During my frequent wanderings around the alleys in my neighborhood have on numerous occasions found old discarded mops that I just couldn’t resist. You never know when one might come in handy. I immediately found a place for a couple of them on heads of two home-made scarecrows in my vegetable garden.

Later for an exhibit honoring the 200^th anniversary of Edgar Allen Poe’s birth I decided to create a piece that would be perfect for a mop. I painted Poe’s head in black and white on an 8”x10” panel and placed a mop on top of his head. I then dangled some black ravens from his fingers and called the piece ‘The Dreads,” as a double entendre referring to the word dread endemic in Poe’s stories and dread locks for obvious reasons. After the show I created more Dreads and turned Poe into a father. The others became his sons. That’s not to say that there won’t be any daughters brought into the family later on. I guess it depends which direction my brush takes.