Why?

Lady Bird and the crying Indian every 1st lady has her pet project. "Lady bird" Johnson was no exception. She made her biggest impact on our nation from '63-'69. A nature lover, her brainchild was a campaign against litter. A poignant tool of that campaign, was the "crying Indian" a PSA commercial of that era (forever etched in many a boomer's memory!) My 1st art car, the "Litter-bug" was a visual pun, an homage to nature, and to that great lady, Lady bird.

Time for a change seeing a beach in South Florida sprouted with cigarette butts (and a toddler tottering amongst them) was an early inspiration for my 1st car. After a decade of life as my "every day driver," local spectacle, and personal campaign against Litter, the "bug" earned her retirement spot in a garage in the "country."

Free at last being free to drive her occasionally (and keep her out of inclement weather) gave me the privilege to work anew on a slight variation on the theme of litter. Work began in 1999 to change her into a canvas against the most insidious form of litter imaginable, cigarette butts!

Lemons from lemonade what is an artist's job? To take something and make it their own. To see things as shape, raw materials and texture. To say something about who we are, what we see, what we love. I began exploring the cigarette but as just that.

Payback to "make even" for any filter I threw down as an everyday smoker.

A reminder not to start up again.

No one gets outta here alive and that's the truth. In reality we just get a short time to say or do something with our lives. To make a + impact. To create something that will last beyond us. Most of us leave children, I'd like to leave a clean beach for them to walk on :-)

A tribute to my favorite aunt, artist and sculptor, Marsha Farley and to friends and strangers whose lives have been affected by smoking related illnesses; for those who didn't stop (or stopped too late) and those who loved them.