I’ve told this story before, but hope I have new readers since that original telling. Here goes. . .
In August of 2007, I was asked to paint an ornament for the White House Christmas tree, representing Sequoia National Park. My first thought was to moan, “Not another freebie”. An invitation to a White House reception would come with the ornament, and I thought, “So? That’ll be expensive”. A friend said I would be nuts to turn this opportunity down, and then Michael said he’d be happy to come to the White House with me. So, I began painting. (You can see that my painting skills have developed since then, but just be polite, okay?)
At the time the call came, I was working on a painting of Sequoia trees in the snow. I got a few little ornaments and tried the same design on one in acrylic paint, but it dried way too fast. I tried oil paint on another, and that was better.
Eventually, a large shiny gold ornament arrived. It looked like glass, and I was afraid of dropping it. I put layer after layer of white paint on it, carefully handling it as if would break, because if that happened, what would I do?? During one of these layers, my thumb dented the thing a little bit and I realized it was plastic! That eased a bit of worry. When it was finished, my neighbor took photos of me holding it so that the size would be evident.
You can see this is no ordinary ornament – it was very big, which made it much easier to paint than my little practice ones.
There was a little difficulty about the reception because no date was given, and various reservations needed to be made. We painters were given a fax number to send any questions, so I faxed a note asking the reception date and how tight the deadline for mailing the ornament was. As I was frantically trying to program in the fax number so a response could be received by my fax machine, the phone rang. “Cabinart, this is Jana”, I answered. “This is Bob at The White House”, came the response. “Hi Bob,” said I, ever so casually. To be continued. . .
2 Comments
Looking forward to the next installment. What an honor to be asked to contribute one of your creations to the White House Christmas Tree. A personal invitation to the WHITE HOUSE!! (Can you tell I’m just a bit jealous?)
P.S. Didn’t we talk about you offering hand-painted Christmas Tree ornaments this year? Next year? Never?
Sharon, we did indeed discuss handpainted ornaments. We may have concluded that the price would be a bit steep for Joe Bag-of-Donuts (or his wife, who would more likely be the customer).
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