November 25, 2003
I'm in a kind of fallow period right now... just putzing around with a few paintings, trying to get some commissions going, working with a couple of students. Most of my creative energy is background now... will bloom later, maybe around the first of the year.
The winter rains have started, right on time, and our roof and gutters were finally fixed just in the nick of time. Now I can think about getting the living room and foyer repainted (they were ruined by the year-long leaky roof.) Luckily all the plants in my yard managed to survive my inattention this summer, so I can look forward to the explosion of green that starts every December.
My Grandmother seems to be going through some kind of crisis in terms of her (usually chronic) unhappiness. she has been calling me a couple of times a week, and calling my brother's house daily. It's painful to watch, but if there's anything good about it, it's that it has scared me into taking steps not to end up that way. For a long time, I thought I was going to die early like my mother did. After I discovered the Hanford nuclear spill was the probable cause of her cancer, I realized I might actually have an old age (that's when I started painting full time.) A few years ago, after getting off the phone with Grandma, it finally dawned on me that I have her genes. The phrase "use it or lose it" came to mind. So I signed up with that hiking group the coach got me on a workout program that focuses on strengthening the back and cardiovascular system.
Maybe I need to focus on different role models. Like my friend M - she's 73, she takes care of her son (who has schizophrenia) and her brother (who has Alzheimer's), she paints everyday, she has a little tremor in her hands and she's hard of hearing, but she walks and buses all over town to go to art shows and other cultural events. And then there's April (she modeled for the "woman in the chair" in my Trickster paintings.) She's 80+ and lives alone but doesn't spend much time in her apartment. She takes continuing ed classes at the local universities, goes down to City Hall to watch the Board of Supervisors meetings, and attends most of the political rallies in town. A few years ago she was run down in a crosswalk by a hit and run driver and it left her with some serious back and hip problems. But she's been working with a physical therapist and a few weeks ago she told me she was ready to try the stairs at my gallery (19 steps, no elevator.) She met me on the sidewalk out front, asked me to help her fasten her shoes a little tighter, and then we went up the steps together. Afterwards, we went out to lunch and she grilled me about my views on the upcoming election. If it wasn't for these women, I'd be looking into membership in the Hemlock society.
Saturday we did a hike on Angel Island. I hadn't been out there in a few years, but it's just as beautiful as ever, especially on a day like that, with a storm moving through the area. The sky was so dramatic, constantly shifting colors, and alternating between sunny and dark clouds. It was quite windy on the bay (although we were protected in Ayala cove) and we could see sail boats all around us, leaning way over and zipping past the island. We watched deep indigo clouds dump rain on Mt. Tam, but we stayed dry - it only rained briefly on the island, and we were under a canopy when it happened. There were a couple of very active raccoons there too - they kept sneaking down the hill and trying to open the backpacks that were piled on a deck under the canopy. They have the zipper concept down, and they are stealthy enough, and bold enough for the job. Their main mistake was fighting with each other. When they started spitting and snarling at each other, the owners of the backpacks jumped up and shooed them off. I brought some paints, but never opened them... just looked.
I was just reading the daybooks of Edward Weston and came across an entry on the aesthetic sensibility of the Eastern vs Western United States (dated March 19, 1934.) It rings true to me today. He was living in San Francisco area at the time and a review of his photographs in New York called his work, "theatrical" and "lacking dignity". This is what Weston had to say:
Everything is relative. To the New Yorker of fifty years ago the present startling architecture - now accepted as a matter of course - would be dramatic, maybe called "theatrical." So to one not used to the West, to the scale of things out here - nature must seem very dramatic. It is fear of a thing which makes it strange. Everything in the West is on a grander scale, more intense, vital, dramatic. Forms are here which never occur in the East - in fruits, flowers, mountains, rocks, trees. All these forms, natural manifestations of Western vitality, are my neighbors, my friends - I understand and love them. I do not lie about them. After living here for ten years, I made a trip back East. Nature seemed soft there, poetic, tenderly lyrical. someone pointing out the sights to me from the train window said, "Look at the mountains." I looked and saw not! Then I realized they meant what to me were low rolling hills. But I must have has some apprehension that my prints would be misunderstood. I recall laying aside one cypress, saying to myself, "I will not include this. no one would believe it true."
Also from Weston:
"My work is always a few jumps ahead of what I say about it."
Sunday Oct. 12, 2003
It's been about 10 days since the opening. I'm still not back into my regular routine, but it's OK. Dave has been on vacation, so we've been doing things around town. A couple of days ago we got up and left the house around 6am to get to North Beach before sunset and shoot some photos of the neighborhood as it came awake. I have a commission to paint a North Beach scene, "with no people", and early morning seemed like the only natural way too do that - otherwise it would look like some kind of alien abduction scene.
On Tuesday of last week we went to a lecture that featured Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Garrison Keillor. They were an interesting combo - both intelligent, literate, artistic... but so very different. Ferlinghetti kept wanting to talk about the Mississippi River, which he had just traveled down. He kept extolling the virtues of small towns, and at one point he made a comparison to Lake Wobegone. Keillor replied. "Well that's true, Lawrence, but you wouldn't want to live there... really, you wouldn't."
October is Open Studios month in San Francisco, and I managed to get out each weekend to see some artists, including visits to Project Artaud, Fort Mason, and Hunter's Point. It was inspirational to see the great work that all my friends are doing. Everyone is still struggling, but there seems to be a hint of optimism in the air, and a few more sales than last year. Hope it's a trend.
