While we go about our shopping and gift gathering some of us may find special packages arriving on our front porches. Yes, our expectant family is exquisitely blessed with the arrival of Alexandra Dean Galang, born the 20th of November in New Jersey to her parents Lex and Audrey, my daughter, and Alexandra’s big sister, Sophie. We are all thrilled and delighted to receive the precious gift of this happy, healthy baby girl. May the crèche of her new home be blessed. May her dreams be made sweet and beautiful. May all of Alexandra’s very best dreams come true.

In our jubilation we light our trees and windows. What a marvelous way to announce and laud Alexandra and all those newly arrived and arriving! We push back the winter darkness and make twinkling the paths of their arrival. Our local shop windows do this all so well, especially at Screen Door Antiques, aka Oldies and Oddities, Curiosities Unlimited on the Square’s west side at 331 South Main.

Come with me now and I’ll take you into this enchanting downtown venue owned and operated by Dana and Gary Reed with the help their family. With love for artistic aesthetics of color and texture, Dana brings in the design talents of her more than two dozen vendors and consignors. Together they create a winter dreamscape.

Passing their twinkling tree-filled, holiday windows, we walk into a really good, living, breathing, bigger-than-life storybook overflowing with countless enchantments and wonders. Taking time to have a visit with Dana is one of the best wonders of all!

Raised in the Carolinas in an arty family of five, Dana as a very small girl dreamed of growing up and having her own magical shop—like the romanticized ones she saw in movies—filled with curiosities and collectibles. At age twelve she climbed onto a school bus with her music-minded parents and adventuresome siblings and their two cats. Off they went on their meanderings. Unlike the bygone “grand tours” that covered Europe in a year or two, their “grand tour” followed the coastline covering the southern states over several annums as they stretched out to Arizona then circled back to mid-America and Missouri. Kansas City then Springfield were their chosen ports of call.

While living her own road story (a genre favored by Dickens), Dana read voraciously. Throughout our conversation favorite authors kept popping up and dropping in—Poe and Steinbeck and Dickens among them. With her love for literature and language and story to know Dana became a teacher is no surprise. For twelve years while raising her family, she taught school.

Somewhere over her traveling miles and through her child-rearing years, Dana’s shop keeping dream faded away and was almost completely lost. Eventually she and her husband Gary leased a warehouse on Route 66, filled the space with vintage antiques and sold them. One day on the square in 2016, she pressed her nose against the plate glass window of the Screen Door’s storefront and thought, “I wish I had a shop like this”. They bought the store and then in 2018 they acquired Oldies and Oddities, Curiosities Unlimited (opened originally in 1991) and blended the two ventures.

Late one night, working alone after store hours while setting objects in yet another display installation, Dana realized, “I had a dream when I was a little girl. My dream has come true. I’m living my dream!” Walking into the Reeds’ store is like walking into a dreamy book. There’s so much to see, to discover, to investigate and study. The vast space is set up with nooks and crannies, each a different chapter, each leading to the next and somehow related as they go forward and backward and sometimes veer to one side or the other. They cover many genres: primitive, mid-century, farmhouse, reclaimed and repurposed, vintage, antique and even shabby chic, home décor and gift items.

Dana and Gary and all their staff aspire to be open and friendly, helpful and flexible—the best antique store in the four state area with price points and something special for everyone. They’re succeeding beautifully! I’m enchanted by the art of their storybook venue and by their art-making of Dana’s childhood dream.

This is the season to celebrate the birthing of dreams and tiny babies, too! Dreams really do come true!

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​dreams be made sweet and beautiful. May all of Alexandra’s very best dreams come true.
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In our jubilation David and I are lighting the trees and windows of our home and artCentral, too. What a marvelous way to announce and laud Alexandra and all the newly arrived and arriving and the one who came to a manger so, so many years ago! Let use push back the winter darkness and make twinkling the paths of their arrival as we fill the spaces of our hearts with celebration.

