Bill liked to make wooden boxes and paint them with his special technique when I first moved to San Francisco. I endeavored to help him with the process. He called them Smurf houses. They were short and the top could be opened for storage.As time went on, the boxes grew larger with a fixed top and four ball feet. They looked like obelisks on rolling feet. He painted them various colors and gave them to friends and family as presents. We turned a few of them into lamps.
To try to make a little money we took one to a high-end gift store hoping they could sell them since they sold varidous little obelisks for decorations. But, the young man at the store said “Sorry, we look for things that are more traditional.” We didn’t know what could be more traditional than an obelisk.
At that time, Bill was very concerned about infections and was trying to prevent pigeons from landing on the window sills. We called the San Francisco Pest Control to see what we could do. They sent us a picture of hawk wings and suggested that we put copies in the windows. It didn’t work even when we made wooden wings to hang outside.
We had several wooden hawk wings and didn’t know how to use them. We decided to cut slots in the sides of the large obelisks to slide the wings through them, and called them “Obelisks flying away from tradition”. I guess that was our revenge against the rigidity of tradition.
