An ongoing theme since my early days as an artist has been creating scenes on pavement. I find wherever I go I am looking at the ground around me, and my eyes seem to naturally divert to these little scenes of transient beauty.

I love the textures you find in concrete. I remember walking along a sidewalk in East Lansing, Michigan in 1984 when my friend Jennifer and I carved our names, and the date, into a patch of newly-poured cement. This past summer I took my daughter Ella back to that spot and showed her where we left our mark twenty-six years ago. Since then, I imagine that patch of concrete has had leaves and paper strewn over it's surface, only to be blown away by wind, or kicked away by the feet of passersby. It is with this thought in mind that I find myself in love with the idea of creating permanent scenes out of otherwise transient ones.

My vision in this scene is of some friends who have just spent their allowance at the corner store, much like my brothers and I did when we were little. They've come together on a summer day to compare their treats, but one poor child spilled his bag of goodies all over the sidewalk and left it. After awhile the chocolate nonpareil starts melting into the crevices and a few butterflies land to enjoy the sugary treats.

Everything here is painted except the butterflies which were collaged on, and the nonpareils (100's & 1000's), which were glued down with Golden Heavy Gel Medium, allowed to dry, then coated with two layers of resin. Also, in the lower right corner I painted a portion of a stick of Blackjack gum (my all time favorite) and used pieces of a real wrapper to add some fun--a blue-raspberry Nerd rests on top of the gum too..

The background was created using texture medium on canvas. I slathered it on thick and used the end of a paintbrush to play tic-tac-toe, as one might do in freshly poured cement. I made a heart, wrote my daughter's name, signed my initials, and wrote a couple other random letters and numbers, then used a rubber stamp to create the image of the fossilized fern

I used a thick texture medium to create this little chocolate cup, kind of like a bezel cup, so it would hold the real sprinkles and resin. I mixed this luscious chocolate color using a lovely, dark forest-green, crimson, and ocher. I wanted the chocolate to appear to be melting into the crevices in the pavement and the resin makes the chocolate look wet.

The pink Good 'N Plenty was sculpted out of texture medium, as were the swirly peppermints, white chocolate drop, candy beads, and the Nerds. Several other candies were created this way to make them look more 3 dimensional.

Of the many candies seen here, and aside from the ones already mentioned, there are three cinnamon jellybeans, one Sugar Baby, two pieces of designer hard candy, a yellow Necco wafer, gumballs, jaw-breakers, and a few imaginary pieces.