So it's been a long time since I posted here. I think we probably should do this more often. Maybe we'll try but in my defense it's been a little crazy.. 

2024 has been a wonderful year. It's been a hard year. Phil and I've been making boxes for well over 50 years. We've sold in markets. We've sold online. We have sold to galleries and museum shops.  We have traveled to do fine art and craft shows.. We sold in our own brick and mortar gallery. But you know the essence of who we are and what we do is found in a market.  

Markets are real.  Markets are natural. Markets fill basic human needs - Connection, community and commerce. 

Markets are where commerce happens, but commerce is not the m ost important part of it.

Markets are a comfortable casual community gathering space. Markets are familiar..  There is comfort seeing friendly faces..That is important. Community is a human thing. I'm sure other species have levels of community. I see my pet cats and   dogs are definitely a community. It's a small community but they they have their personal and communal space. They communicate. With each other. With us. 

Markets are a place of connection. You might think that's the same as community, but it's not. You can have a community of strangers that connect because they enjoy seeing something unusual or they share a moment of serendipitous  intimacy. A shared "aha" moment. We see visitors connect in our booth at the Chattanooga market. And we'll say where are you from? And one will say, "I'm from Chicago..." and then another person on the other side will hear and say, "Oh my gosh. I'm from Chicago!" And they oonnect.  

Markets are a place of commerce. They allow people like us who really don't fit anywhere to make a little and pay our bills and live our lives. They give us access and the ability to share and show our work. We we're not real egotistical about it. You know it is what it is. We do our best. We do original work - nothing that can be mass-produced. 

That's where gratitude comes in, gratitude that we are able to do this. 

Phil and I've been making these boxes a long time. And they're all different every year. Who knows what they'll evolve into next year, but suffice to say that we're already working on it that we're already planning for next year.

I'm not real good at the website. I'm going to work on it again. I changed it up a little bit this morning. I'm sorry if people have trouble checking out. I'm going to try and find somebody to help me with that but we do our best. 

Philip He's in his 80th year. I'm in my 77th. Isn't that remarkable? I mean who would have thought anyone would live this long and still be productive and still be creative and still be able. We are so very very fortunate. We are grateful every moment of every day. 

We are so grateful that we have come back into the Chattanooga markets. We do the aquarium March through October. That's the River market and then  do the pavilion market from April through November and next year we will be going to do a Holiday market in Knoxville. So yep we are resting. It's been a hard long year and we are cleaning and organizing, and we are looking forward never backward. 

Mostly, we're grateful for you. We're grateful to be connected to you. We're grateful to be able to communicate with you. We're grateful to be able to share our work with you. And we're grateful for the Chattanooga market