What an adventure we had this morning! Our friends Jerry and Rose Payne invited us to their home, Tick Hill, so that Jim might photograph some uncommon butterflies, Giant Yucca Skippers. We did see the target insect and some other species, but the highlight of the trip for me was the bottle farm. Well, that and fascinating conversation with Jerry.
We have a bottle tree in our yard, and so far, it’s done its job of warding off evil spirits. Jerry does not have a bottle tree, he has a bottle forest – made of 135 trees and counting. That’s more than 10,000 bottles. Amazing!
Jerry can tell you a lot about bottles. He knows which companies use recycled bottles, which ones make brown bottles, or green bottles, or blue bottles, or frosted, or painted. He knows spikes, too. Winds at his place will cause bottles to pull the spikes out of the post if they are less than 6” long. The spacing of the spikes is determined by the bottles he’s planning to use and the intended final design.
As a child in Virginia, Jerry was fascinated by bottle trees he saw on his walk to school. His forest is a tribute to that memory and to individuals in his life. There is a tree with colored bottles entwined much like a barber’s pole: a salute to his uncle who wielded clippers for a living. Another has only bottles from the monastery where a friend resides. Yet another holds pickle jars, all from a neighbor whose children eat a LOT of pickles. There are trees comprised only of brown beer bottles, or frosted wine bottles, or medicine bottles, or tiny bottles, or bottles dug from a particular location.
As we walked, our conversation included weather, butterfly behavior, plant identification, educational systems, life in south Georgia, mutual acquaintances from years past, and the history of Catholicism in Virginia. We exchanged stories of family experiences and art pursuits. We learned more about each other’s educational backgrounds and professional experiences.
Jerry’s folk art is delightful and we were fortunate to bring home some treasures today. Jerry paints bits of tree limbs and roots that he finds lying about as well as shells and bones from animals. There were some roots and branches whose shapes said to Jerry they were a chicken, a whippoorwill, and a tadpole. Here you see the tadpole.
And this piece is one of a series where he painted insects on tortoise shells. This one, Water Strider Flotilla, includes images of those known as pond skimmers, water striders, Jesus bugs, water skaters, or pond skitters.
Time spent with Jerry and Rose is a treasure in itself. Rose was away for part of the morning, so our visit with her was abbreviated this time.
Dr. Payne is an amazing person whose breadth of knowledge seems neverending. He is best known in some circles for his ground breaking work in forensic science. In the 1960’s, he detailed the changes that occur as insects are introduced to decomposing pig carcasses. A documentary film has been made about his life and a more complete biography is here.
And for those who read this blog hoping to see a quilt of some description, here is one of my latest art pieces. A butterfly photo is relevant, don’t you think? This is Swallowtail in the Briarpatch. A photo of Jim’s I printed on silk fabric, quilted using free motion machine stitching with silk thread, then framed it with a batik and some cottons.
The stalk of the flower and some leaves are stitched with a heavier rayon thread. The finished piece is mounted on foam core and measures 11” x 14”.
My mother entertained little girls by cutting paper dolls from paper. She would fold the newspaper or catalog pages accordion style, then cut one-half of a girl in a dress. All of us squealed as she unfurled the string of girls holding hands.
I finally learned to do the folding and cutting for myself, even to change the cuts to make strings of little boys, or of girls linking hands up, then down, then up again.
Later it occurred to me that one of the granddaughters might like a parade of little girls like she once played with in paper. I happened to have fabric from five dresses she had worn as a toddler. I cut a pattern so that five girls would fit on a vintage doily I found, and a memory was rekindled. I layered the dolls and doily on a bit of indigo dyed linen and used machine quilting to add dimension. Buttons from those five little dresses were used as embellishments and to secure the layers to a bit of a vintage cross-stitched quilt. The finished piece measures 17” x 16”. 
