The Anecdotal Life Part. 88

When you are an artist you spend a lot of time working, sometimes, if you're lucky, in a little world of glory known only to you. Used to, I'd wonder why I kept on, now I know why, but have given up when it come to recognition, galleries, advertising, etc.... the games I guess. However, lack of recognition takes a toll. Yesterday, something happened that helped heal the ache. I was working with three other collage artists at the Academy of the Arts Museum in Easton, Maryland. I love that place. They are really on the side of the artist. They let us work in a large studio for free....unbelievable. Studios cost a lot and it takes a lot of politics, besides the money and energy, to get and keep one. You lose a lot of freedom in these places besides having very little space in which to work.
Besides the use of a large studio, the Academy allows us a show and we may enter other group shows for very little cost. Apparently, they've even helped some artists frame their work. More unbelievability.
In that sheltering studio/sanctuary we make things. We make what we want. People walk by on occasion but we are not expected to entertain or instruct them. This Saturday was special. In a way they all are, but this one held a surprise, a gift for me.
We had a new member that ambled in a few months ago. She was beginning what she said was her first collage. We try hard to wait for requests for help rather than interfere. A major credo of ours. She asked for advice a time or two and we batted our answers around, but when the others had gone and she and I were left , she said something half aloud by way of explanation for what she was doing. I , at first, ignored it since I was hot into finishing something, but what she said ran through my mind and I turned to her and asked "were you saying something about four seasons? I did the a four seasons once". I was as astonished as she was to find that the four paintings she referred to as inspiration for her collage were four paintings she had seen years ago at the Torpedo Factory for artists in Alexandria, Virginia. It was my work.. it was so many years ago when she went to the factory and saw my paintings. The price, around 2500, was too high for her, but the paintings stayed in her mind. (admittedly, they were large) We stood and stared at each other stupified. I had made a difference to someone , a big difference, and yet, in spite of the fact , that it was so long ago and in another state, there we were working together. What goes around, does come around is too simple a phrase.
I had sold the fall painting to a lawyer in Baltimore. He, God love him, came back sometime later to let me know his little girl often sat in front of it and just gazed. I remembered a "talented and gifted student" I gave an art demo to in an elementary school who stood in front of the painting just saying over and over to himself, " It is so beautiful, so beautiful.' Maybe it is like looking for love in all the wrong places. We look for recognition in all the wrong places. Art must move the heart, enlighten our senses, change our mind and paths. That's making a difference.

The Anecdotal Life Part 87.

I sit warm in the library waiting for our first real winter storm. I am at the library because by jumping into the new facebook hubbub, I allowed strange things to invade my computer. My own fault entirely, since I hadn't current antivirus protection or spyware.

I was, just a few days ago, inhaling spring... or so I thought. My sister, Diane, had been regaling me with cougar stories, where he had been seen last, etc. Obviously, she and her bridge buddies don't have the usual bridge chit chat. It seems their sightings and collected reports of sightings have ranged from the dunes up near Empire, Michigan, to the hills across the lake from us. That is getting a little close.

I can only report a plethora of fat robins sprinkling the lawns and my cats beating the stuffings out of each other ( at any rate I think that's what they doing) and begging to go out. Everyone in the family is yearning for the Lake. A neighbor in a recent letter, whose cottage is up the hill some from ours, was fantasizing about the inevitable Hearts games we play on the porch. He was intending to capture the "two tens of diamonds" in one of our rounds. I blew the opportunity of a lifetime and sent a reply that said don't you mean the "two jack of diamonds" ? When will I learn to leave well enough alone. That would have been so beautiful.

One thing I can report for certain is that my boat must be ready and is being readied for, hopefully, a new marina across the Chesapeake. I went to a meeting at the Bodkin Creek Marina up north of me in Pasedena, Maryland to be put on their waiting list for a slip. It is a great spot on a small promontory on Bodkin Creek that leads to the bay. It will be out of the wind and perhaps now, at last , I can practice docking without having an overweening North wind bullying me into the opposite direction and ignoring my pitiful efforts to keep square with the dock and narrow slip I need to back into. At all but one practice session I had to hand it over to whichever Captain was giving the lesson and let him fight the current and wind. They all had trouble themselves so I didn't truly have to apologize, but I still felt less than competent. There was, I remember, one fine day where I did make it into the slip. It was calm and I had a calm and gentle Captain. He stood in the cockpit calling up to the flybridge which gear to use and I , all by myself for once, maneuvered the 34 feet of my beloved monster , stern first into the slip. That was such a good day. I think with the size of the boat I have , I will always need one or two people in the stern calling directions or fending off minor collisions with whatever is on each side of me. Then, after a few more sessions, that will be "good enough for government work." That's the way it with most things we endeavor though. We rarely can do it all on our own. One way or another we always need a hand.

Copyright: March 1, 2009.