My Collection of Willow Tree

                            Willow Tree

Willow Tree was introduced in January 2000, the first year I took up playing the flute. I was a pretty good flute player, mainly because I enjoyed it. An old family friend, Barry Gray, who at the time was the current owner and operator of Peavey Melody Music, sold me my first flute. He told me to handle it as if it were glass. The music store was opened in 1945, by J.B. 'Mutt' Peavey, father of Peavey Electronic founder and CEO Hartley Peavey. The upstairs of the music store served as Hartley's first home for his company, and where he bulit his first amplifier, when he was a young entrepreneur. See where dreams can take you? For Hartley, it was around the world and back again. It was my dream to play in a symphony, but my dream did not come true, though I did perform two years for Christmas productions and a several times at church. It was during one of these performances I received my first Willow Tree of a young girl playing the flute. My mother was always thoughtful and gave appropriate gifts, so when looking back there would be a story behind the gift. My second was a young girl dressed in blue sitting with her leg drawn to her chest - a dancer. My collection started to grow from that first Willow Tree of a young girl playing the flute. I wanted my collection to represent the life I knew, as a child, a teenager and a young women. My mother and I have always had a close bond, unbreakable, that even in death, we will be connected. I never questioned my mother's love for me. For me, there is no greater love than the love of a mother for her child. My mother has two children, my brother from a previous marriage and myself. I even have three Willow Tree figures that represent the bond between my mother and brother. It is hard to understand how a mother could not love her own children - instead loving herself more. Thankfully, my brother nor I ever had to experience the lack of love from our mother.  The original inspiration for Willow Tree still holds true today: They help us feel close to others, heal wounds, or treasure relationships. These art forms beautifully express love, closeness, healing, courage, hope - all the emotions of a life well lived. The name Willow Tree was chosen to symbolize that which is gestural and beckoning. The figures are columnar in design, like a tree, and often carry natural objects or animals as metaphors for human virtues or qualities - rosemary for remembrance, a bird for healing, flowers for beauty. The sculptures are rendered so as to suggest elegance, simplicity, peace and serenity. Forms reveal their expressions through body gestures only - a tilt of the head, placement of the hands, a turn of the body. Emotions are left to the viewer to discern, which makes them personal and powerful.  Had I not taken up playing the flute, I may have never known the 'sweetness' of the Willow Tree line. I purchased a rosewood shelf to house and display my collection of these figures. They are as beautiful today as the day I received my first one - of a young girl playing the flute. ℰℒℬ - 2011