Tag: memories

Getting in touch with your young inner artist

When I was ten, we lived in South Carolina. Someone or some organization decided to put together an art exhibit in an empty house at or near the college where my father taught. Anyone could submit works, and I decided to paint something while watching my father go through his paintings to pick out one or more to show. I don’t remember if anyone else in my family contributed anything.

I always loved it when my father painted. Oil was his favorite medium, although he also used watercolors, inks, and pencil. I liked the wooden box that held his supplies and his wooden palette. I liked the smell of the oil paints, turpentine, linseed oil, and mineral spirits. During the time I was making my “work of art,” he was painting on these pressed wood panels salvaged from the back of a bookcase:

Easy to see whose technique influenced what I paint today, although I judge his work far superior to mine for many reasons. And at ten, I was much more literal. Here’s my painting that hung in the show (my mother, bless her, kept it framed and packed away all those years or I wouldn’t even remember it):

Please click here for work of staggering genius.

Button Sunday

I have absolutely no reason whatsoever for making this today’s button. Some things in life are just random and we have to accept that. Although if I were older than 35, I might remember a Christmas when I got Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads when they were still just things you stuck in actual vegetables and not inserted into plastic potatoes. Apparently those newfangled ones were safer. But could they smell like a rotting vegetable or piece of fruit that would make your older siblings gag? I think not.

In fact, if I were older than 35, there might even be photographic evidence.

In other matters, I greatly appreciate your comments to my previous post. I will try to fulfill all your requests over time. Thanks for giving me ideas for LJ material!

A soft goodbye

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market—
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanches
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response to your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That’s it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren’t the same.

Saturday’s memorial service for Don introduced me to this poem by John Updike.

30 Days of Creativity: Day 17

One of my favorite amateur sleuths of all time is Pamela North from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries written by Frances and Richard Lockridge. The novels were set in Manhattan during the World War II era. When reading one of the books as a teen, I was charmed that Pamela North wore rompers. There was something endearing about a grown woman wearing the same thing my mother used to sew for me to wear when I was a little girl.

In honor of two women who made me want to be a writer, here’s my model Susannah wearing a romper that I sewed on Thursday.

For 30 Days of Creativity. The fabric is a gift of Marika; the ribbon belt is a gift of Laura C. Susannah is posing in front of an unfinished painting by Timothy J. Lambert.

30 Days of Creativity: Day 14

The heat: It is draining me.

Yesterday, we found out we lost a friend, who died unexpectedly. Not long after we moved to Houston, we had the good luck to meet a group of terrific people who I worked with at the bookstore. Through them, we met Don. During many of our early years of friendship, he was finishing his doctoral work and writing his dissertation, and his acknowledgments when it was published included Tom and me in that little group who Don had dubbed “the Disgruntled Liberals Club.” Don and the other “club” members were part of my support system when I lost friends to AIDS, and they were among the most enthusiastic of our friends when the Tims, Jim, and I began publishing books. It’s hard to believe that when we get together in the future, Don’s big laugh and many stories won’t be heard around the table. I feel this acutely for his best friend Robin, maybe a little more today because it’s the eighteenth anniversary of Steve R’s death, which just doesn’t seem possible. Clichéd though it may sound, time does heal, but it doesn’t ever diminish the magic and memories of a profound friendship. I’m thankful for all the ones I’ve known and still celebrate.

The heat, the mood–they both made me grateful when Tim suggested we catch a matinee of Sex and the City 2. Considering the less than stellar reviews, I figured it would at least be a diversion. Instead, I loved the movie! I thought it was better than the first one, and I was more than happy to land in Carrie Bradshaw’s well-shod world once again.

Whatever, critics.

Today, I also finished the thank-you card I was working on, submitted a sketch to Lindsey’s Bravo challenge site–where I was quite impressed by the other submissions!–and began another 4×6-inch canvas to eventually add to my One Word Art site.


“Pledge”

For 30 Days of Creativity.