19 September 2011
Meeting the Man by Alison Bird
The Peppers have met and befriended on occasion, a long and distinguished list of notable people, including Paul Newman, Woody Allen, Hakeem Olajuwon, Francis Ford Coppola and Nicolas Cage to name a few. Mrs. Peppers even saw Elvis Presley when she was a young girl while looking out the back window of her mothers' T-Bird while riding down an interstate outside Memphis. He smiled and waved to her from his white Phantom Rolls Royce.
Yet the one person she has wanted to meet for years, Al Pacino, had eluded her until now. "Mr. Pacino is the only one we have photographic evidence of. He had asked me the details of J.D. being bitten by a rattlesnake when a photographer walked up and blinded me with his flash. The spots in my vision were well worth it." The couple said the only way to describe the event is that it was a once in a life time chance to watch him act out several different roles on stage and meet the man himself.
2012 March
Patience by JD Peppers featured in the International Sculpture Centers' publication Sculpture Magazine
2012 December
Wonderful Toy by Leslie Peppers has been in the Peppers' private collection for over two decades. We are thrilled to announce the public debut of this painting. Permission to allow the painting to keep its title was generously given to the artist by Mr. Doug Ferner and Mr. Ray Dallavecchia of Slinky.
2013 May
There
is a new series in red, black and white by Leslie Peppers titled Childhood. There are three editions at present, Red Wagon, Swing
and Kite. We are looking forward to what editions the future will
bring.
2013 June
Announcing the debut of Art in Motion videos by Leslie Peppers. They consist of CGI's made by the artist of her paintings set into motion and ones in her signature text. These limited editions are available at Sedition, a ground breaking website based in London, England where one may purchase art in digital HD format by some of the world's leading artists. The art can be viewed on ones PC, tablet, cellular phone or television.
There are artworks in video, still's and photography by film director Wim Wenders, Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst and a client of Mrs. Peppers', Yoko Ono, just to name a few of the talented artists at Sedition. To discover a whole new side of this amazing woman and an exciting new way to collect art click on the following link, www.seditionart.com/leslie_peppers.
2014 May
While writing the description of her painting Fountain, that can be categorized in three art genres, Modern, Minimalism, and Pointillism, the artist wanted to give it only one and realized there is no genre to accurately describe this style of her art. So the need for a new one arose. In doing so, a new genre of Fine Art has been named and founded, Modern Pointillism.
2015 March
A gift from the artist, an Art In Motion video in HD
of the NATO phonetic alphabet paced to the children's ABC's melody.
Be prepared to keep up when it gets to the words for l,m,n,o,p.
Click here to watch this at vimeo.
2015 April
Long Story Short by Leslie Peppers is the artists' first Automated Book. It is a fairy tale parody of two lost children turned into very dry humor. It is complete with pages that turn and a synopsis on the back flap of the books dust cover. To read the automated book at vimeo click here.
2015 May
Coincidence or Fate? by Leslie Peppers is a true story about a chain of events in the author’s life. It begins in 1974, when she was a child, with a brush with death that her mother saves her from. From there the story unfolds over the next 29 years. It concludes during the 2003 SARS epidemic. It is a must read because it reveals an herbal tincture that has successfully treated many respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia. To read this automated book at vimeo click here.
2015 June
Fresh Hell by Leslie Peppers is inspired by true events in the life of Dorothy Parker. A friend was visiting her during the Hollywood Blacklist days and her name was on it. The phone rang and she said to the friend, "What fresh hell is this?"
The artist made this is in the style of the old silent films to prevent you and others from hearing the sound that can at certain times make your blood run cold, the phone ringing. Click here to watch the video at vimeo.
"I watched a beautiful time lapse video, The Voyage by Beno Saradzic, at vimeo. It inspired me to create an Art In Motion of Harmony, a series of paintings I started in 1992 and completed in 1997. After you watch it you may think that it was taken from Coexist, but that began three years after the paintings were exhibited. My series is pure and has no distractions, just the symbols and is something I am most proud of.” Leslie Peppers
Click here to watch the video at vimeo.
2015 July
King Me was created in
2008. It is the first
Art in Motion video by Leslie Peppers and is available
though vimeo. To view the trailer click here.
Peeping Tom uses the name Tom, instead of a face, moving erratically as he tries to find the best line of sight at the window without being detected. He is quite high strung as he moves in and out of view, but you must purchase the full length video to find out how he finally exits the scene, which is highly entertaining. To read the story that inspired Peeping Tom and watch the trailer at vimeo click here.
2015 August
This is a short film made by Leslie Peppers from various exhibitions of
sculpture by JD Peppers and is the sculptors' World Wide Web Exhibition.
