HOUSES: ANOTHER ART FORM

It’s time to move.

We bought this house five years ago. Our former house – a unique 1960 California contemporary where we’d lived for seven years (before that, a city townhouse and once, a 100-year old farm house) – was sold in a week. We moved into an apartment while we planned the “ultimate home for the mature couple.” It never got built and after living with rented furniture and even worse, rented artwork, we were ready to jump out our sixth floor window. Instead, we jumped here.

Once more we’ve poured ourselves into a house. It’s taken us five years of hard work – and more money, naturally – and now it is as close to perfection as I can make it and so, time to move on.

My best friend accuses me of self-sabotage. She claims that I can’t deal with success, that I manufacture reasons for turning perfection (whenever I get too close to whatever-that-is) into chaos and I wonder if she could be right.

I read somewhere once about achieving women who bore additional stress as they tried to keep up the face of success while, internally, feeling like an actor in someone else's play.

Do women feel like frauds most of the time? Is this the true curse of Eve?

Maybe Eve felt unworthy of all that perfection. Maybe she got tired of smiling and hosting all those garden tours while all the time thinking "this could be better. I can see the mistakes even if no one else can. I mean...poison ivy? How can I hide THAT one?"

But I prefer to believe that she looked around one day, dusted off her hands and said “There. It’s the best I can do with this place. Time for me to find a new challenge.”

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The lead photograph is our current Colorado contemporary house that is “for sale.” It’s pretty grand. Our plan is to buy a small something in Upstate New York for spring/summer.

We’ve already made a commitment to purchase a little cottage in North Carolina for the cold months. My ideal is this rustic cabin. I love the textures and the piecework look of the place. If anyone knows of such a place near here, send me the information.

Meanwhile, prepare for more house images - real and imagined - in my upcoming blogs. Here's one that I like: Christina Brinkman's charming sculptures. They look like toys. She does her own woodworking. The slab-formed houses are porcelain and she collects antique wheels from on-line auctions.

YES, BUT IS IT ART?

My daughter was in town this weekend. She ran away from her grown-up life – one husband, two children, goldfish, cat and turtle – and for 48 hours, pretended she was single again. Some of her old friends came over; they dressed all in black, put on their twenty-year old Doc Marten’s and went to a rock concert.

She reports that the 1980’s have not completely died in Rochester, there are still plenty of mullets around, and in this, her home town, the 1990’s is still a bit cutting edge.

I think she’s being a tad harsh. Or is that the role of generations - one just recently past idealism of youth and coming into the judgmental middle years and the other, rage, passion, crusading replaced with acceptance, introspection, joy in wabi sabi, the imperfection of the universe?

Like bats, my daughter and her friends begin their social circling after dark and so, during Saturday afternoon, I took her with me to the art gallery craft sale; it was nice (yawn) (sigh) (ho-hum) and spontaneously, we wandered into the main gallery to see “Pain of the Flesh" which is NOT y-s-ho-h but startling and vulgar and almost-but-not quite shocking. I liked it - it is NOT a holiday show.

My daughter was wearing her pre-concert-barhopping black garb including this hand painted jacket that she bought when she was in full-blown rebel mode in 1992 and living in Seattle. The museum guards began following her, talking to each other, nearly pointing, and when they saw that I was onto them, one of them said “her coat fits right into this show!”

We left the museum and drove to Main Street and the Scio Street garage to see the newly finished tile mosaic installation commissioned by the City, the work of artist Jill Gussow.

It’s colorful. Represents a ton of hours of work. It’s good… and decorative…and impossible not to like. But what if it was installed behind a kitchen stove or in a shower stall? Does the fact that it’s big, make it good? Does intricacy make it ingenious? Is this the best kind of public art – non-controversial?

I guess I can only ask the questions. I think my daughter’s jacket is repugnant and tasteless and I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it. But it captures a certain spirit of its time and place. The murals are cheerful, colorful, fun. Do they tell us more about ourselves? Our place? Our time?Is this good public art or is it more lipstick on a pig?

Art in the Woods

Witch hazel is in bloom. I just saw it as I walked my dogs along the wood’s edge and my heart leapt as it does every fall. Witch hazel blossoms are easy to miss. They are small tufts – more like bits of yellow thread than flower petals – attached up and down the dark limbs of this under-story bush.

You need to be up close to appreciate the subtle witch hazel blooms. They appear just as the color bullies of the woods are at their strongest – maple, black cherry, sumac, beech and ash - each elbowing for attention. Those are too easy. You can appreciate their color with a drive-by, even from a tour bus window with people yakking in your ear and someone on a speaker explaining temperatures and geographic history (an occasional joke thrown in.) In a week or two, after a heavy rain or wind, their fifteen minutes of fame will be over for another year and the trees will be left empty handed. Witch hazel blooms will remain until about Thanksgiving. It’s not uncommon to see them holding up through a light snowfall or locked in a glaze of ice along their parent stems.

