A Ride to the Past

My family is flawed. Because of that, the research into my roots for my art project has often stalled. I write about leaders and pioneers in their fields who are acclaimed for their achievements. Yet with a little searching I find them prejudiced, mysogynist, racist, or thieving. Many harbored opinions that I consider untenable today. My family story, much of it a story of white males, had to be balanced a bit by focus on the strong matriarchs. The women come to light (and literature) in the branch of Americans that wrote books and kept diaries. I want to focus on the brilliant and inspiring Florence Cowles, (1861- 1950), who grew up in Algona and traveled the world visiting schools and talking to teachers. That is what drove me to the Midwest last week- a need to gain a clearer perspective on the people I admire.

Florence and Gardner Sr and their home famous for mandatory Family Sunday Lunches

Our week in Iowa felt much fuller than a mere 7 days, for the amount of time we spent in the past. From the moment we landed at the airport and took the road named after my granddad into the city, we were faced with signs of family legacy from the late 1800's to mid 1900's. It was special traveling with my mother. She had grown very quiet over the summer, and on the trip her memories came flooding back. She remembered details, names and addresses and recounted little stories every where we went! I booked us a room in the Savery Hotel, Des Moines' first sky scraper at 13 stories, across from the Cowles Commons. We looked out to the capital building dome covered in 23 carot gold. Grand Avenue linked us to her childhood neighborhood, her grandparents home and the art center. 

Though Florence spent one year at the Chicago Institute of Art, her legacy is in the education emphasis of the Des Moines Art Center

After a few days in Des Moines we ventured up through a sea of corn and soy crops to Kossuth County and the town my relatives founded, Algona in 1854. Within minutes of arriving in the sleepy town, we saw fliers about the restoration of a family grave and colorful murals across multiple buildings referencing Asa and Ambrose, the patriarchs of our Cowles branch of the family! Ambrose is Florence's father. Needless to say, we were welcomed warmly to the Kossuth County Historical Society and quickly overwhelmed with the amount of information and personal items in the collection. All my questions were answered and I only wished my sisters could have been there to glean from their own perspective from the treasures on display. 

 

Mid week we visited the Meskwakie Nation in Tama, and had to ourselves an afternoon in the Tribal Museum. It was important for me because any story of my pioneer ancestors has to acknowledge the settler colonialism that crushed the indigenous population. Manifest Destiny was firmly in the minds of the pioneering Asa and Ambrose and the land they staked a claim to had other residents. 

 My time in Iowa answered many questions about the limitations of my ancestors and exposed me to their liberal leanings. I came to see that they were compassionate and on record as eventually supporting the Meskwakie (Sac and Fox) in their bid to return and own land. People like Governor Grimes were real heroes, changing the tide and protecting the native Iowans from the homesteaders. Florence's diary detailed some of the cultural interactions she witnessed between her mother and the destitute tribes that passed through. The stories of the settler's survival emphasized their willingness to treat the natives fairly and peacefully in all transactions. I learned about a handful of other people who also felt the enslavement of blacks and the incarceration of natives were wrong and to be protested. I feel relieved that Florence spent time and money securing decent support for the natives and spoke up about the civil rights of all those less fortunate. 

 

Of course there was Hezekiah, Ambrose' wife's father... my great great great grandfather and Florence Cowles' grandfather). He and his brothers fought in the Black Hawk and Civil war, clearing the natives away from good farm lands and from potential cross-continental routes to rich mines.

Dignity for Jo Davidson

This is personal family history, art history and American History!

Taken from text written by Bradbury Kuett:

The Centerpiece of the Louis I. Kahn designed FDR Four Freedoms State Park on Roosevelt Island in New York is a triumphant bronze head of FDR, sculpted by the renowned artist Jo Davidson, a fervent supporter and friend of the president.

At the park's entrance there are engraved the names of the architect, the founder of the Park Conservancy, and the donors, but Jo Davidson's name is nowhere to be found.

Appeals to the board to engrave Jo Davidson's name have been met with silence. This unfortunate oversight, inconsequential in the view of the board, is a slight that, in effect, denies Jo Davdison his rightful recognition in American art History. Whereas Jo Davidson should be heralded as an American success story of consummate artistry, the board's silence is an outrage thrown onto the great heap of innuendos and falsities hurled upon Jo, a native son of the lower east side.

