Friday, December 08, 2006

Holiday Innovation


We're all aflutter at my office building today because this house, built in 1910, is on Raleigh's 35th annual Historic Oakwood Candlelight Tour.

The queen and owner of the building, Carrie Knowles, shares my views about creativity and self-expression. Her studio and writing office are called Free Range Gallery. Here's what she just had painted so that you see it as soon as you come in the front door.


And here's the Christmas/holiday/winter solstice tree: it's made of cans of food that will be given to a soup kitchen when the tree comes down. This construction, a piece of art in itself, was made by Carrie's 16 year old son Cole Leiter and his friend Wilson Sayre.

Happy holiday preparation!--whatever you celebrate. I hope you'll take pleasure in doing it your way.

The tree of cans is a good demonstration that self-expression isn't necessarily selfish at all, can be quite altruistic in fact. For more on this, see The Healing Power of Doing Good.