Our beloved artCentral lives in my heart all the year through and especially in this glorious season. Yes! Yes! Yes! Finally! Our new baby has arrived and now another dream is about to come true, too. What we’ve all been waiting for—artCentral’s awesome annual Holiday Boutique and 5x7 Silent Auction is opening! We are grateful for the generous underwriting of Old Missouri Bank that helps make our dream a sparkling reality.
I’m giddy with anticipation! I can’t wait to see you come up our drive and see Hyde House so spectacularly, elegantly festooned. Get ready to slip on your coat, grab your wallet and be first in line when the Boutique’s welcoming green door opens. Help us fulfill our mission to work on behalf of art and artists in Carthage and beyond. Your support makes a difference! Come shop with us and place your bids for one or more of the amazing artist-donated small canvases in our Silent Auction.
• November 29th, Thursday, 5-8 pm, is the Holiday Boutique Preview, Silent Auction launch and your first shopping opportunity.
• November 30th, Friday afternoon and evening, 3-8 pm, your shopping and Silent Auction bidding times continue.
• December 1st, Saturday, 9 am-4 pm, is morning and afternoon shopping with the Silent Auction bidding concluding at 3:00 pm.
You’ll be amazed at the plethora of artist-created gift items our regional artists have here for your choosing. Glass artist extraordinaire Jane McCaulley of Carl Junction offers her charmingly colorful glass ornaments. From Neosho Lee Ann Jack is bringing her exquisite woven bookmarks, and award-winning Dustin Miller is bringing his magical art prints, cutting boards and coasters, as well as small paintings.
Of Springfield Wayne Pycior has exquisite native American drawings, and Ann Butts has photo enhanced note cards, note pads, trivets and much more for your shopping pleasure. Becky Golubski of Pierce City will have art pillows and mugs and small paintings. From Oronogo and Mount Zion Illinois, Chadan Tomlin of Empire Market fame, has clay creations including mugs and vases and jars, and Wayne Walker has photographic offerings.
Charming fiber creations of hats and scarves, hand-built clay angels and much more will be offered by Joplin artists, Brenda Hayes and Christina Lorenzen and Todd Williams. Also from Joplin artists April Davis-Brunner, Mary L. Parks and Debbie Reed you’ll discover irresistible giftable treasures.
From Carthage you’ll find: beautiful color pencil created note cards by Lora Waring; photographer Koral Martin’s ornaments, mugs, cutting boards and coasters; quilter Barbara Montague’s and Ruth Potter’s quilted originals; talented gallery docent Emily Rose’s lovely rosaries; delightful pocket-friendly selections by graphic artist Teri Y. Diggs; and, of course, my own prints and cards from my own original paintings.

Featured again this year, in addition to artCentral artist creations, are artCentral’s signature potted and elegantly bowed scarlet amaryllis planted to bloom at the peak of the holiday festivities. Each limited edition amaryllis, modestly priced at twenty-five dollars, is presented in a sparkling container. Perfect for your own home, these beauties make lovely gifts for everyone on your list and support artCentral’s work on behalf of art and artists
Remember, dreams really do come true when you: 
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*Buy local.
*Buy handmade.
*Buy from people you know.
*Buy from self-employed.
*Remember, the big stores don’t do a jig when they make a sale.
*Make someone jig this year.
*Put smiles on the faces of everyone on your gift list!
*Shop artCentral’s Holiday Boutique and Silent Auction.
*Then watch our artists do their happy jigs when you make their dreams come true!

The Silent Auction is a Christmas miracle happening for the benefit of our unique non-profit arts organization and our mission to promote, exhibit, teach and foster the appreciation of fine arts in our community. I’m blissed with the unselfish generosity of our accomplished artist contributors, for all Silent Auction proceeds raised by these artists will go toward artCentral’s work and programming on behalf of art and artists throughout southwest Missouri.

Don’t miss this once-a-year opportunity to select fine art and support the arts and artists. Bid (starting as low as $5), purchase and take home one or more of these truly amazing artworks from the hands of artCentral’s awesomely talented artists—our marvelous constellation that includes international art stars, regional luminaries and emerging artists just beginning to twinkle. Each of these artists is shining at their very best through their Silent Auction gems.

Even mega star Andy Thomas is making the time to contribute a Silent Auction treasure. What is he painting this year? I’m eager to discover! Two years ago his canvas depicted the passion of a rising up stallion. Last year his canvas brought us the image of the jolliest Santa I’ve ever seen. For both these small works the bidding was vigorous and artCentral was made sustainably stronger by the dollars Andy brought in to support our work.
 
As you likely know, Andy was recently publicly recognized and praised by our country’s President and consequently made known around the world as “the painter of presidents”. In spite of his jettison into the highest heights, Andy remains our beloved and always modest local artist super hero. Even cast into the bright lights of international media coverage, our home-boy-made-famous remains true and his work ethic uncompromised. Though he’s been hard pressed to guard the sequestered studio hours he values, he’s committed to spend the time needed to create yet another Silent Auction treasure. Thank you, Andy!

Thank you! goes out to all our artCentral artists who are stepping up to make this year’s Silent Auction the best ever. The newest members of our board of directors, Jane Ballard and Jason Shelfer, are signed up to contribute their talents. Former board member Helen Kunze again shows her joy in her warmly painted duet of pomegranates titled “Pom Poms”. Former board member Brenda Sageng will also contribute a canvas. My own, “If the Shoe Fits”, wire on canvas, will be included, as will be the “Tiny Dancer” rendered in oil by artCentral’s prepitor (art handler), my husband David Greenwood-Mathé. The shimmering old-masters beauty of Karolee Blanchard’s “Spring Iris” will bring tears to your eyes.

