The beginning
My name is Georgia Helen Bovenizer and I am an artist. My mom, a writer, once told me that “writers write and artists art.”
I art … and I also write!
In the North Georgia Mountains, and later on Tybee Island near Savannah, I spent my childhood turning one thing into another thing - which, after all, is the basis of all art.
Almost as soon as I learned to walk and talk I began drawing, molding playdough and clay, making things out of fabric and foil, painting, sculpting and designing.
In school I won prizes for my art, was written up in newspapers, and eventually my work caught the attention of the prestigious Savannah School of Art and Design which offered me a full scholarship.
Me with my recent carving
But because I am dyslexic, and was unmercifully bullied as a child because of it, I had always hated school. So I - foolishly - turned that scholarship down!
But “artists art,” and I continued along my own artistic path while also pursuing many other interests now reflected in the art I produce today.
These interests include living a sustainable lifestyle, organic gardening, raising small livestock, building renovation, wood carving, and writing fan based stories which attract readers worldwide.
My varied interests have contributed to a work history that includes - among others - being a ballroom dance instructor, teaching horseback riding, and driving river pilots to and from ships.
A change of pace
My boss in a Florida gardening center was from Ireland. Not long after she had returned home to her native land, she called to offer me a job running the exotic pets department in her store in Dublin. Naturally, I jumped at the chance!
It was in that job where I met my future husband and father of my three children. We lived in Ireland for ten years and then moved to Florida where our marriage, sadly, ended after 17 years.
But throughout it all I continued to pursue my interests and, of course, my art.
The kids and I moved from Florida to Bulloch County, Georgia (where my Mum was then living). There I worked as a carer for my youngest brother’s father-in-law. We lived on a small farm where I was also able to indulge my interest in small-hold farming and gardening.
I also - as I still do - made commissioned one-off pieces of art for individuals and various art galleries.
Because, after all - and no matter what else they might be involved with doing - “artists art.”
Mum became ill...
Our place in Georgia was surrounded by larger farms planted with cotton, corn, soybeans, and peanuts. There were also nearby lands devoted to raising pine for the paper industry. What I didn’t know then, but eventually learned, was every single one of those crops - pine included - undergo huge amounts of poisonous chemical spraying throughout every month of the year.
Mum became ill.
Mum became very ill.
As did the rest of us!
Her doctor in Savannah said she had developed MCS - Multiple Chemical Sensitivity - from the “chemical drift” off those dangerous chemicals sprayed across nearby farm fields.
We packed up and moved back to Florida to be in a healthier urban environment!
There Mum regained much of her former good health, but not all.
We did some research and learned the roadsides in that area were sprayed regularly with glyphosate for weed control.
The company that produces glyphosate is now the defendant losing countless court cases to people all across America now having cancers or Parkinson’s disease caused by glyphosate exposure.
Moving to Florida's coast, inland, then England
We moved again.
This time we settled on the Florida coast, thinking the sea air would be healthier. It would have been, too, were not the nearby orange groves and highway roadsides also under non-stop chemical attack and that the chemicals used to control mosquitoes also attack and injure humans.
Mum, because she also has British citizenship, gave up and moved back to England.
The kids and I then bought a small house with land in the middle of rural Florida surrounded mainly by brush and some livestock farms. No big poisoned fields or groves. There I developed my own small farm, raising poultry, rabbits and pigs, along with vegetables and fruits for our own consumption. I also packaged and sold the organic meat I raised to very happy customers.
Small outing to the town
Meanwhile Mum had settled in a rural village where she was learning the hard way England was no longer the country she had known and loved. Massive chemical warfare was going on there, too, with various hard-core poisons being sprayed across nearby fields of wheat and rape (a type of mustard used in making cooking oils).
The kids and I sold out and moved to England to move my now again very ill Mum across country to an area where nearby fields held mainly sheep and cattle. (I find it interesting that chemicals are seldom sprayed where livestock are raised while our food crops are being poisoned non-stop.) Mum’s health bounced back.
Covid
Covid arrived...
During lockdown I did a number of commissioned art pieces (some shown on this webpage), but sometime during lockdown several of the nearby livestock fields were plowed under and planted in wheat. The poisoning resumed.
We went online looking for any area in the UK or Ireland - in our budget - where poisons weren’t in use. We were gearing up for a move to the Shetland Islands when my older brother suggested we have a look in Northern Portugal where he was then looking at property.
Portugal?
It took some convincing on his part, but we finally did start looking online at properties there and discovered we really liked what we were seeing!
Mum flew over in April of 2022 and rented a place in the Portuguese mountains about 30 miles from the Spanish border.
I flew over in August for a two-week house-hunting trip where (thanks to the generosity and assistance of Mum’s friend, Lisa) we were able to buy outright an old, old house in need of much repair, but one located in an area where no poisons are - and hopefully will never be - used in agriculture.
Our house Rocksalot - as we named it - is located in a very rural setting about 2,000 feet above sea level found at the coast, some 30 miles west of here. All the fields, terraced hundreds of years ago and maintained still, are too small for today’s horrific agricultural practices to be put into use. The fields around us prove it. They are alive with bees, butterflies, birds and wildflowers beyond count.
The kids and I moved into Rocksalot in November 2022 with no electricity, no running water, no stove, no fridge, and an open hearth to build a fire on for heating. It was the rainy season and the roof leaked like a sieve.
I, however, was (and remain) determined to turn our now forever home into a place where we can not only live a sustainable lifestyle, but one where we can teach others how to do the same.
Work begins
We started a Go Fund Me site to help us with that project and the text and pictures there will enable you to see how far we’ve come in just one year. That link follows if you’d like to have a look: https://gofund.me/568b572d
While learning roofing skills, along with how to cement walls, install plumbing, and also adding to my existing building skills for shelves and other necessities, I planted a successful first year garden that gave us groceries all last summer. And we now have a small flock of chickens there giving us eggs.
And Mum, now poison free at long last, has regained her health to be the energized active 80-year-old she was meant to be!
We have wonderful neighbors in nearby farms.
And we live where the tinkling bells worn by passing sheep, and the strong bells tolling the hours across the hills from distant churches, add lovely pastoral music to our lives.
We love it here. We may eventually even learn to actually speak decent Portuguese. Give us more time cause that is HARD!
In the renovation of a large shed across our courtyard - and while digging our garden - we have unearthed shards of pottery dating back to the Roman and medieval eras. I am now using that material for jewelry making.
And some of our firewood turned out to be beautiful chestnut pieces, perfect for carving,
So even with everything else being done here … there is still art!
That’s because first, last, and always, I am an artist, and as we know ...
Artists Art
Newspapers were writing about my foil art sculptures when I was just a teenager, and since I now have grown children of my own, it is obvious I've been developing and improving my art for a while now!
Over these years I have developed into a skilled artist in a number of mediums, including felt art, sculpuring, bronzed foil art, wood carving, glass art, carved signs, cartooning, painting, jewelry design, sci-fi character art, and making other smaller artistic decorative or useful items. And there's more - all of which you can see pictured here at my website.
My art reflects my own many personal interests which continue to expand in ever new directions. But online selling can be a lonely old space sometimes, so even if you are here just to look and not to buy, I would love to hear which items here caught your interest or even brought you to my site in the first place.
You'll find a space for leaving those comments below and I thank you in advance! Really! Thank you!