Pirate Crayons 101

Resist the notion that your beginnings are not of substance. They are the framework of your life. Whatever you take from, grow from, spit out, keep or leave from your beginning to who you are now  matters. Everything has made you who you are today. 

“There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I said. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said & then he pulled his eye patch down & turned and sailed away.”

This color wash print is part of a collection in our master bath from ‘StoryPeople’, a small family owned business in Decorah, Iowa. While the creator and his spouse have since separated, their work on the puzzles of life and living surrounded by conversations about creativity and community are very similar – and we have decided to start a collection. (Links cited following this post).  

The company started out in a  town in Iowa called Decorah-  “in an area known as the driftless region, in a crater left by a 270 million-year-old meteorite.” The name Decorah means a spirit something more than average – something not to be spoken lightly of. 

I first noticed this artist’s work posted in an obscure spot of the wall of my therapists’s office during a counseling session while we lived in Alabama. I started counseling  when I realized that the whispers of my childhood traumas were still living in my subconscious. I was not willing to give them that much power anymore nor did I want to raise my children under those shadows. The myriad of bits and bobs covering his office space were things to bring folks back from despair is what I thought. I found myself focussing this artist’s prints over and over again. When we moved the therapist gave me a card print from the artist and my own personal collection began. 

I had no idea then how much this ‘spot on the wall’ of an old crowded office would be such a healing starter for me. 

~Lydia Patrick