John, My First Child

Some of us are born with strong creative genes. Both of my boys are creative in their own ways. John got the artist genes from both sides. From and early age, we encouraged his creativity. In his teen years, he was inspired by graffiti and began doing his own exploration. One form of his work took the shape of his faces which he would paint on and cut out of thin plywood. He would scale a telephone pole and hang the face as high as he could and take a Polaroid of the piece on sight. He would then wait to see how long it would survive.

I found out at his celebration of life that his graffiti had made the front page of the Tennessean (newspaper) when he had climbed the Wedgewood Ave. exit sign off I-65 in Nashville and tagged it with his notorious “Downer”. I was completely unaware of this at the time.

On the 5th anniversary of John’s passing (2014), I did a replica of one of his faces in mosaic and put it prominently in the center panel up a telephone pole on the facade of the Bell Buckle Mosaic House. In another area, I had scaled up a contour drawing John had done of his hand.
I was able to place a gardenia in the hand and combine it with another hand to imagine John passing Ashlie her favorite flower as she crossed over after her passing.

Next week I’ll share the work on the mosaic inspired by Ashlie.

Hug your loved ones.

Lynn