Jo Davidson should be celebrated beyond prominence as an artist. Chairman of Independent Voters' Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt, and vice chairman of Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, Jo chose with a colleague the site of the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Piaza in Riverside Park.

While Jo was under constant surveillance during the Cold War, the government targeted his two sons. Jacques (Tilly's note: my stepgrandfather) a Voice of Freedom (VOA) to the French under German occupation, was blacklisted, fired from CBS radio without cause. U.S. agents urged without success, Agence France Presse in D.C. to fire Jean.

Of note, Danielle Benedite, brother of Jacques wife, worked with Varian Fry in Marseille France, and saved some 1500 people from Nazi capture.

We ask that the Park's Board Chair Barbara Shattuck Kohn, Vice Chair Katrina vanden Heuvel and President Sally Minard redress this unjust situation by engraving the name of Jo Davidson on a plaque at the Park's entrance, similar to the one honoring Loius. I. Kahn. And we ask your support in this effort

Facebook: DignityforJodavidson

contact dignity4JoDavidson@gmail.com

Nightmares

(continued Daily Drawings during the Covid Pandemic)

Nightmares/ April 24

A month into the national quarantine and numbers of deaths silently continue to rise. Unemployment increases are shouted about in the news. Congress tries to print more money. Alternative stations start floating conspiracy theories. The president encourages protesters to ignore the science, suggests injesting bleach, and screams hysterical over trying to find someone to blame.  No one I know will talk politics, because it is too exhausting and unbelievable. What outrages us one day is overshadowed the next. I feel like I am holding my breath and waiting.

The city, two hours away, empties out and soon all the empty houses on our country road are filled with city people. The stores seem ransacked. There is still no toilet paper to be had. Or whole wheat flour. The trash thrown along the road reflects a higher economic shopper. Maybe we are all high, panting thru stifled homemade masks.

Mask Making/ April 11

I attend church on line, and the local hospital erects a tent in the parking lot to handle the expected rise in patients.  I can’t sleep and worry about my job as a school teacher.

Easter Sunday/ April 12

Hospital Tent/ April 13

Image of the "Mother of Modern Medicine" Inspires Hope for Vaccine.

As we try to “flatten the curve” of stress on our medical facilities and healthcare workers, we pray for a vaccine against Covid19. Doctors are studying patient responses and leaning over lab Petri dishes with questions. No doubt they will turn to the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks, called HeLa cells, that have helped fight numerous diseases from Polio, Ebola, Parkinson’s to AIDS.  

Who was Henrietta Lacks?

Henrietta Lacks, a young mother of five, died in 1951 at John Hopkins Hospital from cervical cancer that her Doctor noted "looked like pearls". He had stitched tubes and pouches filled with radium inside her cervix, as was standard treatment at the time for invasive cervical cancer. He also took some cell samples from her cervix, without her knowledge or consent, which was also standard practice at that time.

Henrietta, the great, great, granddaughter of a slave, died that same year at the age of 31. Her cells in the lab replicated quickly and continually and amazed the doctor with their seeming immortality. They were the first human cells to reproduce outside the body! Afraid of being sued, the doctor gave the cells a code name, “HeLa” and shared them in labs across the country. They are still the most commonly used cells in research today.

The story turns rough when you learn that in the 1970’s some scientists, with secret agendas, did research on Henrietta Lacks' children without their informed consent. Then in 1975, a family friend asked about the source of the Lacks cells that his coworkers, at the National Cancer Institute, were studying. It brought a light to the two decades of darkness that the Lacks family had been kept in.

A book was written, then an HBO movie. In 2010 the John Hopkins Hospital donated a grave marker to her unmarked plot. It says: “Here lies Henrietta Lacks, Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever.”

To say that Lacks is a global phenomenon would be limiting. In 1962 her cells were launched into outer space aboard a Russian satellite for study. Two years ago, the National Museum of African American History ofCulture and the National Portrait Gallery jointly acquired a painting of Lacks. It adds a beautiful and much needed face to the woman often called “the mother of modern medicine”.

Kadir Nelson with his painting of Lacks

Who painted her portrait?

Kadir Nelson (b.1974), an American artist, was commissioned by HBO for the 2017 movie premier of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, to paint the first portrait of Lacks. An author of several best-selling children’s books on African-American culture and lead artist for Steven Spielberg’s 1997historical drama Amistad, Nelson is known for his larger than life portraits of African American leaders. According to his website, Nelson chooses “subject matter that has emotional and spiritual resonance and focuses on the journey of the hero as it relates to the personal and collective stories of people."