Volunteers extraordinaire Lora Waring and Emily Rose will have their 5x7’s on offer. Lora’s “Fistful of Flowers” is a brilliant bouquet created in color pencil. Emily’s “Golden Nautilus” is painted in oil. Chris Raredon is donating a charming rendering of a precious puppy. Many more Silent Auction contributing artCentral member artists and friends are putting the finishing touches on their canvas creations.

This year’s 5x7 Silent Auction onsite bidding begins at Hyde House at 5:00 pm Thursday, November 29th at the Holiday Boutique Preview. Bidding closes at 3:00 pm, Saturday December 1st.

Treat yourself to the ultimate experience in happy holiday shopping for your loved ones, friends, teachers and business associates. Mark your calendars now for November 29th and 30th and December 1st. Admission is free for all three Holiday Boutique days.

Plan to visit artCentral’s elegant Hyde House filled with beauty, inspiration and one-of-a-kind 5x7 canvases and pocket-friendly presents.

• November 29th, Thursday, 5-8 pm, is the Holiday Boutique Preview, Silent Auction launch and your first shopping opportunity. 

• November 30th, Friday afternoon and evening, 3-8 pm, your shopping and Silent Auction bidding times continue.

• December 1st, Saturday, 9 am-4 pm, is morning and afternoon shopping with the Silent Auction bidding concluding at 3:00 pm.

 HAPPINESS RUNS IN A CIRCULAR MOTION 

David, my artist-musician husband, is a walking encyclopedia of songs. He can instantly call up lyrics he sang and played fifty years ago. All I have to do is give him a phrase. He picks up his guitar and the words and cords flow as memories poetically unwinding.

If I sing “happiness runs”, David responds with my favorite lines penned and released in 1969 by the talented, Scotsman Donovan:
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Happiness runs in a circular motion
Thought is like a little boat upon the sea
Everybody is a part of everything anyway
You can have everything if you let yourself be.

Practicing the art of happiness is on my heart every day. David and I begin by setting our tone with happy, spoken intentions, the ringing of our Tibetan singing bowl and a bit of our own singing. Early mornings, after David leaves for his day job, I take Lasyrenn our Aussie pup to the Carthage square where we practice happiness together and do her social training. While I go inside Mother Road Coffee, she waits patiently outside tethered to a bench hand-crafted by shop owner Ed Hardesty. Returning with a cup of ice for Lasyrenn and my floral thermos filled with steaming red berry Rooibos tea for me, we settle in to practice our greetings as customers arrive for cups of warm beverages and a tasty breakfast wrap or pastry.

When approaching people ask me, “How are you today?” mostly I answer with my favorite mantra “I’m happy!” There is great truth in the wisdom: “You get what you think about and what you speak.” I’ve learned even if my day feels a little “off” because I’ve encountered an unexpected bump or I have something worrisome on my mind, when I declare, “I’m happy!” I have the greatest chance of getting to happy faster.

At almost fifteen months old, our Aussie lives in a perpetual state of exuberant happiness. While she’s still refining her art of saying “good morning”, mostly she remembers to sit, even though her people-loving instinct is to jump up with kisses to show her pleasure at seeing old friends and meeting new ones, too. Of course, when photographer Koral Martin walks up from her KOKA gallery just down Main Street, Lasyrenn just looses all sense of learned etiquette. She wiggles her backside so hard her whole body vibrates, as she nuzzles and presses into Koral’s caressing hands and delighted laughter. She keeps wiggling until she melts and rolls herself over for one of Koral’s blissful belly rubs. These two have a happiness thing for each other!

There’s a post going around on Facebook that goes like this:
Happiness is the new rich.
Inner peace is the new success.
Health is the new wealth.
Kindness is the new cool.

Yes, all the good stuff begins with happiness. We know the happiness and richness of life when we enjoy the inner peace, health and kindness that bring us success, wealth and cool.

I experience this circularity of happiness every day as executive director-curator of artCentral where I’m collaborating with my board of directors and our amazing bevy of artCentral artists as together we create the magical happiness that is our Holiday Boutique and 5x7 Silent Auction set for November 29th and 30th and December 1st.

