Then

 

A way of seeing.

 Memory markers. 

Several friends, both in the flesh and the vaporous sort, have put me in mind of keeping my mind. I have never had a good memory for names, and a large part of that was being lazy because I was married to a walking cultural database. The man read the TV guide. He knew the names of the studio musicians on most albums. He always knew the names of supporting actors in movies. And what book the movie was made from. Why should I stress? 

Now I'm reminded that those blank spaces need attending to. Connecting the face and the action with a name or title. Puzzling it out, even if it takes five steps to get there. I'm not a big fan of physical exercise, but brainwork gives me instant payoff.

 I've also recently started wearing hearing aids. Taking an active part in conversations is really nice. 

The purple box is a relic of Spring 1967. I took the train alone to interview for the School of Visual Arts. Here's how my memory works: keep the good stuff, leave the trash behind. 

I remember nothing of the interview at all. Wherever my brain was at the time, whatever nonsense came out of my mouth, they bought my story. I don't even recall what was in my portfolio. Zero!

What I do remember. Taking these pictures in a booth in Grand Central Station before I hailed my first cab. I can still smell the acrid chemicals that lingered on the filmstrip as it dropped into the hopper. 

~Grand Central was and remains overwhelming. It's a portal into history. The track I came and went on, 49, faced the Oyster Bar that I never set foot inside. It never seemed to be open during the daytime. A vampire hangout. 

~The newsstand was a marvel! I took one of every free paper. The East Village Other, the Village Voice and a copy of the NY Post because my Dad always bitched about not being able to get it in the 'burbs.

~The relief I felt when the interview was over and I stepped out the double doors onto 23rd street and I still had an entire day with no one to account to, some cash in my pocket and, best of all, no one knew who I was. I could be anyone, least of all an aspiring artist. It was a magical feeling of invisibility despite the chrome yellow felt hat. 

Takashimaya was right in midtown. I bought a kit with a Chinese ink stick, stone, and brush for calligraphy. About ten of those colored acrylic boxes for keeping everything. A striping brush that I used for eye makeup.  

Somehow I made my way to the East Village. As if time and tide could have stopped me. I bought beads and incense, and feathers, and brass glasses with round green prisms for lenses. I bought JOB rolling papers just to say I had them. 

Somewhere in my clutch of important papers there's a transcript . First year? Second? Without looking for it I can tell you that the art grades came in a pale second to a literature and language course. 

I wish had taken a bigger bite of the Apple at the time. 

so raw

What do you see?  A pile of old sheets?


I see pure potential!

A friend has a naughty dog who raises mayhem with the bedsheets, digging for that ever elusive comfortable place, tearing the fragile 100% cotton fabric in unmendable ways. I hate it for you but I'm thrilled you thought of me before deep sixing  all this fabulous cloth.

This is hands down my most favorite kind of cloth to work with. Vintage, well used sheets take the dye in strange and wonderful ways. Not just into the cloth and the thread, it seems like the very soul and being of the cloth is anxious to absorb the color as if to find, one more time, a way of  being useful and alive in new and wonderful ways.  I am dizzy with the anticipation of color.

steeping

For the first time in ages I am dwelling on my work. It's a total luxury to be able to have it with me at all while I'm at the office. I pin the piece up on the wall of my cube and just look at while I'm taking calls and think about what's going on with it. Then, between calls, I can cut, adjust and stitch, slowly. thoughtfully. only this time I'm not thinking all that much about process or technique. With this kind of time on my hands what could be simpler than honoring the grid and attending to good design elements, each one a wayward and willful sheep? I'm thinking about the cloth and the spirits in it as if possessed. The ground, of course, these antique damask tablecloths that I have rescued from rag bags and dyed, are each full of mystery and history. They came to me mostly white but I feel as if the colors that I have given them reflect something of the character of their lives and service. Some are worn through in places, evidence of what? Years of happy Sunday family gatherings? Years of straight laced enslavement to social requirements? Was this tablecloth washed, ironed, folded and fussed over by a young, Irish immigrant girl brought to New England as an indentured servant before the turn of the century? Did this tablecloth cost more than her family could earn in a year? Did her heart ache as she stood back and watched dinner guests spill wine and gravy on it without a thought? The grid elements are refugees too, all snips and bits taken from here and there. The black here is a messy-when-cut expensive linen taken from a pair of designer label slacks that were incredibly a size 2. Not much fabric here. Each piece of cloth I'm handling is speaking to me of it's origin, it's use, it's history. I hope the finished pieces will convey the fabric's wishes as much as my own.

history

Today is my 31st wedding anniversary and while I was rummaging around for a different wedding photo I came across this gem. Jake turned 23 on Monday so you get the idea of how long it's been since my first heady sip of success. That blue ribbon was from the first night of judging at the Putnam County Fair - by the last night I had two more blues and the Gold Overall in the Adult Needlework Division. There were some pretty pissed off ladies in the local guild, to which I did not belong. This was my second and last traditional quilt.

the daily shout out

Good Morning! Melbourne, Westcourt, Tallin, Vilnius, Zebbug, Eyguieres, Dewsbury,Illescas, Rio Branco, Hallifax and everyone in the US from Honolulu to Portland! As a person who hasn't had the privilege of traveling outside of the United States (or inside it much, for that matter) I am fascinated by the placenames and imagined lives of the people who visit my blog. I'm quite likely to wind up paying to continue using the NeoEarth widget that appears in my sidebar. Imagine, someone from Malta has dropped by recently. I have become a computer chair traveler. Someday, I may just get a passport. Many years ago I was telephone operator and I always loved the opportunity of getting someone an international, person to person phone call. How many of you even remember having an operator handle a call for you? Many of the women I worked with had a great deal of stress from that job. I faced the fact early on that nobody calls the operator to tell her to "Have a nice day!" so I rarely took the daily quota of abuse personally. When I was moved into the customer service and sales arena it got a lot worse. For a long time after I left that position I missed conversations that started out with "BITCH!". I'm one of those lucky persons who was blessed with a good phone voice so I took each confrontational caller as an opportunity at lion taming sans chair and whip. I usually won the toss. Yep, the board I worked in 1971 looked just like this one. Hello World!