There was no portrait in existence of Lacks save for two small family photos. Nelson used those as well as a vocabulary of symbolism to tell Lacks' story. Standing in a red dress, Nelson paints a yellow straw hat as a halo around Lacks’ head. Her strong faith is reflected in the bible she holds with her hands crossed over her womb. A complex “Flower of Life” pattern against which she stands is the ancient symbol for immortality and exponential growth. The pearls around her neck reflect the doctor’s note about how her cancer grew. A pendant of a nest represents motherhood and the hope of fresh birth. The repeating flower pattern on the dress symbolizes the biological bounty that she shed without knowledge for our salvation. The most poignant details are the two small buttons missing from her dress. They symbolize that something precious was taken from her.

Hopefully, soon the HeLa cells will demonstrate another cure.

Not All Hospitals are Equal

In the light of today, when countries around the world are scrambling to build hospitals, virus test sites, and labs, I can’t help but reflect on the glorious façade of the Ospidale degli Innocenti. Back in the late 1400’s, the Silk Merchant Guild of Florence hired Filippo Brunelleschi, who would go on to become one of the renaissance’s greatest architects, to build the first public building to receive and house orphan babies as community service. 

Brunelleschi pulled together ideas of scale and optics that glorified human proportion and signaled the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe. 

The hospital façade is longer than tall. A colonnade of composite columns rhythmically punctuates the full front. Each column is placed apart at a distance that equals their height and the arcade behind them maintains the same measurement, creating a series of cubes. Sweeping arches fly up from each capital and leap down the length of the building, like a beating pulse. In the triangular spaces where the arches meet there are tondos, (circular framed), ceramic babies in sculptural relief. Above, on the top floor of the 2-story building, the rectangular windows have triangular caps that visually lift the weight of the horizontal building upwards. The design incorporates grey stone and white stucco to break up the space into geometric patterns. The whole building feels light and measured.

Brunelleschi was a trained goldsmith, and sculptor, but when in 1403 he only won second place in the competition to create panels for the FlorenceBaptistery doors, he seemed to quit all that and turn to architecture. He is known for designing innovative machines to help construction, and for his greatest masterpiece, a wonder of the world, the largest Dome of the time, theDome of Santa Maria del Fiore. It is more then 150 feet across and involved construction 180 feet in the air. It took 18 years to build and there were only three accidental deaths recorded! Brunelleschi, a problem-solver, patented many innovations to get the job done. Born in 1377, he died ten years after the completion in 1446 and is buried under the dome.

My son, another problem solver, is working in construction with a company proposing fast pop-up buildings for FEMA. It looks as though they will be made of extruded recycled plastic, and dome like in shape. I wonder if asking for columns and arches would be too much? Maybe some tondos framing the virus?

Poignant Art in Times of Panic

Today with all the news headlines are of crashing stock markets and shutting markets, uncertainty (and insensitivity) in political leadership and a contagious, possibly terminal, epidemic on the loose, we can look to the arts for humor, brevity, distraction or focus. Artists ideate and imagine. Ideation is the process of pulling forth solutions to a question. The role of the artist is to imagine- and that means to give form to an image, movement, or sound as a solution.

I am reminded of an artist who was able to alter a simple iconic image and make it resonate as the voice of the disenfranchised. In his best images he combined rage and tenderness. David Wojnarowicz, (1954-1992), was an American artist at the peak of his career in the 1980’s. Working under the slashing (and insensitive) government of President Reagan and amidst the scorched-earth Aids body count. He turned personal confessional expressions into powerful political activism. Wojnarowicz suffered a life of childhood abuse, homelessness, teenage prostitution, and by the time he was a young adult he was losing his friends to the Aids crisis. His art famously clashed with forces of censorship and repression. He called out, with his art serving as a social critique, the political mythmakers such as Jesse Helms and the conservative Christian’s who would insist that condoms and safe sex not be talked about in schools. Wojnarowicz most famous work, Untitled, 1988-89 is a platinum print photograph taken as a section of a natural history diorama. It is of the American buffalo jumping, one after the other, over a cliff. The image is beautifully developed and hauntingly cropped. It symbolized the hopelessness people felt within the medical crisis looking at government policies. His image brilliantly spoke to the marginalized, from the Native Americans (the diorama story) to the Aids victims.This was seen not only as the swan song of the poor, sick and politically invisible, but as the prediction for our society as a whole if we continued without a change of heart.