I remember finding our hillside of witch hazel. It was our first year on this property. We had moved into the house in early winter; I had open-heart surgery ten months later. I was taking my first post-operative walk outdoors, alone, wondering how my life would change and mostly, what was I spared to do? Even more disturbing, what if I never found my life’s grand purpose? That’s when I saw the witch hazel and I wanted to tell everybody about it – no joking.

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Debra Audet’s memorial service was held Saturday in a grand gothic cathedral on East Avenue. Her friends and family spoke eloquently about her life, her gifts and the meaningfulness of her life in theirs. It was a fitting tribute.

You can tell a lot about a woman from her haircut and humor. Debra was class all the way – style that never goes out of fashion, tastes that transcend fad. Her laugh lifted the very air around her and she intuitively and magnetically attracted an army of people like herself: talented, bright, quick to savor life.

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Here’s a photograph of a garden “folly” in a tiny city backyard in Davidson, North Carolina. I have christened it “the cathedral” and somehow – in my mind’s maize – the witch hazel, Debra’s life and the garden cathedral all tell a similar story.

COMFORT ZONE: Right or Wrong?

Bill Stewart and Kathy Calderwood opened the fall season with an exhibition of their work in the spankin’ new art gallery at Nazareth College. Kudos to Nazareth College for having the good grace to include such a class space in the re-do of their art center and to the Sands’ family (Wine anyone?) for underwriting this brilliant facility. I am, however, unclear about how the gallery will operate. Is it to be used strictly for Nazareth College faculty and students? What a shame that would be! And who is serving as its director? Experience tells us that unless a qualified dictator is hired, the gallery space will fall into an art cow pie. So let us be positive and assume that the future quality of the exhibitions will be top rate with art that inspires, challenges and informs us all – faculty, students or voyeurs.

But is that what we truly want? Or do we really crave “comfort art”? Otherwise, how else can you explain Thomas Kincaid (the “painter of light”) with his cheesy cabins sitting in moonlit snow/English spring garden/fall foliage/beside a stream, animals peeking through windows, the top money-producing artist in America today? (Yes! It’s true!) Or the quilt show at Memorial Art Gallery being the largest attendance draw they had all year?

I was asked today to give my opinion about an up-coming tour of art galleries in our region with the caveat that “some members really don’t like that far out stuff.” So is the steering committee right to avoid subjecting viewers to the art fringe? But how and when does the fringe become mainstream? Has our definition of "fringe" changed in the last 5 years? 10 years? How did that happen?

Is it true that the greater our exposure to art of all ilk, the more refined and informed our art tastes? Then are museum guards the MOST sophisticated art audience in the world? Must I keep staring at the “white on white” painting until I understand it or can I simply walk away and admit that it’s all bunk?

Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi, the “happiness professor” at the University of Chicago reports that the longer we experience happiness (read his books on “Flow” for full description of that loaded term), the higher we evolve as individuals. Looking at art makes me happy and I've seen a bunch. Playing golf makes my friend Fred happy. He thinks my art taste is weird. Who's to say which of us is a more highly evolved individual? Can we respect the differences among us without being judgmental? Or does staying in a comfort zone too long give you brain sores?

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A word or two about the Nazareth show: Bill Stewart is a friend of mine, someone I’ve known well for nearly twenty years. A few years ago, I feared – and wrote publicly – that he had entered a “comfort zone” of his own. This body of work dispels those fears. They scream “Catholic saints” – size, presentation, even the spare use of red and gestures of hands look like Stations of the Cross. It’s difficult to infuse artwork with humor, subtlety and intellectual content. Stewart manages all those things with this group of all-American saints.

The very best painting in this show is Kathy Calderwood’s little girl in “Green Shoes,” a painting of her 3 year old granddaughter. There isn’t a grandparent alive who could resist this picture and there isn’t an art critic anywhere who wouldn’t be happy pointing to this painting as an example of the essence of excellent contemporary portraiture.

PORTRAITS; NOW WHAT?

I have people all over my house. Mad Sally hangs above the fireplace and the Fisherman's Wife stands on the floor below. Three odd looking men watch me brush my teeth, a rigidly correct Presbyterian sits in judgment of living room activity and Mario Cuomo in clown face is downstairs along side a native american indian lady swallowing the sun. These are all works by Upstate New York artists and while other paintings have come and gone through our various homes, I still find these pieces interesting, mysterious and funny.

