Magnolias and Strange Fruit « Cheaper than Therapy

Cottonmouth and Magnolia

Cottonmouth and Magnolia graphite on Arches watercolor paper 48 inches x 25 inches

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: Grandmother

The “Cottonmouth and Magnolia” drawing is finished and in the hands of an art photographer who is capable of making great digital images (not my forte). This new drawing is about my connection to my grandmother, which is, oddly, one of the few things that I have trouble articulating. I am rarely at a [...]

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: Namesake

To think a whim and a prompt saved the specific details of the lost life of a soldier – details that otherwise would have been destroyed long ago, along with the reassuring and insightful words delivered by a chaplain. [...]

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: Kudzu

I think that I shall never see Kudzu as lovely as a tree. And if don’t I pull the Kudzu down, There will be no trees left in this town.

Sincerest apologies to Joyce Kilmer and Ogden Nash.

I love kudzu…probably because I don’t have to deal with it anymore. A horticultural experiment [...]

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: Howard Finster (Part Two)

Serpent in the Wilderness

Part two with more images from Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden: these photos were also taken in April of 1990 with my beloved 35mm camera (Pentax Super Program).

Those ubiquitous telephone line insulators – my great aunt had a pile of hundreds of these in the woods behind her house [...]

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: Howard Finster (Part One)

If you were an art student or indie rock fan growing up in the South during the 1980s, it is very likely that you made a pilgrimage to Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia.

Cover of "Reckoning" – a painting collaboration with Howard Finster & Michael Stipe

Finster started the four-acre garden [...]

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: Biggin Church

Sometime during the early 1990s, I was driving a friend from “Up North” to visit some favorite landmarks throughout Georgia when she observed that Southerners “never tear anything down” – the barns, old houses, abandoned gas stations – everything is left to fall to the elements or to kudzu. I thought about this for a [...]

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: Salem Black River Church

I was a bit of an arty goth girl in my teen years; this was before there was a word for “goth” or a standard dress code for the style, so my fashion was more of a mix of flowery dresses, black hair, silver skull-themed jewelry and Victorian granny boots. As part of my artsy-thing, [...]

Magnolias and Strange Fruit: The Reverend Ruth

“Technique can be taught, art can’t. Artists are born. They’re born in all the varying circumstances of society. They are privileged or not, supported by their family or not, and they move to a place where artists are accepted or they don’t. Many live the life we all recognize from fiction as the Artist’s Life. [...]