The Woodlands High School Art Trust and Me

This is the auditorium where each artwork was displayed in poster form and where student docents spoke about each artwork and where the winners were announced.

This past weekend I drove to the Houston area for an event at The Woodlands High School. I, along with 19 other artists had been selected as finalists in the high school's program called "Palettes and Paintings" which raises funds with the specific purpose of acquiring fine art for the high school's permanent collection and is organized by The Woodlands High School Art Trust. Each student gets one vote towards the final selection. This was only the event's third annual but the students seemed really enthusiastic--3600 votes were cast out of approximately 4000 potential voters. The student docents (who are responsible for selecting the finalists) display the artworks in the high school's hallways in the weeks leading up to the event so that the student body has a chance to look them over. And each year the Trust purchases the art works which receive the most votes...actually the top 5. Now, I get asked to participate in a lot of fundraisers and I participate in many but this was unusual in that I wasn't being asked to donate anything, and in fact, was instead given a chance to expose my work to a new audience and given the chance of actually selling it. I love that the goal is to surround these students with art. The two previous years' acquisitions (10 pieces, so far) are prominently displayed in the hallways so that the students will have the opportunity to see them daily. I am pleased to say that my painting, Rio Frio, Opening Earth was one of the 5 chosen and will now reside in those same hallways. The evening was entirely charming, run by the students with much help from many devoted parents. This is a wonderful model. It's a learning experience for young artists and future curators and something many schools would do well to imitate. And for the artists it's a great opportunity. I will recommend this program to other artists as this collection will surely grow in variety and sophistication over the coming years.

 

Here, my painting displayed in the hallway with the other finalists.

Here is a better view...Rio Frio, Opening Earth, oil on canvas, 12x36", 2011

And this is me, in the bathroom, before the proceedings, and wearing my excellent pallet name tag.

How to Conquer a Nightmare

When I was very little, say 5 or 6, at the oldest, I had a recurring nightmare. In the dream, a sculpture which hung in my home, came to life as a monster, and tortured me. The sculpture, called "Falling Lady", by Don Snell, early sixties, was a life size human mass assembled in old painted rags, spooky mummy style, which looked to my eyes like a really horrific paper mâché piñata. The woman's body was grotesquely twisted and the spattered paint, though multicolored, looked like so much spattered blood. I had to constantly divert my eyes, and as a result, I don't even remember what the face looked like. It hung over a two story expanse in my parents office/studio space. If I visited my Mom in there I would cover my eyes except to look at her. Never would I enter that room at night and if the door was open and I had to walk past, I looked the other way and ran.

Just your average paper lantern, or is it?

My dream took several forms, usually some otherwise benign household fixture would suddenly turn into the horrible creature, often it was the huge paper globes which covered hanging light fixtures in our entry hall, my parents had several hanging throughout our house, big white cheap, paper lanterns which looked clean and contemporary but which I could only run past as a child for fear they would turn into the creature of my nightmare. So I avoided these lampshades also.

When the dream would begin I would feel the scratchy claw-like hand of the sculpture woman on my shoulder. Made of rags stiffened with paint and probably copious amounts of glue, the sculpture's surface was scratchy and creepy to touch. I had only touched it once, in waking hours, and I don't know how I dared. During my dream the monster's touch would send me into screams and fits of terror. My mom would run to my room and try to wake me but I could only feel the monster's touch--my own mother's touch mistaken for the monster's. It would take her some time to wake me and make me feel safe again. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I would spend the rest of the night in my parents bed because as soon as my bedroom light was turned out I would again feel the monster's touch and begin to scream.

It is hard to say how long this went on, weeks or months but it was during this period that my parents moved my sister and I into another bedroom, long planned to be our big girl room, vacating the room which would become our baby brother's room, but with just one hitch: the new bedroom was the room next door to my parents' studio. Now if a lampshade could turn into my monster, the wall which separated me from that monster could not be trusted to keep that monster at bay. The nightmares continued. But gradually, they developed and changed. In my very last monster dream I found myself walking two houses down to my best friend Rosie's house to play, only to discover that the garage door entry was all closed up, indicating that her family was away. I sat at the curb of her driveway, missing her, and there appeared the monster. I remember not screaming, not running, but gazing down at the marbled motor oil rainbow in the water of the gutter and saying, without looking up, that we should try to be friends. And it seems it was as simple as that. My nightmares ended. I'd like to think that I ended them with my own will. I suppose my parents thought I just grew out of them.
Fear, while you experience it, is a hard thing to get around, and simple, in hindsight, to dismiss.

My husband, Brian, had a recurring childhood dream also. In his, he is at a carnival or fair and after exiting a ride realizes that night has fallen and the carnival is deserted. He is alone and terrified.

How do these dreams stop? Is it simply that the child dreamer matures past the fear? Does the dreamer decide to banish the monster or just look at the monster in a new light? I'd like to think that the dreamer plays an active role. In my dream I think missing my friend helped me to see the monster as somebody less threatening. Who knows? But Brian's dream became a seed idea for a musical he wrote, Ivy and the Wicker Suitcase. 
And here is a song from the musical in which Ivy, our hero, puts a nightmare to bed.
Oh do listen in, and enjoy... 
Below is an illustrations I did to accompany it.

Ivy's Dream, from Ivy and the Wicker Suitcase

Living in a Painting

Month # 5, Work, Work, Work

How to know when good is good enough, when improvement is complete? How to step away?

This painting has been my constant companion--I've been working on it almost daily for the past 5 months. It is a self manufactured problem needing to be solved--but solved in a way which compels others to be swept along into my peculiar reality. How to entice and excite interest: this, for me, really is a fun puzzle. Maintain a certain mystery,  include plenty of candy indulgences (centers of eye pleasing pleasure) but it has to feel genuine. Balance the colors so that they almost, but not quite, shock the viewer. Activate all the potential dead areas with stimulation or is a calm transition more helpful? Several times this past month I was convinced I was finished. Some days I would stare and stare hoping to be convinced that it could not get any better but always I was wrong. So I tweaked and refined, painting elements in, painting them out. Stare and stare, until I got to the point that I believed that even if it could get better, it shouldn't. And so it is finished. And the next painting will be better for the experience of this painting because my life and work is one great long line of learning. 

Many thanks to Brian, my husband, who visits my studio and takes great pictures.

Earth Has a Long Memory, Dedicated to the Lost Pines of Bastrop County, oil on canvas, 44x54", 2013