In November 2020 , my wife Carla left behind an unforgiving, brutal digital marketing job to focus on art. She started Thunder Moon Studio, selling watercolor art at local fairs and farmer markets. She recently branched out to teaching art as well.

Earlier this year she participated in a 100 day project, which was a very broad and general global art project where participants would commit to doing something artistic for 100 days straight. Some people learned a song, some people wrote poems, some people took photographs, etc. Carla made art.

In addition to making the art, inspired by meeting the warm and kind George Berlin, who described how he liked to leave tiny pieces of art around places he would visit, we also hid each of these hundred pieces in our hometown. I would typically hide the pieces and take a few photographs to give clues as to where to find them, and Carla would post about them on social media.

A lot of people ended up participating, and all the art was found (some were gone in minutes!).

That project ended in June. We had discussed doing something for Halloween. One day seemed a little short, so Carla suggested we do the thirteen days leading up to Halloween.

I had the idea to make multiple pieces for each day rather than one. Similar to the 100 day project, we would post clues on social media to find the first monster. The only way to find the monster’s family would be a clue we would include with the first picture.

I was really happy to be a small part in Carla’s project. This is what makes me happy — bringing some magic and joy into the world for no other reason than that — magic and joy.

Here are the monsters and their families.

Love, Splotchy (and Carla)