I liked his music, loved to dance to it, only 19 and too young to go to a club, but living on my own. And then I saw the movie Purple Rain, going back to see it again, and again. I went to my one and only Prince concert, which was also my first ever concert experience, on February 14, 1985 at the Tacoma Dome and I was totally hooked. The next day I was on the hunt for anything and everything by him that I could find at record stores. At the time, there was a fair amount of negative publicity about the lyrics to Darling Nikki. That was a nasty song, one of many - which turned out to be all the more reason for me to buy and listen to his music!
His music videos were hot, the way he danced, played, sang, dressed - he was just sexy everything. I was married on February 14, 1990, and when Prince and Mayte married in 1993 on Valentine's Day - I was just a tad jealous, even though it was my third wedding anniversary as well, and I was pregnant with my son. As happens in life, at that time his music kind of faded away for me. Once in a while I would catch him on TV, but I was never fortunate enough to see him in concert again.
Fast forward to April 2016 when my husband, son and I were on our way to work and over the radio they were reporting that he had died. I could not believe it. I had no tears, I was just shocked. The totality of his death hit me like a ton of bricks the next day after the news sunk in. I was devastated and cried many times. I still get teary.
The only thing I thought would help me grieve is to create some lyric scrapbook pages. I had four pages in mind and I thought after I completed them, I could move on. But once I started I had to create more, accumulating more photos and creating 24 pages total. I knew that I needed to see his home, and once the tours became a reality I planned to celebrate his birthday by visiting Paisley Park. I found Prince groups on Facebook, ‘meeting' people who understood my grief, and joined a group specifically planning for June, 2017.
Being a scrapbooker since the 70's, I knew that I would be scrapbooking my Purple trip, and had already started collecting papers and embellishments to work with after I returned. Trying to raise some extra money to fund my trip, I started creating what I call “Prince faces.”
My Purple trip was amazing! I met the nicest people, and the highlights were the VIP Tour at Paisley Park, the After Dark dance party, First Avenue, and the places he grew up. I could just imagine growing up in the same area/time as Prince did. Returning from Minneapolis, I knew I would have to visit again in June 2018 to see the places I had not gotten to see yet.
Gathering all of the interior photos, including the two taken inside Studio B, I set out to scrap the photos as if the viewer was taking the tour. I did spend an inordinate amount of time researching the details within the photos.
Bonnie Freshour is originally from Lakewood, Washington now living in Honolulu, Hawaii. She has been scrapbooking since the mid-70's and taught herself paper-pieced images using only scissors, well before electronic cutters were invented.