Virus Anniversary Ponderings on a Plague Saint

 

Marking the anniversary of yearlong pandemic-induced closures and nationwide isolation, I am drawn to St Sebastian as a perfect devotional image. Depicted tied to a column, tree or stake, he is riddled with arrows and gazing, with a beatific smile, up to the heavens.

Back during Bubonic plagues of 17^th century Europe, Christians embraced the saint as an intercessor for their prayers. Sebastian, who lived in Rome, became a martyr who submitted to torture and was left for dead twice. He seemed to defy odds, surviving arrow wounds and beatings. For that reason, he could serve as a lightening rod to relieve and protect others from the plague.  

 

There are other saints to pray to for help in times of plagues, such as the Virgin Mary and St Roch, but St Sebastian seems to be the perfect one for me.

His ideal physique, riddled with arrows has come to symbolize the toleration of multiple zoom meetings and multiplying obituary pages, while the archers, who run away on the receding road, are the business commitments and goals of a “get-me-ahead-at-any-cost” lifestyle. The calendar is the rubble of antiquity around us. I strive for the verticality, and the connection to God.

 

St Sebastian By Botticelli

, Tempera on panel, 1474 (Berlin)

In the 14^th century the “Black Death” killed 30 million people in Europe alone, and an estimated 75 to 200 million across Eurasia. Some people blamed God and turned to focus less on the afterlife and more on a humanist philosophy of earthly delights. Many blamed marginal groups such as the Jews, and instituted brutal and devastating pogroms. The movement of the Flagellants reflected a growing belief that self –harm could win God’s favor and spare the body or even the community. Many people attended gruesome performances of the faithful whipping themselves into frenzy. In the port of Venice, they instituted a law for 30-day isolation applicable to all incoming ships, called a “trentino”, and then extended that for what we now call a “quarantino”

In the 15^th and 16^th century, with the European hunger for world exploration, (and exploitation), 80 to 90% of indigenous populations in the Americas were wiped out by small pox.

Just this week America reached a milestone of 500.000 deaths due to Covid. There hasn’t been public mass mourning until President Biden and VP Harris stood in silence with 500 lit candles. We seem like Sebastian, suspended between two deaths, those of our loved ones and possibly ours. St Sebastian reminds us of that as he is depicted still alive a moment or two before his death. He shares in our personal vulnerability.

 

 Featured art work:

Digital drawing, dimensions variable. Last May, my 82 year old mother had to undergo massive surgery on a rare abdominal cancerous tumor during the Covid crisis. We had to drop her off outside the hospital and wait to hear from her after hours of surgery and recovery. I did this drawing as a prayer and a nod to St. Sebastian. (And mom's doing great!)

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.

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.

Coronavirus Shadow is as Terrifying as Breugel's Triumph

Triumph of Death by Bruegel ca.1562

When I think of the Coronovirus leaping around the globe and adding to the daily death count, I think of one of the most terrifying paintings in history, the Triumph of Death, an oil-on-wood-panel painting, created in 1562. It has something, like this virus, of everyone’s worst nightmare. Set along a coast in a village with commerce, the scene looks like a premonition of hell. Flames and smoke dot the horizon. It’s an eco-horror. There isn’t a sign of any green life in the landscape. Trees are being chopped down. The land is scorched and rust colored. A bloated fish gasps on the shore. The painting is of a jumbled panicked populace surrounded by almost quaint little scenes of victims stuck in torture contraptions, and coffins sinking into the mud in the surrounding fields. It looks like the cursed forecast of what we can expect if the stores run out of medical masks, or you are stuck in an airplane full of coughing aliens.

Not enough is known about Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the artist from the Netherlands who worked in the 1500’s. No one knows his birth date, but the time he was registered in an art guild (1551) to his death (1669) he executed 40 paintings and 60 prints. This particular painting is hung at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

In The Triumph of Death, the hysteria is loud and panoramic. Men, women, babies, the rich, the poor, the laborer, the gamblers, soldiers, monks, and kings, are all tormented and terrified. Skeletons arrive in massive numbers and outnumber the living. They arrive on boats and by horseback. They interrupt meals, disrupt commerce and dismantle forts. They amass an army, creating a wall of coffin-shaped shields.  They pull wagons piled high with skulls, trampling over victims, and herding crowds into a large dark door: a death trap in the side of a hill. They wield long slivered scythes and blow on trumpets, even drumming percussion with bones. A woman, face down, cradles her baby while dogs eat it’s face. A man is hung with his pants down. A bewildered king is taunted by a skeleton holding up an empty hour-glass.