To view this video at vimeo click here.
2015 October
"As I watched a documentary on the Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda the subject came up of how easy it to get caught up in the events and chaos of everyday and lose you equilibrium. Just before this I had spent two very long weeks in back to back blindsides and was occasionally looking outside to see if one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was lurking." Leslie Peppers
To view the video Everyday Life on vimeo click here.
17 November 2015
Death Match by Leslie Peppers
It is said to believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. In this case I could not believe what I was seeing. Let me begin with this, the back wall of our house is glass. There is a deck 6 feet wide that runs the length of it inches from the ground. There is a wetland at the back of our property. I often stand in the dining area looking at it. On this particular day I am watching a Great Blue Heron fishing. In the corner of my eye I see something move at the edge of the deck 5 feet to my left. As I focus, to my disbelief I see the head of a rattlesnake. It proceeds to inch its way onto the deck in my direction. After about three feet of length is visible I expect to see its' rattle. No, it becomes the never ending snake. By this time my heart is pounding. When the whole thing is finally crawling across the deck in front of me, I see that it is almost five feet in length and wide as a baseball.
When I realize my heart rate is off the chart I get a sedative, place it under my tongue and grab my phone to call JD, who is on the way home from his studio. "When will you be home?" "In about five minutes." "Could you make it home a little faster please?" "Why? What's wrong?" "There is a rattlesnake on the deck that is close to five feet long and the size of a baseball." I really do not remember what he said after that, but I did tell him to get the shovel and come to the back on the right side of the house. I am standing in my spot and it is directly in front of me. I stay on the phone with him until he is home, has the shovel and is about to reach the deck. At last, JD is visible. When he sees it he steps back out of instinct. Hearing its' size and seeing it is two different things.
I want to walk away, even though I am inside, this thing is 4 feet from me and it is upsetting, but I stay to give JD support and to see if things go bad. He has grabbed the square shovel with sides on the spade. I thought that was not the best shovel for this, then I realize I will not have to live with the image of it being decapitated, so I'm cool. JD raised the shovel and struck it so hard things on the deck fell over. This made it angry. He struck it again. This time it looked at him, raised its' tail and shook its' rattle. I heard it. Then it tried to strike JD. His jaw dropped and he looked at me. Then JD turns, looks at the snake and says, "I killed your brother too." (This is a reference to the one that bit him and sent him to the Trauma Unit.) Are you serious? Did he just talk to that thing? I finally screamed,"Kill it." and he did.
Our daughter's boyfriend told JD he should have kept the rattle, but we explained the sound would mess with our heads. JD took photographs of it as proof of how big it was, but I cannot bear to look at them. The next day his slightly younger brother came looking for him. He went under the deck. JD was at his studio. Days later he was crawling around the deck in front of me at my spot. I called JD and Animal Control. I had to watch him until they got here. This one was taken alive and relocated. I am scared for life. The wooden deck is going to be a concrete patio soon.
2016 April
The seeing impaired version of Alpha Bravo Charlie's, the NATO phonetic alphabet
paced to the children's ABC's melody, is the first Art In Motion video to have sound. It is
narrated by Leslie Peppers. To hear it and watch this at vimeo click here.
19 June 2016
Surprise by Leslie Peppers
Years before the terms of ground rushes and Extreme Sports were coined JD was a ground rush junkie. He started riding a mini bike at the age of four and when he was 12 he started illegally riding a dirt bike on streets terrorizing neighborhoods looking for dirt and eluding law enforcement officer's chasing him. At fifteen he was competing in Motocross races and winning I might add. At sixteen in one such race he encountered a pileup he could not avoid, injured his spinal cord and wound up in traction for several days. A year later he went down again, re-injuring the same vertebrae in his spinal cord and landed in traction again. At this point he was told another spinal cord injury could put him in a wheel chair for the rest of his life, so he reluctantly hangs up his leathers.
In his quest to find his next ground rush venue he discovers Free Climbing, what is now called Free Soloing. In his 30’s on a climb with a friend on the ground, he found himself in an area the rock had condensation on it. He knew he was going down and was well over 30 feet high. He had to decide in two seconds whether to fall along the rock or turn, release and attempt to tuck and roll. His friend told me that it looked like he was base jumping. He was standing on a five foot ledge that had another 40 feet below it. When JD landed he bounced and his friend threw him back down to ledge to prevent him from falling the other 40. He was lucky to be alive. Like it was yesterday I can see what JD’s legs looked like. His knees, ankles and the area starting two inches below his toe’s and everyone one of his toes were black. His right knee was never the same. Twenty years later he still wears a serious knee brace and will only run in emergency situations.