Untitled by Wojnarowicz

When a friend apologized for making art that was less than political, that focused on beauty, Wojnarowicz replied, “…these are so beautiful, and that’s what we’re fighting for. We’re being angry and complaining because we have to, but where we want to go is back to beauty. If you let go of that, we don’t have anywhere to go.”

self portrait by Peter Wojnarowicz

 I'm thankful for Wojnarowicz and artists like him that do the dirty work, remind us of death, and of what is valuable (and worth fighting for) about life.

Art Made of Matchbooks to Ignite Awareness

This article was published in the Millerton News, Compass, February 20, 2020,  page A8.

In the cool crisp air of the cavernous Wassaic Project grain elevator stand or drape 7 large quilts in a show titled, Heirloom: Quilts from Another Country Quilt Cycle.

DARNstudio, "Amplify"

Walking through at first glance they can seem silent and even severe. It takes further reading, and peaking closely, to decipher the conceptual layers and emotional heat behind the works. The labels inform of title, ingredients, dimension, and date completed, but there is so much more to share.

Quilts are the quintessential heirlooms passed down through generations. They map our stories and stitch together family and community. A friend of mine in college had a quilt on her bed sewn by her mother commemorating the send off to school with an aerial view of her ancestral home. Quilts such as that one have warmed us, aided with healing, and silently comforted us in our beliefs. Historical lore has quilts serving most famously as poetic signposts pointing black slaves to promises of freedom along the Underground Railroad. 

This show does not point to freedom.

These DARNstudio quilts have a more sinister air. The patterns and colors are comprised of units made out of souvenir matchbooks lashed together and backed by thick grey felt. The places commemorated on the books of matches are of mundane sites: a train station platform, a convenience store, a sheriff’s jail cell, a traffic-stop intersection.

Put together by the collaborative duo of DARNStudio, based in Roxbury, CT, these quilts are part of a larger series-in-process making a statement about the killing of unarmed black American men.

David Anthone and Ron Norsworthy, the DARNstudio artists, design logos for each new place where such a killing has occurred and they then print thousands of custom-designed matchbooks. 

Flipped back to front for the sake of variety and rhythm, the matchbook fronts bear letters and numbers, codifying the names and most recent dates of a death of a victim by the hands of police,  stand-your-ground policy and other traumatic events. 

Vaguely resembling the patterns of coded quilt signage, these are contemporary pictographs where crows in the sky replace flying geese. In the quilt titled Amplify, the volume symbol of our cell phones is replicated over and over. 

Pattern titles such as "Snake in the Garden", "Go High", and "Double Cross" are an update for a vehicle that explores inherited trauma, and policy bias. 

 

This is the new story quilt that we, as a culture, are creating as heirlooms to pass down through generations. Each quilt of 2800 matchbooks appears colorful and comforting, but in actuality they are flashpoints. Each matchbook is a spark and a part of an overall blaze of conversation that needs to be shared. 

"Heirloom: Quilts from Another Country Quilt Cycle" is at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY until March 28th. The Maxon Mills Gallery is open from noon to 5pm every Saturday and Sunday; admission is free. To learn more go to www.wassaicproject.org/events/2020-heirlooms

In Miami and Baltimore, Mickalene Thomas is the life of the party

One of the most exciting exhibits I recently experienced was at the Baltimore Museum of Art's Mickalene Thomas:A Moment's Pleasure exhibit. I remember first seeing her work when she was a resident at the Studio Museum of Harlem back in 2001. This was so different, and yet very much connected. Known for her large colorful, elaborate, mixed media portraits of black women, Thomas has taken the viewer right into her paintings.  By building immersive installations that mimic a party room from childhood, Thomas is bringing intimacy and a different sort of stimulation from the rest of the museum experience.

