Otherworldly Art
This year marks the 10th year I’ve done a painting for Master Lu’s Health Center! Hard to believe it, but I’m only 2 years from having all the animals done for them. This year’s painting was the horse, and I was nervous. The horse is very special to me, so I wanted it to come out just right. I really like the look and feel of it, please enjoy!
Ok, so if you look to the right, you can see Memphis post-surgery. He is doing great and already trying to use the leg the day after surgery; the physical therapists among you should be proud.
Dr. Scott Matheson at Petcare Animal Hospital was fantastic, we highly recommend him for orthopedic surgeries. We went to him because of his experience and because he was willing to engage us in a conversation about options, whereas, the “awesome, board-certified, state expert” didn’t even want to look at the X-Rays with John…those of you who know us can imagine how well that went!
Dr. Matheson did a relatively non-traditional surgery because Memphis had the most arthritis and scar tissue he had EVER seen in 100’s of surgeries. Little dude was almost certainly in constant pain, because his joint was completely over-grown with bone remodeling and scar tissue. Dr. Matheson did his work without cutting the scar tissue all away, since it was attached to the tendon holding the joint in place. Going over his judgment call, we agreed with it, though it was not “by the book.”
Memphis is to walk only for 3-4 days after surgery, so he will be spending a lot of time in his crate because dude was already trying to run up stairs and jump on the couch!
Thanks again to all that have supported and helped through this process.
Here is the little dude last night after surgery. We went to see him. We pick him up Friday the 27th at noon. He looks pretty stoned and scared in this photo, but they tell us everything went well during surgery, and no complications…so now we start recovery.
It seems odd to get so worked up over a pet’s surgery, we admit…but there’s something surprising in being unable to talk to a loved one, even a pet, and explain what is happening. Knowing that they don’t have the full range of verbal skills to understand what is happening to them seems to make this experience more emotional than we expected. It was hard to leave him there overnight, harder to drop him off.
We are glad that he did well and we get to bring him home today. Now the road to recovery. Thank you for all your well wishes. He’s a special little guy.
Memphis The Pug
Full Name: Ralph Memphis Tennessee Blues
So, our little pug, adopted from folks who had to leave the country has a displaced hip and needs hip surgery to reduce his pain.
Memphis is a delightful, if clumsy dog who gets excited about pretty much everything. He has charmed everyone he has met. He loves to run, play, bark at passing anything and likes to make talking noises. He is incredibly snuggly.
Apparently what happens with some dogs is that the hip never completes its formation so as they age, their pain increases. This condition is common in pugs, and Memphis was over-weight earlier in his life, which accelerated the degradation. He is at the point where he limps every morning, stumbles down stairs, falls when running around corners — but is a trooper and just has not lost his enthusiasm. At all.
Unfortunately the surgery is expensive. We are using pain medications to help him in the mean-time while we try to raise the budget for surgery.
To have surgery, and pay for recovery and therapy is approximately $3500.
We simply don’t have the funds. We will be raising money as quickly as possible through extra work, Mary-Kay sales, Art sales and whatever we can do.
In the surgery, they will remove the top part of his bone so that it sits along-side his hip and doesn’t rub against the socket. After surgery, he will need physical therapy to build up the muscles around the joint. Small dogs do very well with this surgery; so long as Memphis’ weight is under control, he should do very well. We have already explored alternative care; physical therapy, drug therapies, dog-acupuncture, glucosamine, and more. Every single professional suggests the surgery for Memphis; his joint is just too far gone for anything else. As you can see from his x-ray, his hip has gotten to the point where pretty much, the bone is rubbing on the bone with every movement, so we feel some urgency to to help him out and give him the surgery that will alleviate his pain.
We know that many of our friends love Memphis, so we wanted to create an opportunity to help out. This isn’t a life-threatening condition, just a chronically painful one.
There is a donate button at the side of this web site and at the bottom of this post. Every little bit can help us grow the fund necessary to ease Memphis’ pain.
One big thing I’ve neglected to share with many people outside of Master Lu’s Kung Fu Studio is my Chinese New Year Animals that I paint for the Studio each year. This year is the Year of the Snake, so that is what the painting was of. I’ve got all of the paintings, including the sketches and ink work before the watercolor goes on, for most of the animals I’ve done thus far. Enjoy!
I had a wonderful art show at The Granite Gallery this past summer with Bill Larsen. His pieces were the paintings, while I brought in pottery and hand-built ceramics. They looked really good together, and thanks to Tamara Burnside, the arrangement in the gallery really complimented all of the work. It was great fun to be able to have a show with my former High School Art teacher!
For my second year of helping with the Thorne Miniature Holiday Exhibit, I was asked to create some paper lanterns for the New Mexico room. Wow! These turned out to be a lot more challenging than I expected them to be. It is very tricky working with paper on that scale… particularly when you want to hand color the paper and get it to bend into those tiny round lanterns. After a lot of experimentation (mostly failures) I was finally pointed in the direction of using rolling papers. It’s pretty funny going into a head shop, describing what type of paper you want to get, and telling them it’s for an “art project.” Gotta give a shout out to the guys at Knuckleheads in Salt Lake City, they were awesome and got all excited about helping me find just the right papers that would work for what I was doing… and loaded me up on a bunch more with fun patterns on them just to help out and be part of the whole creative process. You guys were wonderful!
Okay, so I haven’t done any blog post in forever! I could give lots of excuses as to why… like I’ve been in a total funk with my art for the past year, but we wont get into that. I’ve been working on a commission piece for a while (too long) and have pictures of the miniatures I did for the Chicago exhibit again this last holiday season. I LOVE doing those miniatures!!! I’m going to do a post or two to show what I did for the miniatures in just a sec. Also, I think that the template I’ve been using here for my blog isn’t being updated anymore, so I may be changing it. The designer has another one that I might be switching to… so there might be a revamp and overhaul of my site coming up. We’ll see…
Hi all! It’s been far too long since I’ve given an update on things I’m doing… so here’s a start:
I’ve got some of my single goddess tiles for sale a Crone’s Hollow, a local shop here in Salt Lake City.
I’m working with my sister again for this year’s holiday exhibit of the Thorne Miniatures in Chicago.
I’ve got a couple of private commissions going… more info to come there.
All in all, I’ve been super busy. I’ll be trying to get more images and info uploaded!
On Christmas, the Today Show featured a story about the Holiday Miniature exhibit. My sister is wonderful in the interview, and you even get a couple of glimpses at the menorah! Enjoy everybody.
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/mini-museum-gets-big-makeover/66cmu4a?from=