The Pulpwood Has Built Her NEW Club House!

Dear Pulpwood Queens, Timber Guys, book and art lovers, and those who NEED a clubhouse!

You all when I was growing up in Kansas, every waking minute was spent outdoors. My time of play was building tree houses, forts, and clubhouses, as perfect places to read. My best friend Debbie Teegardin and I were always on the hunt for a secret location. When I went back to college I realized as an older adult I had lost my sense of wonder and imagination. How could I reclaim it? I began through my art and worked whether in printmaking, collage, painting, ceramics or sculpture to do just that! I had to get my childhood mojo back!

When I purchased my little house in the woods that I called Murphy’s Law, (my dear friend and author, Robert Hicks, named his home “Labor in Vain” which was from the Bible and my inspiration), I knew I had found a refuge from a life that had turned into total chaos. Divorce. Been there, done that, wore the shirt, let’s move on. This house began to fuel the flame to fire back up my imagination. I dreamed of a NEW place to work. First, I thought I will build me a treehouse. After much research and book reading, I realized my budget could not create that world at this time. Then I looked at my carport, it had a shed attached to the back. Hmmm, the possibilities.

As you well know, it’s expensive to go back to college. I decided I would not take out loans that I could never repay, I would work as hard as I could to make finished my college degree fly. I am in my last semester and I needed a home studio. I basically had turned my little house into a studio and it was NOT working! Floor to ceiling, art supplies, and finished works were everywhere and I could not move or breath. So I began to look at that carport again, all I needed were some big glass windows and some French doors as I wanted it mostly glass so I could see the world. First a trip to a place that sold either used or unclaimed windows, doors. I found some great buys. Time went by, perhaps a year or more before I found someone to help me flesh out the plan and help me create my art studio. Two brothers, friends of my dear friend and Pulpwood Queen Barbara Deen came and did it all in one weekend. I had the bones. The carport is enclosed and as I type I sit here at a card table looking out at my woods, (the first photo you see in the photos below).

I am in heaven. The squirrels are jumping tree to tree, a woodpecker is busy having breakfast, and the birds are making their sweet calls. I can almost hear the jungle drums in the distance and imagine Tarzan, swinging vine to vine with Cheetah by his side. My imagination is coming back, in flicks and imagery, but it’s coming. I feel like a kid again. This is my happy place.

May you all find your happy place and today is the day to find it! The weather is incredible. The sky a pale blue peaks through the tall pines and understory trees of my place in the East Texas forest. It’s homework day for me and can think of no better place to work on all these papers and PowerPoint presentations coming due than in my only little world in the woods. May you find your mojo! It is never too late. I am proud to be 61 and still leaping out of bed to seize the day! I woke up this morning and bounded out the door. My clubhouse awaited, my NEW art studio and though unfinished, it sure beats the salvaged boards and nails from my hitting up my dad and neighbors for building materials as a kid.

I have big plans, big, big plans. First to graduate after all these years, then on to a NEW career but the tree house awaits, I can envision it in my mind. The Pulpwood Queen will create her queendom until it is her time to go on to the next. Share your hopes and dreams and use that imagination. The catalyst for me has always been being outside in nature, it’s my best medicine for whatever ails me. But I could never be who I am without sharing that it was reading that fueled my fire for all that I do. I am ablaze with energy and no task seems too daunting. And you want to know something really cool, author, R.D. Vincent gave me a vintage clock. I could never get it to work right as it’s one you wind and set the time with a pendulum. I carried it out to my studio and it started working the minute I put it down. The clock ticks, the pendulum sways, and it chimes on the hour! I just love it! But then again I remember ole Captain Hook listening to the clock ticking as it came closing and closer that was swallowed by the crocodile. I am instantly Peter Pan and flying with Wendy as we search for the lost boys…

Welcome to Kat’s Club House, by invitation only as you have to know the secret word. Hint! Hint! Adventure is my real middle name and it awaits!

Kathy L. (Adventure) Murphy

The Pulpwood Queen!