Everyone in the painting is in the throes of death except for two young lovers in the lower right corner. They are seemingly oblivious and feeling immortal as they play music and read. But, behind them, a skeleton has picked up an instrument and is playing along.

On a barren hill to the left, two skeletons ring a large black bell.

Painted during a time when northern Europe was rocked by pandemics, reeling under the ruling religious wars, and leery of the inventive fury of the Inquisition, pictures such as this were called “moral paintings” because they were warnings to live right. No one was/is immune to death. Washing hands hadn’t caught on and religion, literally, could kill.

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

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.

 

Bathtime Painting

painting by P. Bonnard

Soaking in the tub is such a great way to catch up with myself. It is also the time to let go of myself. Inside the hot water, I love musing on how the bath has been effectively depicted in art history.

Since indoor plumbing of the early 19^th century, scenes of the solitary bath have been depicted by many artists. My favorites are by Bonnard (1867-1947). Somehow the artist has so melded with the model (his wife), that I don’t feel like an outsider gazing in. I get the perspective of the woman bathing. 

Oil Painting by Bonnard

I love Frida Kahlo's painting,What the Water Gave Me, 1938, where she looses herself in daydreams. 

What the water Gave Me, by Kahlo in 1938

Personally, as I keep soaking, I find myself feeling more like Ophelia by John E. Millais (painted in 1851)

Ophelia (not soaking, but drowned)

 

This year will be a little less...

Thinking of all those who died last year, it is hard for me to imagine the space they held being so empty now.

I guess we get to travel a little longer and carry their potential a little heavier on our souls. If nothing else, I rejoice each day with the miracle of songbirds outside my window and my own eyes to see them, and the breath that still travels through me! Everyone be safe!

#loss #death #mourning

Year 2019 in Review

My uncle passed away 3 weeks shy of a year ago. He knew he was going to die. The doctors had given him weeks, and not feeling that ill, (or feeling incredibly stoic), he took his last days getting his financial affairs and housework together. He changed all the light-bulbs and batteries and left instructions for my aunt on how to pay the bills.

This year I feel trivial taking an assessment on my life. So much has happened and been accomplished, yet I still feel at loose ends and unsure of the next step. I feel as though I would be falsely glorifying my past decisions if I look so hard, list so adamantly, and project too intently.

The year in retrospect was probably a 9 on a scale out of 10. Looking forward I expect the same, if I work hard and avoid the despair that comes in those taunting and slicing voices, located in my own head.

I like this image of uncle Pat’s flashlights. He left them all in a row for my aunt to find as needed. I want to trust that the light will be there for me, when I need it.

On Being a Good Hostess for Heartbreak

Haunting, acrylic on panel

These festive holidays of light actually fall on some of the darkest days of the year. Every year, as Christmas and Hanukkah approaches, many people see the world like George Bailey in “It’s a wonderful Life”. They feel that they just can’t do it. There is so much stress, from going off diets to diving deep in the red with finances. On top of it, we may have attended more than our fair share of funerals. My aunt, (who was a veritable Christmas elf) passed away at the end of November and a friend lost her grown son to the ultimate moments of depression.

Do I need to go into all the reasons people might not be as happy as those perfect family units in the advertisements? Some people can’t handle it. Perhaps a loss, a breakup, some past trauma, the political divide, the seasonal light disorder, or insufficient funds are to blame. In a season of ritual gathering, pressure gifting and belting carols, we can feel alone and unworthy heading into the holidays.

Throwing a party comes with all sorts of lists and preparatory steps. May I suggest that we not forget the friend suffering depression at this time? Gatherings can seem full of false cheer and guests may feel as if divided by an invisible wall looking in.

Have on hand simple items like tissues, treats, small oranges and offer your friend moments of stillness. I always try to have wine, nuts, assorted teas and fruit to share. Small oranges can remind us of brighter times with their sunny color and sweet taste. I keep a few handy to pass to the homeless on the street corners.

