Stick Bobbers

Giclée print on mounted canvas
Edition of 300 S/N
Image: 10″ x 6″
$100

I guess you realize that you are getting old when the things that you took for granted when you were a kid are now collectors’ items. I can remember stepping over old decoys in the Barnegat Bay marshes where I grew up and not even giving them a second thought. Today, some of those old wooden birds are worth a fortune. (I did save one old decoy given to me by an old Jersey waterman when I was about five years old. I found out some years ago that it dates back to the 1860’s. It is kind of a clunker and not valuable to most collectors, but it is to me.)

For a good bit of my career my work centered around hunting and fishing and I collected a ton of artifacts including guns, decoys, shell boxes, lures and stick bobbers. It was easy to find stick bobbers in flea markets, but they have now become hot collectibles and are harder to come by. I like them for the varied shapes and colors (most are handmade). More than that, I like them for the stories they could tell of summer days and small boys with cane poles sitting on the banks of a pond or on an old dock; no school, and not a care in the world, and just maybe a stringer of panfish to bring home for supper.

This piece is for that small boy in all of us and those simpler days before the malls and the video games. I’m pleased to share it with you here.