view from my comfy seat towards the bar

Born out of a desire to memorialize her mother and inspired by old Polaroids she had of her mother getting ready for parties, Thomas has been creating rooms since her "Better Days" art bar installation at Galerie Volkhaus for the Basel Art Fair of 2013. In 2016 she created the work, "Do I Look Like a Lady", an immersive video installation of singers now owned by the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. She followed up "Better Days" with Better Nights, rooms installed at Miami's Bass Museum December 2019. In the ArtNewspaper, Thomas calls the work a "manifesto experience... celebrating a marginalized group of people".
The decor is 1970's and 1980's. It is dimly lit and the music is loud. There is faux wood paneling, carpet squares, tiled ceilings, mix matched furniture, angled mirrors, bright colors, macrame plant hangers and contrasting fabric patterns. I found myself lulled into having a seat in the darkened living room and watched a few animated video shorts, while in the next room a formal bartender lined up bottles and wiped the surfaces clean. As far as I could see the other visitors were just as entranced. Included in "A Moment's Pleasure" are paintings and videos by younger Pratt artist. Thomas, a Pratt alum, has a reputation of generosity. She mentors younger artists, particularly those of color, to help them get ahead in the art world. I am sure they produced some of the colorful and mesmerizing videos on display at the end of the room.

Some books on the endtables. New to me!

The Baltimore Museum recently announced that they would spend the totality of their 2020 allocated purchasing funds to buying art by women. The focus on decolonizing the institution's collection has spread to reflecting on how they welcome and cultivate relationships with patrons and collectors of color. Mickalene Thomas is a strong artist to support. She brings with her some serious humor, a community of fans and, with installations like these, her base is only building.
The exhibit will be at the Baltimore Art Museum until May 2021. "Better Nights" at the Bass in Miami will be up until September 27, 2020.
Links to Books here: Liliane by Shange and Sister Outsider by Lourde

Reminder of gift offer

If you sign up with your email to follow my blog by the end of the month, I will mail you a piece of art from my flat files!
Just add your email address to the window at the top of the right side bar, and press "submit". You will get a verifying window that makes you click to prove you are not a robot, and once you do that, you will soon after receive an email to verify your subscription. Then email me your address so I can send you your the packet.
Tillystudio@aol.com
It's a blatant ploy on my part to build up followers among friends as I embark on a year of writing intentionally. I plan to post issues of history and finding your voice in the story. I want to share tips for art lessons and crafty ideas that can be done at home or in a classroom.  And I will continue to point out the art in our communities. By subscribing to me, you will participate in keeping me accountable. If the art and stories inspire you, I hope you let me know and don't hesitate to pass it forward.
I believe that the arts can make a difference in shifting the world view to a more positive and inclusive place. It's my small activist act... trying to make the world slightly more hopeful, positive and beautiful.
Thank you!

What Really Happened to the Buffalo?

The Last of the Buffalo, by Bierstadt, 1888

In researching for my art history book, I was shaken to understand that the American Buffalo were systematically killed under the encouragement of our government. Hoping to force the Native Americans off the prairies and onto reservations, the thought behind the extermination of the docile species was that,  “every dead buffalo figures as one less Indian”. Without the herds, the native Americans would starve. This was the policy of leaders of government in the late 1800's, all the way up to President Ulysses S. Grant.

1938 nickle

Of course that was not depicted in the great paintings of the time. Alfred Bierstadt’s painting, The Last of the Buffalo, actually depicts a Native American in the act of planting his spear into the animal and surrounded by slaughter and a seeming abundance of wildlife. Bierstadt’s painting did a lot to reinforce the romanticism of the “wild west” and the white man’s “Manifest Destiny” to own all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Though convincingly painted, the work shows vast vistas of “empty” lands, symbolic dried bones and primitive savage warriors of the past and a dramatic blue sky portending to a bright future. Painted at the same time as Van Gogh in Europe was painting, this picture is as surreal as Starry Night. Both are interpretations of landscape reflecting dreams of the times. 

Unfortunately the reality was more of a nightmare. Congress passed a bill in 1957 to protect the Buffalo, but President Grant refused to sign it. In 2016 President Obama signed a National Bison Legacy Act protecting the mammals, who have been on the verge of being wiped out, from further harm.

A real photograph from the late 1800's

Currently, President Trump sees the need to protect hunting as a hobby, over protecting any endangered species.

Donald Trump Jr.

 

Oh, Capernaum* (chaos to my mind now)

The world outside my kitchen sink

I’m having an existentialist crisis because last night I experienced the art of Nicole Labaki. She is a Lebanese actress, screenwriter and film director who in 2018 finished a 2-hour social-realist drama that will shake your soul. At first the award winning Capernaum is hard to watch, but the filming of it is so delightful that I hung in there. And I am so glad that I did. After the credits went by, Michael and I sat in silence for many minutes unable to shake our selves back to the present.

