My favorite things 37

One of the nice things about being a member of a co-op gallery is that you get to spend time hanging out with the art while you do your shifts of gallery-tending.  After I joined Pyro Gallery last fall, we had a pre-holiday show in which all the 22 member artists displayed work.  During my shifts I noticed that some of the art was definitely priced to sell -- perhaps it had been sitting in the studio so long that the artist didn't want to bring it home again.

I was drawn to a limestone sculpture by Mike McCarthy which looked vaguely pre-Columbian, and when we held a 10 percent off sale the week before Christmas, I pounced!  I wanted a sculpture for our front yard, something that would hold up to the weather, too small to be noticed from the street and too big to be easily stolen if a miscreant did spot it.  This one filled the bill.

When Mike brought the statue over, it was the dead of winter and this part of the front garden was just dirt.  My husband the gardener thought it was pretty much plant-free, although he wasn't sure what might come up again in the spring.

We sited the statue so it gave the big eye to people walking up the path, but also to those coming down off the porch.

As the spring wore on, daffodils came and went, sometimes crowding the statue on one side while leaving it empty on another; obviously no professional landscaping had occurred in the testing of this product.  But in August all of that changed -- brilliant zinnias came up to the left, scarlet sage came up to the right, framing my pre-Columbian guy in color.  He guards my front walk with a stern, all-seeing eye (and peeks into the guest room window with his back eye if you open the curtains).