Already Jackie Boyer, board president, and board member Jane Van Den Berg are festooning our elegant Hyde House with the red and green and twinkling lights that make our hilltop sparkle and glow. While our artists put final touches to their unique gift items to be offered for your shopping pleasure, board members Jane Ballard, Betsy Flanigan, Lonnie Heckmaster, Doug Osborn, Lee Pound, Jason Shelfer and Gail White are making their share of happy magic. They’re preparing our signature potted and bowed amaryllis for your purchase while they schedule volunteers, get the word out through the media that reaches you and stir up delectables for your sampling pleasure. When you see these imaginative, happy magic makers out and about beyond artCentral, please join me in saying “thank you”.

Mark your calendars now: November 29th and 30th and December 1st for artCentral’s Holiday Boutique and 5x7 Silent Auction. Happiness will fill your heart and set the tone for your holidays when you drive up Hyde Hill and walk through artCentral’s welcoming green door to find an artfully perfect, unique gift for everyone on your shopping list.
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In the meantime remember the “Art of Quilting” exhibition gracing the gallery walls of artCentral at Hyde House remains on view through November 18th during weekend gallery hours: Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 5:00 p.m. and Sundays, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. For more information call (417) 358-4404.

Yes, our gusty breezes have done their best to tease the lingering clusters from our magnificent maple trees. Gentle showers have twirled them down and added them one-by-one to the multitude of shimmering leaf carpet littering our lawns like nature’s best confetti. Soon we’ll hear old winter’s song, though I’m so, so reluctant to see this season go.

​Have we ever had a more gloriously colorful autumn? To drive through Carthage—down Grand or Garrison Avenue or almost any street or even any alley—is like traveling through a movie set that’s decorated to saturate our senses. On sunny days the glow has been dazzling. On cloudy days the wet tree trunks have looked like sturdy, blackened, upright columns supporting crowns of glistening dazzlement. Reds in crimson, scarlet and aubergine. Yellows from pale lemon to dandelion to bright and burnished golds. Oranges and coppers to make our eyes pop. This year the vibrant palette of our trees has been more resplendent than ever!

What shameless glory! What magnificent showing off has unfurled for our delight! Mesmerized and distracted into a state of sustained, low level delirium, I’m almost disoriented. I have so, so much to do to get ready for the coming twirl of the holidays just ahead, and yet I’ve been endlessly inclined to play hooky, as though my life depends on running outdoors to plunge into the beauty swirling all around us. When my husband, David, comes home to tell me he has the luxury of a couple of unexpected days off, I chorus with him, “Let’s use this time to make art and have fun!” We do. We give ourselves a stay-cation and follow the flow of our creative impulses.

Filled up and brimming with the good fortune and joy of our free time to-spend-as-we-please, I want to use some delicious moments to reach down into my little purse of words and images. I want to use them to tell the world that we live in a land of awesome amazement—a wonderland of wonderment. I want to share our abundance with everyone, and so I go out with David to meander about to look and sniff and see. I want to photo document the gifts we find and post them on facebook for all to savor. I do.

I photo and post and the world responds. Julie Yokey, director of our Carthage Library, is delighted with my photos of our autumn afternoon in Ma Chéri Amour, our beat up old john boat, floating along the colorfully, reflective shoreline of her beloved Lake Lamar. My facebook friends in Florida and California message me, “We don’t have your colors here. Please share more of yours there.” I do. Sharing makes my heart sing as I say my good-bye-ing to this gorgeous Carthage autumn and turn my attention to the approaching delights of winter, just around the corner.

Already I’ve started celebrating on my easel, for I’ve just received a lovely commission to make a painting on canvas of a grand old Carthage house that was my patron’s home. The best news is her desire to have the depiction rendered to reflect the Christmas season. Lucky me. Just what I need to focus my attentions away from fallen leaves and onto the bright reds of poinsettias and amaryllis, the deep greens of hollies and the twinkling lights festooning the doorways of the magical yuletide we’re approaching.

Of course all my creative, artistic urges always circle round and lead me back to artCentral where at Hyde House magic happens the whole year through—most especially at this changing-of-the-seasons time as our physical world dramatically transforms from the stunning lushness of autumn’s colorful abundance to the subtle serenity of winter’s beautifully bare landscape. While twirling leaves finish falling to serenely blanket our campus outside, behind artCentral’s green door of hospitality exciting preparations are unfolding for our fourth annual Holiday Boutique and 5x7 Silent Auction featuring an enchanted plethora of artist created gift items.

A recent post I made on artCentral’s facebook page tells best of my mounting anticipation:
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This Christmas…
*Buy local.
*Buy handmade.
*Buy from people you know.
*Buy from self-employed.
*Remember, the big stores don’t do a jig when they make a sale.
*Make someone jig this year.
*Put smiles on the faces of everyone on your gift list!
*Shop artCentral’s Holiday Boutique and Silent Auction.
*Then watch our artists do their happy jigs!