Why Red Tricycle?
I grew up in Purcell, Oklahoma, a little farming town about 40 miles south of Oklahoma City. It was the kind of place where folks knew their neighbors.
When I was three, my parents somehow scraped together enough money to buy me a red-and-white tricycle. To me, it was the finest vehicle in Oklahoma.
My mother said I was hell on wheels!
There’s a picture of me in 1956, curly-haired and round-cheeked, in the backyard of our little rented house on West Brule. In the photo, I’m holding a huge, marbled balloon. I was an only child and spent a bunch of time entertaining myself, so that tricycle became my closest friend and ally.
Then I grew up, life happened and, somehow, the tricycle came along.
For 70 years.
A few years ago, I had the old girl powder-coated bright red. Red seemed right. I’m an Oklahoma girl, after all!
Boomer Sooner. Crimson and cream.
As time went by, my Bainbridge Island studio became a stop on the Studio Tour. People would return year after year saying:
“I remember the red tricycle!”
They might not remember my jewelry, but they remembered that darn tricycle.
So Red Tricycle Gallery was born.
Today she sits proudly on concrete blocks. Back home, just about anything could find itself up on concrete blocks: a pickup truck, a bass boat that may or may not ever see water again. Even the washing machine, used as a beer cooler on the front porch, was on concrete blocks.
My parents bought a little girl a tricycle they probably couldn’t afford. She loved it enough to keep it.
Seventy years later, it got a gallery named after it.
Funny how far three wheels can take you.
Same tricycle as in Red Tricycle Gallery
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