Yesterday the UPS man delivered a big box with a portrait of my sister Gaynell. It is none of those things. Gaynell died when she was thirty three years old. Her husband commissioned this painting and now, after forty years, he's sent it to me.

So I've looked up some information and history of portraiture. I already knew that once, historically, painters were only allowed to paint the likeness of royalty or heavenly beings. In some cultures, self-likenesses are still considered bad luck and even the Bible warns of "graven images." Still, humans attempt to re-create themselves with a visual record of their life, to somehow leave an immortal record behind that reveals the truth about themselves, that says "remember me always."

The portrait of my sister is badly painted. Paint is flaking and it looks nothing like her. It doesn't make me remember her kindly, with love. It only makes me feel sad.

So now what? What do I do with this thing? Why does it always feel wrong to destroy a work of art even if it's bad? I can't begin to tell you how many times people call me with the question: "we're downsizing....moving....my parent died and left me...." with the climax "what do I do with this ....painting/print/sculpture?" Face facts. Most of the art we accumulate has very little value to anybody else. Few of us are lucky enough to have picked up that Picasso for a few dollars in a garage sale that everybody else overlooked.

So I repeat the list of possible solutions that usually start and end with "donation." But the real question is : where is the graveyard for unwanted artwork?

Robert Marx , One season ends, another begins

An unexpected August draught sent my gardens into a strange plant purgatory. Color faded, leaves sagged or browned off and ferns simply turned toes up in early surrender. All I could do was pray "Oh Lord, either send rain, send cold or get me out of here!" Obviously, I could have dragged out watering cans and hoses - a bad political choice what with the environment and all.

These are the same gardens that soaked up so much of our resources over the past five years and after such a robust growing season, we hoped for better - one of those swaggering, black eyed Susan summers that melt into frosty nights and smokey clouds of red and orange maples and sumacs. I feel cheated and wonder "Is this what old age is like?"

I had a conversation with my doctor who asked if something was bothering me and I said "No one thing. I'm cosmically depressed." She said "Here, take these. You need a little teflon." So I did (I have really good health insurance.) Now I can almost endure this chapter but I wonder if a season of swagger will ever return.

There must be a "...but" in this scenario and sure enough! There they are! Ornamental grasses that I planted just a year or two ago and they are magnificent - cocky sure of themselves, not to be ignored and I say "o.k. then! Let's get on with this dance."

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Robert Marx has the enviable ability that convinces you - when you meet him - that you are the very person he's been waiting for days to see and HERE YOU ARE! The man who once was lanky has settled comfortably into his skeleton in old age and appears to observe world events and the silliness of humanity with thoughtful concern tinged with satire.

I bought this Marx etching in 1979 at Gallery 696. I'm trying very hard these to days to rise above and away from ownership of objects but last night, Chip and I committed

all our gift-giving dollars for the next several years toward the purchase of this oil painting. Was that back-sliding or an act of optimism? I need to think about this.

Art Gifts

I'm going to a wedding next week end and I've put together this little collage as a gift for the couple- two professional people bracketing 40 yrs. old. In other words, they really do not need sheets and a toaster.

But now I'm mucking around in the question of "the gift of art" - a subject that has wavered in and off my life screen for years now. Here are random thoughts:

Once, a very dear friend and talented artist offered to give me pieces of her work to pass along to my children who were just setting up households. I said "no thanks" thinking about the uncontrolled dogs, the scant housekeeping skills and general chaos that my daughters lived amongst. Art sculpture didn't stand a chance! But my friend looked like I had punched her in the face and I felt awful - still do! - and wonder how I might have handled that more diplomatically.

I know an artist who continuously complains how everybody takes advantage of her and her "generous nature." "Every time any organization wants to raise money, they hold an auction and want free art to sell. What do I get out of this? This is my life's work. They don't ask doctors for free services, do they?"

Well, yes, in fact they do. Visit the St. Joseph's Neighborhood Clinic entirely staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists. And not all retired either! Somehow they make time to spend a few hours a week with the poor and uninsured. For years, an accountant in town kept a few artists as clients without ever charging them for his time and a Park Avenue chef fed a local painter for years when he was "between commissions."

For mind-blowing altruism, I know two artists eligible for social security incomes who still do not collect because, they answer, "I don't need the money and if I take it, maybe the government will run out of money faster and people who truly depend on that to live will be forced to do without." They restore my faith with their generous spirit - even if it's misplaced.

So I'm back where I started with the question of the gift of art. I guess I come down to this: why not? who cares? Go wait tables or teach a class if you need to earn a living but spread the art EVERYWHERE BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE. (And I hope the couple likes my collage but if they don't, I'll get over it.)