I have been discussing in this series of blogs “Geek Chic Babies: Building a Nerdy Nursery” the exciting task of building a space to nurture our soon to be tiny human. To catch you up, we are due March 1st, 2017 with our 1st child… and have decided to not learn the sex of our child until they arrive – our love of space and science fiction has led us to theme our nursery (a shared space within our 1 bedroom apartment) with a SPACE theme.

As part of this theme we have commissioned some of our favorite and unique artists to create portraits of members of our family as space explorers. These artists have been given reference photos and asked to create in their own unique style.

Artist Valeria Holtermann lives in Breman, Germany and can be found on Etsy as Currant Forest. I love her unique a quirky style with the rosy cheeks and little adorable red noses… everyone of her custom portraits looks fresh and cheery.

I asked Valeria to paint my Maternal Grandfather, Louis Lewitz (he has the best name ever, right?) I never met my grandfather because he passed away a couple months before my parents were married in 1975. But everyone has always talked about him with love and admiration. He was the second of 3 children and born in Brooklyn, NY. My Great Grandmother Anna Sherman married Samuel Lewitz in Latvia and they immigrated to the US together where the lived in a walkup on Degraw St. where my grandfather was raised. Samuel (my great grandfather) owned a store with a soda fountain where you could get malts, toys, candy and more (clearly what my mother remembers from her childhood). My grandfather was a medic in World War 2 and apparently when he had a toothache he took it upon himself to pull it out. Louis Lewitz met my grandmother at a USO dance in Atlanta, GA that she had attended with my great aunt, Alice (Lulu has Alice’s name as her middle name).My grandmother and grandfather were married on August, 9, 1945 in New York. They moved to Rome, GA where the rest of my mother’s extended family lived and even moved in with my great grandmother and my grandmother’s 6 siblings and they stayed there until a few years after my mother was born. Eventually they moved to Gadsden, AL which was where my mother grew up and Louis followed in his father’s footsteps and owned a “general store”, that was just referred to as “the store” by my mother, aunts, and grandmother as I grew up. I have always had the name Louisa picked out for my future daughter to honor the memory of a man I never got the opportunity to know and hoped that one day his spirit would be kept alive and I’d get to know him by getting to know her. So, if we have a girl her first name will be Louisa (or LuLu… after Lou Lew…)

I love this painting that Valeria has created the background is just beautiful and the colors are so vibrant. All of her portraits have this quirky little red nose and I think it’s adorable!

Check out some other portraits by Valeria

See the other featured artists here:
Cristina Garcia Ganga
Gaur Estudio