There’s something really special about watching creative community form in real time.

I first met Thom and Jasmine through the Friday Night Artist Table at a mano Gallery, where they quickly became two of our regulars. Week after week, they’ve shown up with sketchbooks, ideas, humor, strange little creatures, and the kind of energy that reminds you why spaces like this matter in the first place.

Their contribution to The Art of the Guitar feels exactly like an extension of that spirit.

The pair transformed a youth-sized guitar into a colorful jungle world filled with winding snakes, silhouetted creatures, sparkling eyes, layered foliage, and hidden surprises. The piece feels alive. Whimsical and playful on the surface, but also deeply collaborative in the way it carries both of their personalities at once.

What makes their process especially fitting for this exhibition is that it wasn’t polished or precious from the beginning. The guitar itself arrived damaged, with a broken headstock that needed repair before they could even begin. Weather affected sanding and finishing. Original plans evolved and shifted. Ideas became bigger, stranger, and more ambitious before eventually settling into the final form.

In many ways, that’s exactly what creative collaboration looks like.

Their answers about the process are full of humor and affection for one another. They describe themselves as “agents of shenanigans and silliness,” and honestly, you can see it throughout the piece. Tiny hands emerge from the center. Snakes twist through painted leaves. Rhinestones shimmer where lights once might have gone if time and resources had allowed.

What I love most is that the work never loses its sense of joy.

Even after all the experimenting and problem solving, the guitar remains playable, becoming not only an art object, but something capable of continuing to make sound and create experience.

Gems, Stems and Little Legs will be available through the Art Guitar Raffle May 29th

Gems, Stems, & Little Legs

Guitar Fragments