Meet this Friend...

Once, and this was when she could still see pretty good my mom was walking around my yard looking at my various projects. Lined up along a flower bed were these hose guides to keep you from dragging the water hose over delicate flowers. They were little frogs sitting on a base with a spike protruding the bottom that stabbed into the ground. Mom tripped on one of these, did not fall as she was and still is pretty agile. She look at that frog squatted there and said "What kind of voodoo thing is that?" 

Mom's vision is pretty bad these days and I don't think she notices my "voodoo" things as much anymore. Maybe she just got used to various creations being stuck around in an eccentric manner. Here's a recent voodoo thing and it's story. I don't know what to call him maybe you can suggest something. 

The skull stick, and this thing is about 5' long and he uses an old Christmas stand as a perching place is something I picked up at the Renfest a couple of years ago. Just one of those things, sometimes I need a stick to carry around even though I know it will get me in trouble. 

Those are some kind of belly dancing bells hanging from the ears that I bought in a shop in New Orleans that specializing in Middle Eastern life style stuff. Now before you get all scared and radicalized on me you need to know that there was no daily call to prayer with an Iman running the cash register but merely a staff of patchouli smelling Earth Mamas in swirling dresses who believe that good girls don't shave above the knee. 

The red, yellow, blue and green balls are a maraca thing that brother in law John brought back as a gift from a business trip to Jakarta, Indonesia. I did not ask what his business was there but thanks John. 

Mardi Gras beads are Chinee in origin of course and are really not a part of the art but just the debris from a recent passing party.  

The bells on the back are from the bell museum in Innsbruck, Austria I visited this summer. I have some good pictures from there and plan a blog post on it sometime. 

Hanging as a pig tail of sorts is a Galveston sea shell and a deer vertebra I found in the East Texas river bottoms. 

The swatch of pink that holds some of this stuff together is from a shirt I bought on the beach in Mexico. One of those times a passing vendor, a poor person made you a price and you said, "I don't want it." and he dropped the price and you said "I don't want it." and he came down even more and you bought it because you were afraid you, a rich person were fixing to have to accept a gift from a guy living in a dirt floor hut. It just did not feel right. 

I regret a bit that I have cut the shirt up over the years and used it in art projects that need a splash of color but I have never seen a real Mexican wear a shirt like this and given my extra large sizing anytime I did wear it that was just a whole lot of pink going down the road.       

If you shake the stick it can be played like a musical instrument of sorts. In fact the belly dancing bells are on some of my droning sound cloud recordings. 

When I think about all the things used here I really can't tell you how many years it took me the gather the various parts. Lots of traveling, walking in the woods. 

Because there was so much tripping on the little frog "voodoo" things I eventually pulled them up as delicate flowers were just not going to be a thing for me. I did save them, the frogs, not the flowers. They have potential for reuse as a project like this one day. Everything has potential, use what you have.