I have finished the last of the current Falls Church building series, with only three days left before the show. I'll frame it myself and bring it over to the gallery after work. Fortunately, the opening is on one of my off-duty days. I still have a lot to do. I have to make "museum cards" with the title and medium of the work on them, for each of the pieces. I need to catalog them and figure out a price for each one. Then I have to make sure that I have notified everyone who might want to come to the event. I expect to have a good time, if all goes well.

The last of these architectural studies is of Bedo's Leatherworks which has been in business in Falls Church for more than twenty years. They moved to their current location in 1998, in an old red house. A few years ago they took down the old red house and built a new beige house on the same location, which is the one in my picture. The business belongs to an Armenian family, whose patriarch, Bedros Doudaklian, founded it in 1977. "Bedo" was Bedros' nickname. The leatherworks is now run by his son, Steven.

The developers wanted to build modern multi-use buildings in that space, but Bedo's Leatherworks would not sell their new building over to be demolished, and would not move. They held out against the developers and so the new buildings were built around them. I depict Bedo's as it was in the autumn of 2006, when the big blocks were just beginning to rise on either side, built with impressive tall construction cranes. The large tree to the left is a yellow poplar or "tulip tree" which was originally going to be cut down during the construction, but was saved, at least for now, by the Doudaklians. As of late spring 2007, the buildings, still unfinished, are now as tall as the tree and have put the poplar in shadow for most of the day. In this situation, it probably will not survive, but Bedo's will.

The painting is called "Bedo's In Between," mixed media (watercolor and ink mostly) on illustration board, 14" x 16".

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