Art Story: 1992

On to 1992!
This was a difficult year in my life that I would rather forget. With that said however, this is something I need to get out so that I can move on to the future! I can easily say that the best thing to happen during this year was the birth of my youngest son Nathan in November.

I'm going to make this a quick rehash, because it was not a year I like to remember!

In a nutshell, (maybe a little longer)
January; evicted from our house with nowhere to go; moved across Tennessee to McMinnville to live in a gutted out mobile home with NO indoor plumbing or anything else for that matter;

February; found out I was pregnant with my third son; terrible morning sickness probably caused by the fact that I had to empty out the porta potty everyday!

March-June; husband continued to stubbornly go out selling my prints rather than getting a job that could actually support us; sales of art barely fed us; luckily the landlord felt sorry for us and didn't charge us any rent for the gutted out mobile home (particle board floors!); finally had running water after husband figured out (after my bugging him for months) that it would only cost $30 for the town to hook up the water line! Talk about living like hillbillys!! This is where I worked on my first series of Native American drawings, I wanted out of this place and figured the only way out was to make some great art! My 'Little Dancer Boy', 'Brave on Horse', 'Mother and Papoose', Woman Dancer', 'Sitting Bull' and 'Bronc' came out of this period. We took a trip in May to New Mexico to sell these prints and blew the engine on the car! He ended up staying with his parents for a month in Las Cruces while it was being fixed! I went back to Tennessee to relieve my brother of babysitting duty and spent the month having to walk into town (about 2 miles) to go to the store and use the phone because we didn't have a phone or a second car! Picture a pregnant woman walking down the side of a rural country road with a 6 year old and a one year old, carrying shopping bags. I could only carry a couple of bags with help from my oldest son because my one year old couldn't walk that far and I had to carry him too! So, we had to go every couple of days.

June; thanks to my husband's wonderful business practices, a man showed up at the trailer from Clarksville, TN to collect money owed by my husband; since we were broke, he took some of my original drawings; sheriff showed up to arrest my husband for a couple of bad checks written for food and gas on the premise that there would be money to cover them; He always did count his chickens before they hatched! So, rather than take care of the problem, we hit the road!

July; It took me a month to convince my husband that we should just give up and go back to New Mexico where we had family to help us out. We lived in the car for that month, renting cheap motel rooms when we had the money, sleeping in rest areas when we didn't. By this time I was 6 months pregnant and hadn't seen a doctor yet! So I finally called my dad to borrow the money to get us across the country to New Mexico and home we went!

August; Finally back in New Mexico, found an old mobile home for rent that we could afford, husband finally found a job! I thought I was in heaven in this 2 bedroom 12' x 50' trailer, after living in the gutted one! This place actually had linoleum and carpet AND indoor plumbing; I didn't care that it was 30 years old! It's amazing what you can live with when you are depressed and beaten down!

September-November; depressed and pregnant I spent most days watching tv; November 6th my beautiful youngest boy, Nathaniel was born; Unfortunately, he had to be kept in ICU for a week because of respiratory problems (probably from lack of prenatal care!) So I spent the week traveling back and forth to the hospital to see/feed him. The funny part of all this was that Nate was born weighing in at 9lbs 10 oz. so he looked like a giant compared to all the little premie babies in ICU! They had a hard time finding an icubator head cover that would fit him!

December; The year ended on an ok note with Christmas being spent with family and friends.

So, in a huge nutshell, that was 1992! whew!

Next up, 1993.