Palmettos celebrating the Fourth!

The orchid in a natural cypress stump vase

Somewhere along the line I developed a obsession with “God Art.” To me God Art is anything from nature used for a purpose or simply for art’s sake. Driftwood is one of those natural elements that fascinate me.

It all began when our friend Jake Ingram, a landscape architect and all around cool person created an Andy Goldsworthy-inspired stick beehive sculpture on the trail to the beach where we lived in Little Redfish. Our son Matt was 6 at the time and when he came across it with his father on one of their jogs, he ran all the way back home for some paper to leave a note thanking the artist for the “God Art.” At the time we did not know Jake was the artist and needless to say Jake has gotten a lot of mileage out of retelling this story.   So, you see it’s really all of Jake’s fault that I have this obsession and I blame him squarely for exposing me to the beauty of found bird nest’s, discarded snake skins, jewelry made from raccoon penis bones, (see Gogo jewelry here) and twisted dune sand pines, to name a few of God’s art projects.

In as many as I can of my interior project I will try to convince my client into incorporating some natural elements. If it’s just adding fresh palmetto fronds at the entry or a whole room of pecky cypress paneling, these elements speak to our area’s natural beauty and defines our sense of place.

Over the past few years driftwood has become quite popular and many have found beautiful uses for displaying their beach “finds”.

I have friends who tackle large projects like refinishing whole stump tables, or contractors whom painstakingly white-wax old wood beams and painters that meticulously dry wipe off white wash from entire pecky cypress room.

This may be old news to some of my friends as these light sconces are in my own home, but I feel it’s important to share them here as an example of what necessity can breed. My hand blown art glass sconce shades came loose from their connections and came crashing to the floor; leaving the light fixture “guts” still intact on the wall. What’s a gal to do when your budget is tight and you can not seem to find a suitable replacement? Answer: make it yourself!

I wish my photos were better quality, but hopefully you will be able to imagine and see the meaning of the posts. I guess they are not bad for a iPhone6 edit manager.