The main actor, a Syrian boy living in Norway, Zaid, is a kid of around 12 years old. His relationship with an Ethiopian baby (actually born of parents from the east and west coast of the African continent) is so sweet and poignant, and evolves to depict a pure and loving brotherhood. Both children are desperate and Zaid is prone to inventive nurturing. The film has a lot of silence, and the emotion in the faces of the children speaks the situation.

Labaki says that the spark of the story came to her late one night as she and her husband (who does the music for the film and agreed to mortgage the house for production costs), were driving home and at a traffic stop. Out the car window a woman was begging with her baby who was so tired he/she could barely stand, yet even at midnight, could not be allowed to sleep. Labaki wondered at the world of the child being limited to the square meter of sidewalk. She was at the time pregnant with her second child and appalled at the way the most vulnerable in our species were treated, at the extent of their maltreatment. For two years she interviewed children in the slums of Lebanon, many of them refugees from Euro-American wars. At the end of every interview she asked them if they were glad to be alive. Most said “no”.

The story is about a kid who tries to save his younger sister from being married off to pay the back rent. The sadness and powerlessness of the situation envelops the movie viewer. Set in Beirut, the story begins in court, where the young boy is trying to sue his parents for having born him. When the judge asks Zaid what he wants from his parents, he says that he wants them to stop having more kids. It is a poignant moment when we pan to the parents who have at least 7 kids and are pregnant with another. From there the story sweeps backwards and is in reality a story about papers, documentation, identification cards and political borders. Without papers, these families are desperate and invisible to all except those who mean to exploit them. 

I don’t want to tell you more. But since I experienced this story I have not felt the same about my work or my life goals. Thoughts fly through my head that I need to do something. Leave this bucolic country home I just landed back in and go to the refugee camps, or at least to the US borders where we lock up children and babies away from their parents. I could work in the prisons in upstate NY with art supplies or do a diaper drive for the Red Cross. Besides giving donations here and there like I always do, WHAT the hell should I do? I feel undeservedly lucky being born American and with economic options, but the stain of crimes done to others for the benefit of our national lifestyle is going to be a longer sentence. It is string of unending moral crimes.

Thoughts on the creative act

It is a gift to bring the tools of art-making to someone and open their world up to magic.

Michael and his daughter-in-law and grandson

We all have inside us something delightful to share. Somewhere in the early teens it is squashed by critics, both knowing and unknowing. That is why Picasso said it took him years to learn to paint like a child.
Stories and pictures, from our ancestors to the present, help us define who we are and why we are here. Those types of questions, it has been suggested, separate us from other animals. We are, if not in bare survival mode, always asking. It is good to write your own story from time to time.

Here we Are by Oliver Jeffers

The creative act connects us to a higher force, a power of energy that was there with the creation of everything in the Universe. Whether it is cooking, or cleaning, or sewing, or carving little Gnomes out of driftwood, when we are doing a creative act we can be present for our life. And what results is a gift for others, like your grandparents, total strangers, your pets, and your parents. A truly creative act will resonate much further than the origin, going across boundaries of time and space. This goes for making weapons as well as making love. So chose with awareness that some things will be funny and others quite sobering.

Follower's Offer

Since 2006 I have been blogging, but not as consistently as when I wanted to paint and sell a painting each day. Somewhere in the middle years I got busy, moved, got a full time teaching job, and lost the discipline of checking in. Now I am back at the writers desk, honing my vocabulary and dreaming of essays that turn heads and guide people to find art that delights and surprises them.

You, my followers, also must have gotten busy, taken full-time jobs, moved on to other apps and even (in hushed tones) died on me. 😞

Today, checking my stats I see that there is only a dozen of you that still check in and I'm so very humbly grateful. Surely it is time to give you some gratitude!!!
Let me know how I can send you a small gift, such as an unframed painting from my morning walks. For every follower/subscriber, I will send a small painting right now in gratitude for your support. It means a lot to me. Just go to my profile link and see where you can email me your address.

🎁

In the year ahead I plan on writing more regularly, unveiling new directions of thought, sharing some lessons and peeks into my families art history. I hope to keep you curious.

