In August of 2007, I was asked to paint an ornament for the White House Christmas tree, representing Sequoia National Park. My first thought was “Shoot! Another freebie!” I was told an invitation to a reception at the White House would come with the ornament, and I thought, “So? I have to pay for that too!” A friend told me I would be nuts to turn this opportunity down, and Michael said he’d be happy to come to the White House with me. So, I began painting.

       

At the time the call came, I was working on a painting of Sequoia trees in the snow.

I bought a few little ornaments and tried the same design on one in acrylic paint, but it dried way too fast. I tried oil paint on another, and that worked well.

Eventually, a large shiny gold ornament arrived. It looked like glass, and I was afraid of dropping it. I put layer after layer of white paint on it, carefully handling it as if would break, because if that happened, what would I do??

During one of these layers, my thumb dented the thing a little bit and I realized it was plastic! That took a load of worry off my mind!

When it was finished, my neighbor came over to take photos of me holding it so that the size would be evident.

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You can see this is no ordinary ornament—it was big, which made it much easier to paint than my little practice ones.

There was a little difficulty about the reception because no date was given and reservations needed to be made. We painters were given a fax number to send any questions (remember, this was 2007), so I sent a note asking when the reception was and how tight the deadline for mailing the ornament was. As I was frantically trying to program in the fax number so a response could be received by my fax machine, the phone rang. (Yes, I had a phone/fax machine.)

“Cabinart, this is Jana”, I answered.

“This is Bob at The White House”, came the response. “Hi Bob,” said I, ever so casually. To be continued. . .