myplusblog.blogspot.con/files/32voodoo.mpg

CRAIG FAIRBURN .... Artist/Poet

I want to thank Donna Mae my significant other for designing
my two bookcovers, the blue side of town vitual studio promo (for an
opening I had showing my art August 4th 2006 at Julies Organic
Coffee and Tea Garden (voted the best coffee and tea garden by eastbay
express) If you would like more info on Julies go to: www.juliestea.com

and..... thanks for all the time Donna Mae put into designing
this blog for me.....

you can see more of Donna Mae's designs at these
three web sites:

donmaemont.com
donmaemont.blogspot.com
kittykharma.blogspot.com

BACK INTO THE GUMBO AGAIN

From 1989 to 1992 I lived in New Orleans and out of this experience
came a body of work consisting of oil paintings, pin and ink drawings,
watercolors, wood reliefs my walking sticks .... inspired by the
musician Charles Neville and a Novel, * "Angels on the Balcony"

In 1999 I moved to Alameda from San Francisco and found that
loved walking on the beach where I found wood which I made into
walking sticks I call "Mojo Sticks", each designed with a spiritual icon
in mind, embellishing them with beads, stones, amulets and feathers.

I do believe my love for gardening, making furniture, writting poetr
and creating my art is an extension of my verdant heart, this coupled
with thehistory of New Orleans, the Cajun food, the amazing blues/zazz
music and my fascination with Vodou which is threaded deeply into
the fabric of New Orleans has made for a giant gumbo for me to draw
from to this day.






My novel "ANGELS ON THE BALCONY" (to be published)


Reveals the story of a man in his mid-forties trying to reclaim some of
his youth.

He, Nick Jamison, ventures into the Deep South (New Orleans)
leaving behind his police record, a dozen or so unpaid bills and
traffic tickes from the Denver area.

Nick desperately tries to reinvent himself. He travels light with a few
essentials; a train ticket, a duffel bag of worn clothing and tools.

Nine hundred dollars is stuffed into a leather fanny pack, which he
wears like a bandolier across his chest.

Nick is a seeker of sorts and feels that most of his friends and family
have sold their lives to the "company store" and live in sad, prdictable
ways in the Denver suburbs and malls.

He's also a man whose face and posture show the scars and emotional
upheaval of the sixties. He lost several friends in Vietnam and an
older brother to suicide when he was jailed after a war demonstration
in Detroit.

Down in New Orleans, Nick meets a plump parade dancer called the
"Duchess" She's a woman who reveals little of her personal history, but
he later finds out, she's a woman that has fled a sexless marriage in
California where she led a "brain-dead" existence in the suburbs with
a police-dispatcher husband named Dale.

Within a month, Nick moves in with her in the heart of the French
Quarter In no time, she integrates him into her Dionysian lifestyle.

In this tropical third world arena, Nick meets Ms. Rudolph, a
charlatan vodou( root) doctor, a conventional doctor, Dr. Eric
Ellenbach and his lover, Jody Bonney. They run a small neon design
company near Tulene University.

He also befriends a crippled chemist who creates time-warping
drugs made from thick vines that crop up in forgotten lots in the
Parrish of New Orleans

A dozen or so characters leap from Pandora's box and Nick finds
himself amused and blown away.

Through the course of time, we watch these people deal with the
muck aand beauty of their lives.... the conflict and betrayal of
their lives and in a few cases, they attempt to do so with dignity
and a kind of heroism.