Before I leave the house I always lower the storm shutters and when I return the first shutter I raise is the one over the kitchen window. It was Father’s Day and in an unexpected twist he asked to go see a movie. We had not been to a theater in three years or more. We are not fond of theaters that are filled with rude people covered in cheap fragrance and are always so cold meat cold be hanging in them.
When we returned home he went to the back of the house to add water in the rock waterfall. I went inside, raised the kitchen shutter and ate cheddar cheese to regulate my blood sugar as I raised the front ones. I walked back to the kitchen and was about to rinse my fingers and raise the ones in the back to keep an eye on him when I saw him run past the window. I knew in a split second he had seen a rattlesnake and did not have the shovel by him of course. Before I could get the back shutters up I heard a thud and silence. I am pretty sure I was not breathing. When I finally got the shutters up he was standing near the window several feet away from the shovel handle resting against the deck looking wild eyed. “Are you all right?” I asked. He replied, “I’m all right. I got the big one that got away.” He walked over to the shovel and looked down in the grass, came back to the window where I was and said, “Seven rattles.” I shook my head. “He did not even see me until the shovel was going down and I told him: Surprise. You aren’t getting away this time.” While I am elated that he got the thing, I still find it a bit disturbing that he talks to them before he takes them out.
2016 July
Learning the Morse code is no easy task and knowing it could help one in a perilous situation. I made this tutorial video to make it a tad easier. Just making it I learned six letters and all the numerals. The distress signal of SOS I knew from my childhood. The letter reads first without the code for a very good reason; as you learn, guess and seconds later see if you were correct." Leslie Peppers Click here to view and learn the content of this video at vimeo.
2016 November
"While
working on a parody series of quotes and famous words I remembered a
thought I had while watching a scene from the documentary by Al Pacino, Looking For Richard on the historical play King Richard the Third
by William Shakespeare. The scene was from the Third Act when King
Richard is surrounded in the battlefield and exclaims 'A horse, a horse,
my kingdom for a horse.' and I thought in this day and age he would
wish for a taxi." Leslie Peppers
The Taxi Series by Leslie Peppers has versions in English, French, Italian and Spanish all available at vimeo.
To view the English version click here.
To view the French version click here.
To view the Italian version click here.
To view the Spanish version click here.
17 February 2017
WARNING: A photograph of a rattlesnake follow this article
Proof by Leslie Peppers
The lawn service came this morning. After they left there was a rain shower which meant the grass would be very green. I flipped the switch that raises the storm shutters to admire the property. As I stood at the window I made my way along the grounds to the sculpture in the back right corner. When I saw it I thought, “What is on the sculpture?” and then I begin to laugh like I am an insane person as my heart rate increases while going into complete and utter denial. I get my binoculars and go back to the window. After I focus them there is no denying that a dead rattlesnake is indeed lying on the sculpture. While I am swaying and wrapping my mind around what I have just seen I think how bizarre and why would they do that.
Then I freeze. With the knowledge the owner of the lawn service is from Mexico and most of the men on his crew’s are as well, I know the answer; it is a warning sign. I grab the phone and call Alex who is the owner and tell him there is a dead rattlesnake on the sculpture and I need him to call the foreman of the crew to find out the details and call me back. Two minutes later he calls and is speaking very fast. “This is Alex. I spoke to my man and he said tell the Lady be very careful, very dangerous.” Then he starts speaking in Spanish which means he is quite upset. I do not speak Spanish but I do know a few words and I catch "muchos diablos" which means many devils and "machete", a broad bladed sword. He finally takes a breath and I ask, “Alex, what are you trying to tell me?” He sighs and says, “Two of my men were trimming at the rocks and all of a sudden many many rattlesnakes came out from under the rocks. Do not go back there, ever and be very careful when outside, they are very dangerous. My men will keep machetes in their belts.”
This creates a vivid image. I tell him not to worry I will not go to the back and explain to him that snakes think vibrating ground means there could be a cave-in and they will flee from underground. He told me he did not know that. I say, “The man on the lawn mower must have gotten close to those men and caused all the snakes to come out. You need to tell your men this and in the meantime I am going to make some calls.” After we ended the call I shivered and continued to do so for hours to the point my skin tingled. I will walk around outside in what is referred to in Texas as high dollar tall shaft cowboy boots and will from this day forward.
