SPRING HOME & GARDEN

antique documents and maps and precision-perfect pen-and-ink drawings by the late Pat Gallagher, a wellknown Lake Charles architect.

The most bold framed art in the Woodard home is the Clementine Hunter series — made all the more eye-catching hung four deep — an Eddie Morman painting and an abstract from a very big talent.

Hunter (1886-1988) was a selftaught folk artist from the Cane River region who would paint in her primitive style only the world she knew, on anything she could get her hands on.

The “Woodard’s Baptism,” “Wedding,” “Reception” and “Funeral” paintings signed with the backward “C and H” monogram are behind glass as they are painted on sheetrock.

“Charles was wise enough to purchase those in 1967,” Karen said. He would have been off to LSU that year.

Eddie Morman is a color blind Lake Charles artist who uses a palette knife to apply thick swaths of oil paint, almost to the thickness of a cake frosting, to create Southwest Louisiana scenes. The Woodards purchased the large square canvas completely filled by a single shrimp at a fundraiser.

At the end of the hall, the hall where the black silhouettes of grandchildren and photographs of sternfaced Fitzenreiter and Goos ancestors grace the hall, is an abstract painting consisting of loose thick black ovals filled in with color. It’s not signed.

“I found out about these elephants in Thailand that paint,” Karen said. “That’s one of their paintings and the elephant’s name is on the back. I think it’s Vesia.”

On a table below is a drawing by one of the grandchildren. It’s on cardboard. A chicken butt, that’s what.

“There were only two antiques that we were determined to keep,” Karen said. “One is the five-leg dining table.”

“It was a wedding present to my great-grandmother in 1903,” Charles added.

It is a wonder any of the Woodards favorite furnishings, antiques and artwork from the river house made it to its new home at all.

“We had moved all of our things into a storage center and warehouse,” Karen said, “and we were renting a house while this one was being built.

As soon as it was finished enough, we moved everything here.”

Two weeks before they were to move into their new digs came the Hurricane Laura warning. They evacuated. The storage facility and the warehouse where their things had been stored were demolished. The house received minimal damage.

“At first I was upset because the scheduling and the damage, although minor, upset the applecart. In hindsight, I see how truly blessed we were.”

The Woodards could have purchased a lot almost anywhere in Lake Charles, but Karen was very drawn to the idea of living on “Holy Ground,” which is the meaning of Terre Saint, the neighborhood named by students of Immaculate Conception Cathedral School. They appreciate being surrounded by younger families, and the noise of children playing and laughing.

“We love it, but we couldn’t have done it without the team,” Karen said. “I think what I learned from Chelsea is that it’s OK to do something different,” Charles added.

And they did, enjoying the process that helped make their house a home.