The Secret Fear of an Overachiever

If left to my own devises, I would probably lounge around post coital, musing about life and eat chips all day. But instead I tell myself that I may die soon, and I have much to accomplish in limited time.

With that in my head, I can barely sit down for tea!

Time to reflect

It's the time of year where we're attracted to looking back and looking forward. It seems the calendar for 2020 might be potently laden with hindsight. There has been a lot of struggle going on all over the planet. Even though we live in a period of massive prosperity and un-imagined peace, the news fills us in with the horrors of incarcerated children at our countries borders, as we live sandwiched between them and the sorrow of leaky corporate oil lines trespassing Native American reservations. What can I do?

Politics is such a messy money filled game. I gave thousands of dollars in small increments this year to buoy favorite candidates and causes. It seems never enough and always more to do.
What can I do?

We moved from a southern city to the northeast countryside. From apartment living to managing an old house and a couple acres. We feel new to the neighborhood. I love having the seasons again at my door. I enjoy the folks down the road at the farm, and our friends who swing by to chat and drop off jams, soaps and even driveway salt! How can they ever know how thankful we are? It seems so warm up here!

Every morning Michael and I take an early morning walk. Its a balm to our souls. I also think it has helped us acclimate to the environment. Today, when I saw it was 40 degrees, I thought that I didn't need to wear long underwear! Surely, I am almost native now!!!

The Trixi Strauss Annual Christmas Bird Count

Trixi and my Grandpa, Bill Strauss

Since returning to the farm 6 months ago, I have become aware of slight memories and remnants of my grandparents in almost everything I do. Perhaps I am closer to their age, but for whatever reason, I think of them both a lot more than usual when walking around the farm, prepping food in the kitchen, or hanging with my dad. Their spirit infuses the land. One of my favorite sweaters to wear when I write is a green one knitted and worn by Trixi. It has a slip of paper in the pocket like she always had. So I was excited to do more this year with keeping the Trixi Strauss Audobon Annual Christmas Bird Count alive. It is organized by the Sharon Audobon Center, a few miles away.

I set up my post just inside the bedroom windows, looking towards the back yard, two full birdseed holders and a suet cage.

Then I watched the sun come up. The high winds must have kept the birds away... until the first little Slate grey Junco arrived. Then pairs of Tufted Titmice came. We had a finch, and a couple small cowbirds.

I think these are cowbirds.

One of three aggressive Blue Jays

I am an amateur armed with bird books, binoculars and paint. The overall abundance of birdseed visitors this morning have been the woodpeckers. I am so pleased. We have them in all sizes, from the Downy to the Red Headed, and even a noble Pileated was seen landing on the backyard trees.

#dailypainting #birdwatcher #woodpecker
And now- at 5pm, the feeders are abandoned as the light of day turns to the dark of night.

Inside Out in the neighborhood

Every couple days on my morning walk up Morse Hill road, I circle back through the Kildonan School campus. Hoping to get a job there this fall, I recently moved back into the area, into my home across the street from the large and now empty campus.  This August, the campus sits quiet and weeds grow in front of the building entryways. The sudden mid-summer announcement of the closing of the school has left the neighborhood guessing, and left me, a former and future hopeful teacher, in a state of hyper-dreamism where past memories, future visions and current truths are all braid together.

Two students, larger-than-life, with books the size of my car, peer at me as I pass. They are the ghostly remains of an art project initiated by Hunt, a Kildonan student who was inspired by a JR Ted talk, whose INSIDE OUT project encourages peoples from around the globe to express themselves. Hunt, a very generous dyslexic advocate, aimed to use JR’s INSIDE OUT project as a platform to raise dyslexia awareness and empower young people with dyslexia. Kildonan was a school with the focus to help kids with dyslexia express themselves through one-on-one tutoring and student driven projects.

Back in 2013, Hunt photographed every student on campus and worked with production managers from JR’s studio to paste the portraits to the driveway, the schoolhouse and the library. Still wheat-pasted on the side of the shuttered library six years later, the last two students are emblematic of how the art of the INSIDE OUT project created by the international social practicing post studio artist JR continues to give agency to the marginalized. I am hoping that the thousands of anxiety and academic suffering students this fall will find the support that they need.

Please check out the links above to hear JR talk about his projects, and to hear Hunt share his enthused participation in projects empowering kids in school.