How can we be here for each other? The biggest gift of all the holiday gifts, the one the corporations don’t intend us to remember, is the gift of our attention. Speak frankly and share memories. Listen in stillness and try to understand. Don’t tell someone depressed to “cheer up”, but be honest and unflinching with your concern. When people are grieving and mourning, it’s okay to remember together and even laugh with the tears. It is important to talk and listen with respect. Everyone’s depression is different. If the discussion gets heated and aggressive, try saying, “Lets talk about that another time.” And walk away. Moving the body is always good, so an invitation to walk around the block can be just the ticket to brighten some ones mood. Some depressed folks appreciate a sad movie or a depressing book, like The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath. Self-help books should be shared sparingly. Often it’s a double-edged sword, leading to additional feelings of inadequacy.

Art and music can be used to set a mood that embraces the idea of small joys making big holidays. Song lists can cover a range of holiday genre and eras. So often I am not truly in the present moment unless I am painting a picture. For me paintings capture the fleeting moment that enriches my appreciation for little things, like sunlight and a good mug of tea. Looking at a work of art can bring wonder to life.

Lit Candle, sewn paper painting

Don’t forget the tissue box.

Beyond the Signature Cubist Style, a closer tracking of Picasso's Versions K, L and M

My interpretation of Picasso's interpretated Version K

Picasso's continuing exploration of Delacroix's famous Women of Algiers in their Apartment, led to fifteen oil painted canvas interpretations. Not merely copying, Picasso was stealing motifs and transforming the image into his own language. (He is believed to have said, "Good artist's copy, great artists steal") Each translated version was named for the sequential letters of the alphabet. 

His Version’s K, L and M are all monochromatic cubist designs. Cubism is the most recognizable style of Picasso at the height of his powers. These works excited the public and once they hit the market, post Ganz family collection, they held a range in value between 7 and 13 million dollars individually. I love the asterisk-like armpit hairs in the reclining figure. It certainly dates the work.

Versions K and M are in private collections. 

My copy of Version L

Version L, a solitary seated woman, was bought by Berlin’s Museum Berrgruen for over 11 million in 2011 at auction. The catalogue said, “She is the Goddess Astarte enthroned in her temple, seated en majeste, but also sphinx-like, inscrutable, a mythic image of sexually powerful and fertile womanhood brought forward from the distant past, to be approached with deference and awe”.

My interpretation of Picasso's Version M

Version M was painted the day Picasso heard his wife Olga, whom he had been estranged from, yet refused to divorce for decades (because he was Catholic), had died. It is in monochromatic tones of umber. There are no facial features. Picasso has simplified the figures to outlines of geometric shapes piled together like a child's play blocks. The precarious balance of parts makes the space one you would only enter at your own peril. The inviting odalisque trope is gone. These "women" inhabit their chamber and warn the trespasser of freshly mined territory. This painting was last seen when it sold for $10 million to a private collector in 1997. For Picasso, freshly widowed and recently broken up, this version signaled the near end of the series. Only two more explosions follow.

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Simple ingredients make a funeral feel happily ever after

 

1.     Location, location, location. Inside or outside, weather permitting.

2.     Find someone with a spiritual bent to ease spirits and address loss. It doesn’t have to be clergy, but often they have the best language for the situation.

3.     Music can build a nest around everybody pulling them close in grief and lifting spirits in memory.

4.     Story. Any and all shared story about the deceased is helpful to mourners looking for a sense of belonging in community at the time of loss. A story can make you laugh and cry and it should honor the soul that is gone. Spoken words combined with social participation grants us a structure to mark the milestone along the arrow of Time.

5.     Food- It is important to nourish our bodies as we grieve and sometimes the preparation of food is devastatingly mundane for those close to the deceased. Donations of food are a treasured balm to ease the suffering and remind us of the need to live.

    6.             Flowers and other additions of nature remind us of ephemeral lifespans and add             beauty to the setting.

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Did drawing my aunt on her deathbed rob me of the opportunity to engage with her one last time?