4 May 2017
A Gift from Leslie Peppers
3 June 2017
Why I was surprised when Leslie told me about her private art collection is beyond me, but when I viewed the images she was going to release of an Egyptian Series, those came as no surprise. When I met her I noticed the gold ankh she wore on her right hand that was apparent she has had for years. I thought it was something symbolic of her youth. Over time I realized it had to do with her keen interest in all things Egyptian.
Never will I forget when the ruins from the Lighthouse of Alexandria were finally located. Instead of being excited when something was discovered, Leslie was aggravated that it took archeologist so long to look under water. She told me she knew where it was years ago and entertained the thought of making a few phone calls, but decided to see how long it would take for someone to get their head out of the sand.
How did your interest in Egyptology begin?
"When I was around seven years old my mother purchased a set of World Book Encyclopedia’s. I had seen them in the library, so I knew exactly what they were. Mother put them on a shelf that was at my eye level and left the room. I remember standing there looking at them, knowing that anything I wanted to know was in those books and I was going to read them. So I pulled the 'A' volume, sat on the sofa near the fireplace and began changing my life."
You could read at that level when you were seven?
"I knew the sound of the letters in the alphabet and all the rules so I was able to sound out any word that I came across and when I didn’t know the meaning I would stop reading and look it up in the dictionary’s, two four inch wide volumes that were part of the set. It did not take me long to realize I should get those and put them on the sofa beside me before I began to read. I had no idea that it was unusual for me to be able to read anything until a few months later I was in a neighbor’s house that had two boys and a girl all in college.
"Their books and papers were on the coffee table. Out of curiosity I picked up a set of papers and began reading them unaware the girl was watching me until she came over and asked if I was reading. I told her yes, apologized for touching her things, and put them down. She told me it was fine and asked me to read aloud for her. After a couple of minutes she asked me to wait and returned with her brothers. I remember I came across a long word and sounded it out in my head. When I knew it I read it aloud and finished the sentence. Their eyes got wide then they laughed. I lowered my head and one of the boys immediately told me they were not laughing at me, they were laughing because they could not believe what a smart little girl I was. He asked me what grade I was in and when I replied the second grade, things escalated. The next year I was sent to a private school.
"For some reason I do not remember the first thing I saw that began my love for Egyptology. This is what I know; that when I was seven years old I built The Step Pyramid of Djoser on the beach instead of a sand castle. At nine years of age, for my first science project I built The Great Pyramid of Cheops out of sugar cubes. When I was 11 The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston was being aired and I was so looking forward to seeing Ancient Egypt come to life. The night it aired I sat in the floor less than four feet away from the screen to watch it. I was mesmerized and can see that moment in my mind right now as if it were just an hour ago."
The image Ra, because I know you, has a story. How much of it are you willing to tell?
"What is relevant I suppose." After watching her get lost in thought she began telling the story. "This is a view I caught in the corner of my eye as I passed a long slender window of a house I lived in. I stopped and stood looking at the beams coming through the clouds down to the horizon until they started to fade. I had never seen anything like it. I sketched it immediately. Several years passed and I finally made the artwork from the visual I carry within because the sketch with the title, time and date on it got away from me during the controlled chaos while moving out of what was left of the house in 2008 after a hurricane. When I finished the first draft I named it after Ra, the Ancient name of the Egyptian sun god, because it reminded me of how the sun was depicted on the gold throne for a pharaoh of Egypt I was privileged to see. This one is my favorite."
"The image with the single pyramid Step was made from an overlay on a recent photograph of The Step Pyramid of Djoser located on the Giza Plateau. The only adjustment I made is the top of each step are flat instead of at a slight angle; I resisted the temptation to draft this into perfect geometric dimensions to keep it true to what one sees at present. Giza was made from an overlay on an aerial photograph taken in 1904 of the three large pyramid’s on the Giza Plateau, therefore the scale is 100% accurate. This made the perfectionist in me very happy."
14 November 2017
17 February 2018
Once again Leslie Peppers has been entertaining us, this time by posting a music video almost every Saturday night on her Facebook page. If she cannot find a video she likes for a certain song she wants to play, Leslie will make her own and add it to the YouTube channel for Early Bird Co. The following is a very good one due to the candid vintage photographs she collected of men giving a goodbye kiss to their women before they left for WWII.
2 December 2018
2 April 2019
22 April 2019
14 August 2019
14 December 2019
27 December 2019
24 January 2020
Ms. Peppers is recovering from the spider bite a well as to be expected. She requires unusual amounts of sleep and being the determined woman she is has been working on her book when she is awake and able to sit at her desk. But the rain continues, the monitor to her computer is going out and she lacks the strength to lift the existing one and replace it. Mr. Peppers is not allowed to lift anything over two pounds. Her computer technician is booked solid for the next two weeks.