the beach here on Marco Island never fails to amaze me. As you crunch along over billions of rolled shells it is astounding to see the vast variety under foot. I'm forever struck by the subtle color schemes, textures and shapes that exist. Mother Nature's bold as well as soft tones from her harmonious color pallet lays comfortably over a huge variety of sensual shapes as varied as the snow flakes failing from the sky. Like everything else in nature these gifts from the sea inspire some sort of artistic expression. We can never duplicate the complexity, diversity, balance and harmony that exists all around us. The best we can do is try and interpret the intuitive responses that our senses are picking up. With that said..I've tried to create the long lost pair from a tiny beautifully colored shell I recently found. I've use three different soft colored gels to compliment the color scheme on the shell. These three layers of color are my attempt to create the subtle power of it's beautiful mate.

#20 Giddy over Gidean

My 87 year old mother has a fascination with the wilder side of life. For years she has dragged my father and any guest or relative visiting them in Florida to Goodland on Marco Island where the Sunday crowd consists of a lot of bikers. The colorful crowd congregate for drink, merriment, and to participate in a wild dance known as the Buzzard Stomp. Also for years she has been a huge fan of Bobby Gidean a very gifted key board player who can play a mean honky tonk piano. She loves hearing him play and whenever she catches his gig she requests and he plays with fingers flying, her favorite, the Alabama Jubilee, a wild ragtime song.

This piece is about Bobby. The ethereal photo in the center is of him at the piano. He is surrounded by red musical notes that are big and small and two rhythmic key boards. It is a real hoot for me to see Mom, Bobby's number one fan, tap and clap as he joyfully cuts loose.

#19 Frosty Frawn

We are in Florida in early January in a dreadful deep freeze. Waking up to temperatures in the mid-thirties that may if we are lucky climb to the low 50's by the end of the day. They say that a natural oscillation process of arctic air is stuck over the Arctic and part of Greenland causing the stalled air to create extreme cold temperatures and excessive precipitation in the form of snow or rain to happen all across the Northern Hemisphere. Here in Florida this phenomenon hasn't happened since the 1950's and in the history of recorded temperatures it has never been this cold for this long.

Jacob, my daughter's partner found this palm frawn which when I actually looked closely at it resembled a moving female figure. I decided to add wire palm trees and gel icicles to her neck to enhance her outfit.

#17 Hunger Strike

The Spruce Bark Beetle loves to eat Spruce trees in the boreal forests over vast areas of the northern hemisphere. Insect infestations are a normal phenomenon but on occasions when the circumstances are just right a population explosion of a particular species can take place resulting in great devastation. The Spruce Bark Beetle thrives in warmer temperatures that are now taking place in northern woodlands. Global warming has raised the temperature just enough to cause an explosion of this hungry creature. Millions of acres of Spruce trees are blackened and decimated by this tiny beetle that is only the size of a grain of rice.

The three beetles on this stick of wood are large to show the population explosion of this species. The stick, trunk of the tree, is bare except for the top which only has a few branches left, to show the almost complete destruction by these hungry beetles.