Polly want a cracker? How about a home?

In Lyerly, Georgia

parrot1 When you wake up in the morning at Ellie and David Mott’s home in Lyerly, Georgia, the birds are always singing. Always. Lots of birds. And some don’t sing. They answer the phone, or bark like dogs, or scream at the top of their lungs like a momma yelling at a wayward 10-year old. The birds in question are parrots, and David and Ellie are the operators of The Parrot Education Project, a non-profit charitable organization “dedicated to providing a natural home for parrots of all kinds and raising public knowledge concerning the care of birds in the home and their situation in the natural habitat.”

David first became interested in parrots when he was in art school in Chicago, so he’s always been fond of the talkative psittacines, the technical term for what others call hook bill birds. There are about 350 species of parrots.. At the Parrot Education Project (PEP), the Mott’s provide a permanent home for about 100 parrots that arrived from all over the United States. Many of the parrots come from homes where the owner has grown tired of them or can’t care for them any longer. The parrots also arrive here for many other reasons. Some of the owners choose to place their beloved pets in a situation where they will continue to receive the love and attention they need and require. Other circumstances that can cause a bird to be given up include changes in the life style of the owner, failing health, or the death of the owner. Many people who purchase these often quite large birds don’t realize that the bird’s life spans are approximately the same as ours. So when they buy a bird, it’s entirely possible the bird can outlive them!

Parrots can range in size from the tiny Pacific Parrotlet (at a mere 3.2 inches high and 28 grams) to the Hyacinth Macaw (a whopper at 3.3 feet and 8.8 pounds). Caring for them is not everyone’s cup of tea. But what do you do with a noisy parrot who has worn out its welcome? If you, and the bird, are lucky, you locate a facility like PEP. The Mott’s estimate that there are about 40 to 50 similar rescue facilities around the country, and almost all of them are strained to the bursting point. The number of abandoned birds jumped dramatically a few years back during the avian flu scare. Prices fell drastically, and the number of birds being euthanized by skittish owners spiked.

Clearly, for too many people the thrill of owning a big, loud bird wears thin. Parrots can be both noisy and destructive. “They’ll tear a house apart,” says Ellie. Their talons are powerful, and they use their beaks like a third hand. A very powerful third hand. David chuckles and says, “And believe me, when I get bit hard by one of our birds the novelty wears off just a little bit more.”

Ellie and David got their first parrot about 20 years ago as an anniversary present The collection expanded over the years to include different species, and the Motts eventually decided to create an educational facility. A native of Connecticut, David graduated from the Atlanta School of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Now retired, for years he was a college art professor. Ellie is an emergency room nurse, and it’s her salary that keeps the bird seed on the table, so to speak. It’s an expensive proposition, but it‘s also a passion for them both. During a Thanksgiving holiday years ago Ellie was grazing the internet and became aware that there were hundreds of parrots that needed a new home. Some were abandoned, some were owned by people who were either dismayed at the level of care they require, or tired of the screeching. For her and David, providing a home for parrots in need became a kind of calling. “I also hope the community gets some benefit,” she says. That’s why they started making visits, with their birds, to area schools several years ago.

Full Story

The artist behind the art

Summerville’s Royal Artist

flowers painting Summerville portraitist Suzanne Royal lives in a one hundred year old house, and paints in another little house out back with her 6 dogs looking on. After 25 years in graphic design in Atlanta, life in Summerville is laid back and comfortably slow paced. In fact, if she runs out of dog food late at night, she and the dogs are just out of luck; the grocery store closes at 10:00.

But there is much to commend in this little town, population just under 5,000. After growing up in Rome, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia, and then spending a successful career in the big city, she seems comfortably situated to pursue her career as a portrait painter in this small town with an amazing roster of accomplished artists.

The daughter of a Rome lawyer and judge, Suzanne says she was always the little kid who ragged the others to be more careful in coloring between the lines. She’d even make her own drawings for the other kids to color. There were no art classes to speak of in Rome during her formative years, so she grew up a tom boy, and eventually intended to follow her dad into the law. Instead, art struck. She thinks she probably got a lot of praise from her parents for little things she drew as a child, and that probably encouraged her, perhaps subconsciously, to pursue an art career. In Atlanta she enjoyed life in the big city for many years until she went out to the grocery store late one night and it took her 45 minutes to go a few blocks for milk. suzanne royal 2 Enough. So she left the success of Atlanta behind, which included designing the state quarter we all see in our pocket change. She modestly says she probably got the job because her college roommate worked for the governor, and Suzanne was the only artist she knew!

Putting her house on the market so she could move to Rome to help care for her aging parents, she sold it almost immediately, with the proviso that she vacate in two weeks. Nothing she wanted was available in Rome, so a friend told her about a house in nearby Summerville that was available. Ironically her house sits in what was the back yard of her great grandmother’s house. Small world. Small town.

Suzanne’s portrait style might be termed photographic, though not obnoxiously so. She paints standing up because she says sitting distorts what she does; if she sits she is either looking up or down or from one side at her painting. She begins by making digital images of her subject. With those photos to go by, she makes a drawing in paint that seems to be more painting than drawing because of the detail it shows. The client then gets a look at what she’s done before she continues. With their approval at that stage, she begins what may be a 6-month process to complete the work. The joy in the process is to simply see if she can do it. She says what she does is like solving a puzzle, in that the many colors that make up a face have to be knitted together in the right mix or the final results don’t work. Children are particularly tricky because their parents have been used to seeing their faces every day since birth. They want to see the subtleties of their expressions accurately rendered, and are quick to notice when that doesn’t happen. “You get to know the people you paint pretty intimately,” she says. “I don’t like to redo a painting if I don’t have to. The first time it’s fun; the next time it’s too much like work. I also get to know their faces well too, and when I see them again after several years and they have completely changed, it’s almost like feeling betrayed.”