A random conversation at the AT&T store last week reminded me of the age of my town and a comment from Karen Jacobs reminded me of how much I take for granted about the abundance within a two mile radius of my house.-- President George Washington visited my high school which was located nearby in 1781!
-- My church was established in 1798.
-- Our Augusta Museum of History, Sacred Heart Cultural Center, The Morris Museum of Art, the main library, James Brown Arena, and the Ronald McDonald House are an easy walk.
-- There's always something fun to observe on the street.
Sometimes there funny ways that all of this comes together. Sometimes it's in gingerbread.
Daughter Kathryn and I decided to create a gingerbread house for the annual history museum fundraiser. Neither of us had done a REAL gingerbread house before. Neither of us knew what we were in for! The resulting entry had to represent a historic structure, be architecturally correct, be made entirely of edible materials and be no larger than 24 inches high/wide/tall.
We made several excursions around town to determine what to use. We agreed on the St. John's 1822 building -- our own church.
We had ideas; we had designs; we had ingredients and we began . . . . Days later, we made the deadline with about two minutes to spare.
We were not embarrassed about our first-time entry although it was not as polished and perfect as the professional ones. We loved hearing that it made people see new things about the architecture of the church. We learned what to do, what not to do and that we need to buy enough to replace what little fingers sneak away. Next year, we'll start earlier and build smaller.
Yes. History and art come together in strange ways. Sometimes it's gingerbread.
NOTE: Our support is gingerbread; the medium is various edible ingredients:
the cement, trim and snow are royal frosting,
windows are fruit roll-ups and crushed lifesavers,
paths are poppy seeds,
shrubbery is cornflakes/ marshmallows/ sprinkles/redhots, candies and gumdrops;
and towers are ice cream cones and striped Kisses.
BushStrokes (c) AAB
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4 comments:
Brava!!!
Annette, I'm impressed with your gingerbread church. I especially appreciated the list of the ingredients you used.
By the way, thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. My resolve this year is to concentrate on "quality" rather than "quantity." In order to do that, I have collected all my "how to paint" books from many years and I'm going through each one to learn something different. So far I've learned a lot and I hope I see something different in my work by the end of the year.
It's great fun!
Thanks for the comments, Karen and Joyce. Actually it was quite a team effort. K. mixed the gingerbread - no easy task - and I cut the shapes. She made all the trim -- windows, shrubs, etc. -- and I stuck everything together with the frosting. It cost us well over $100 and made at least that much for the Museum. It was fun.
Joyce, I have watched your "quality" grow as you have experimented, studied, but mostly painted. You have done some jewels. Can't wait to see what new stuff you will learn.
A
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