My aunt Marianne died on Saturday just hours after I left her and I am riddled with low sense of self-worth, because I didn’t wake her or hold her hand or play her favorite music. It’s not like I was completely ignorant. She had been sick for months and really, really sick for weeks. There was something that struck me about the feeling of the room and the look of her face. The clear oxygen mask on her mouth let vapors escape and they rose against the incoming light from the window, like motes of spiraling fairy dust, or echoes of the cigarette smoke that often, for years, crowned her head. Her hand clutched onto the remote for the bed controls, and I watched as it relaxed, slackened and hung limp off the side of the bed. Shouldn’t I have known? Instead I propped my sketch pad on my lap and leaned a favorite photo of her in a Santa hat, framed, on the window ledge, thinking that when she woke she would know that I had been there and she would recognize the season. Time in the ward seemed suspended and, though she had been there since March, she had missed out on summer and fall. Down stairs there was a celebration of decorated trees that we had often enjoyed, yet she was too weak and to unwieldy to put into a wheel chair. We would miss the spectacle this year.

On previous visits I had woken her when I found her sleeping and been told I had just interrupted the best dream in her life, or was responsible for the wracking pain that suddenly hit her and had her yelling for a nurse. Just the last visit I had asked her if it was better when she slept and she said, “unfortunately, yes”.

All this is to defend myself for not waking her on her last day on the planet. I did drawings of her instead. I didn’t wake her. Does that make me a bad person?

The spirit of Jo Renbeck

I have just armed this Goddess created by Jo Renbeck, ( 1942-2013), with a braided vine scepter. It is so good to have her out in the forest, watching the house, trapping the sunshine and sending fierce love back to us. I miss my friend Jo Renbeck, the fabulous poet, book artist sculptor and painter who died in 2013 while I was living and working in Miami. For 9 years the sculpture of this Goddess was in storage in our basement corner. Putting her back out into the world, especially into the forest, was one of my first acts moving back.
At Jo's funeral I am told she requested this song be sung to the melody of Amazing Grace:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the earth,
the dirt between my toes,
the sun pours down upon my crown,
the mighty river flows.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
of bird song in the trees,
the air is dense with fragrant scents
soft floating on the breeze.
Amazing Grace the ocean swells,
the waves break on the shore,
the moonlight rides upon the tides,
oh, who could ask for more.
Now we’ve been here four million years
sustained at her sweet breast,
let’s sing her praise for all our days,
then in her womb we’ll rest.
 -copyright by Elizabeth Cunningham, 1995. (Feel free to sing at any occasion. For permission to reprint, contact Elizabeth through her website.)

 Elizabeth also shared that, "Jo was a seer. She saw keenly the visible, natural world around her, and she also saw the invisible world, the spirit at the heart all things". ... "She was someone who could go between the worlds, inner and outer, visible and invisible, waking and dreaming, the world of deep human connections and the intricate connections of the natural world, of all life."

Looking out into the woods, I would welcome a visit from my friend Jo. This time of year so much is shed, and we are distilled down to our bones. The spirit world seems palpable.

Jo Renbeck (1942-2013)

RIP Victor Calderon

For 26 years he worked at Palmer Trinity School. I was glad to have known him for 8 of those years when he worked the campus security. He was very popular. Students would slide up next to him, clap him on the back, and ask him how he was doing in both English and Spanish. Always funny. Big eyes and a good mustache I got him to pose for a class painting demo. He had been having some complications with his heart. I think I caught a look of worry on his face. I gave him the picture. And we always joked that I had to do another one so each of his children could have one. I went to the hospital after his first procedure a couple years ago and left a handmade card. Afterwards, back on campus, Victor was always zipping the outskirts in the golf cart or lingering with a great smile by the bell between classes. He'd pull me over to his lunch table and we'd talk about our kids and our worries for them, we'd talk about his heart. He had a great relationship with each person. This week his sweet fragile corazon gave out. I swear it took a part of mine with it.

Cranach's enigmatic signatures

Lucas Cranach must have the coolest signature emblem ever! On January 6th, 1508 he was granted the rights to sign all his works with this seal by Frederick the Wise, his employer and the elector Prince of Saxony. A winged serpent with both a crown on its head and a jeweled ring in it's mouth was soon used on all Cranach workshop products, sometimes with the initials L and C. In 1537 the emblem changed. With the murder of his eldest son Hans, who was traveling to Bologna, Italy, like all good artists were expected to do as part of their studies, the heart broken father folded the wings and turned the serpent in another direction.

This is part of my Climbing up the Family Tree: Art and History Lessons for my Kids, "Searching for Cranach", a text booklet project. I plan to publish a 7-8 page book on Cranach, with a pocket sized original print in the back, by the end of this spring.