The Midwest likes my art. Makes sense. I’m a Midwesterner by birth. And still talk like one, according to my Southerner friends!

Yesterday I sent Peace Offering II on its way to “Art of Photography 2022,” hosted by the Prairie Village City Council at 7700 Mission Road, Prairie Village, Kansas. This is their 5th annual juried photography competition. It opens May 9 and runs through the end of June. This year’s juror was Angie Jennings.

Two pieces made it into the “April Group Art Show” at the Jones Gallery in the Crossroads arts district of Kansas City, Missouri. David Jones’ crew puts up a new group art show every month, filling three floors of an historic building at 1717 Walnut St.

This is the 4th invitation into a juried show for From Which Hope Springs. It’s always reassuring to see an image be selected multiple times. But it’s also gratifying when an image you really like that has been passed over several times get its first invitation into a juried show, and that’s the case with Pinstripe Guy in a Shark Eye.

Most of my photographs have stories to go with them, but the “pinstripe guy” story is especially fun. I was walking a beach along the western end of the Gulf Coast late one July afternoon when suddenly the hermit crabs came alive. Typically, to know if a discarded shell is home to a hermit crab, you have to pick it up and see if you can get a glimpse of feet deep in the shell’s aperture. But on this day at this time, suddenly shells all over the beach were scurrying about, their occupants quite visible. I must have been an amusing site scurrying madly after them, keeping only my camera dry.

BTW, for those who are interested in critters, “pinstripe guy” is actually a thinstriped hermit crab (Clibanarius vittatus) and his abode is actually a false shark eye (Neverita delessertiana). Artistic license, you know, in the interest of a catchy title!