Dave and I went out to Alcatraz one day, and spent 7 hours there, walking around and around the rock, shooting pictures. Our roommate Dan is a National Park Ranger assigned to Alcatraz and he let us in to some areas not accessible to the general public. We were both excited by the images we got, and we plan to go back a few more times. We've been talking about doing a joint show late next year.
A few nights ago I went to hear a reading by one of my favorite writers - Mark Salzman. I've read everything he's written, and although he jumps around from fiction to non-fiction and covers wildly different topics, I know I'll enjoy any book of his, and learn something too. This most recent book in a non-fiction account of his four years teaching writing to teenaged boys in a juvenile detention center. The reading was wonderful, as usual - I laughed, I cried. etc. He's a wonderful man, and a shameless ham, as well as a great writer.
October 4, 2003
Everything for my show was done in plenty of time. I dropped off the last of the paintings ten days before the opening. I tweaked my web site, posted the show on various places around the web, mailed cards, wrote letters to news people, sent emails, called people, and visited the businesses around the Cliff House (the setting for the paintings) to drop off more cards and talk up the show. But I was so nervous, I was sick.
The night before the opening I hardly slept at all. Every time I managed to fall asleep, I'd have a nightmare that woke me up. They were the classic performance-anxiety nightmares. In one, I was trying to cross the street to get to the gallery but was picked up and blown away by a cyclone. In another, I couldn't get in the gallery and had to climb through a second floor window, and then fell through a glass skylight. In another, I fell into a mud puddle which for some inexplicable reason was in the middle of the gallery.
That morning I went to the Corner Cup for the usual Thursday morning art salon. I was grateful to find some friends who had just had a big show the previous weekend - it felt good to focus on someone else's anxieties for a change. But it was downhill for me after I left the Corner Cup. I wasn't able to keep anything in my stomach. I had the runs. I had chest pains. It was hell. But finally it was time to leave the house and catch the train downtown.
The gallery was ready and looked beautiful. Meredith did a wonderful job hanging the show. The weather was nice and people started arriving right away. It got crowded quickly and stayed that way until after 8:00 pm when the staff started flicking the lights. Even then, it took another twenty minutes or so to get everyone to leave.
It was a little different from my other openings, in that people seemed to want to talk about the work in specific, original terms. I didn't get any of the old standby questions like, "How long have you been painting" or "Where do you get your ideas?" The questions were more about the content of particular paintings - actually, no one asked me about technique except a few other artists. Complete strangers would come up to me and tell me which one they liked the best, and surprisingly (to me) three of them liked "The Dance Begins" (the one with all of the characters arranged like actors on a stage.)
Most of the models showed up and it was fun see them on the walls at the same time as they were circulating through the crowd. A man was talking to me about one of the paintings when he glanced at someone walking by and he did a double take saying, "Wait, is that... is that the woman in the painting?" Wendy, a dancer who modeled as the pregnant woman in the paintings, brought her new son to his first art opening. He was an incredibly happy baby and a big hit.
Jean, the woman who modeled for the Trickster, looked as fabulous as usual in a black and red dress with a derby hat. At one point she said, "Anna, I have something for you." She pulled a piece of white string from her pocket and held it up, dangling from her right hand. Then she pulled a lighter from her pocket and lit the end of the string. There was a sizzling, popping sound, a puff of smoke, and the string turned into a rhinestone necklace! (She is a magician and performance artist.)
Don Felton, the photographer from Almac (well known to local artists and galleries) modeled as the wedding photographer in the paintings. He really stood out, wearing his bowling shirt of red flames, and he wore the same shirt to the opening. He brought a huge entourage of extended family and they excitedly moved from painting to painting, looking for Don. Don himself was a little subdued - he had fallen earlier in the day and broken a rib.
Sachiko, another of the models, brought me a bouquet of "Hello Kitty" lollipops, to sooth my throat after an evening of talking (really came in handy the next day.)
Leah, the director of the Palo Alto Gallery (where I showed last year) brought me a little metal model of a 50's era Corvette. As soon as Dave saw it, he popped the hood to see what the engine looked like. Then he demonstrated how to wind up the friction motor and make it run across the floor. I hadn't t realized until then that it had moving parts. Leah said she tried to get an Edsel, but the 20-something sales girl at the toy store didn't have the faintest idea what she was talking about. My friend Julie brought me a beautiful pair of Lapis earrings in a box with a glittered bow - I kept finding glitter on myself for the rest of the evening.
The couple who drove the black and white Edsels brought some friends from the Northern California Edsel club. They were thrilled to find out that the painting that features the Edsels most prominently got almost half a page in the West Coast Gallery Guide.
My ex-husband Tom showed up. I thought he was in NYC, but he' s here to work on his visa - he's on his way to the Philippines to open a restaurant in some mountain town north of Manila. My brother Vern and his wife Toni came, and gave me the family imprimatur.
There was a weird guy in a black suit who came up to me, asked me if I was the artist, then and started gushing about the paintings. I said the usual thank you phrases and tried to be polite, even though he was standing way too close (I couldn't even focus on his face - I would have needed my reading glasses.) He handed me his card, but when I looked at it, there was nothing on it but a name and phone number, so I asked him if he wanted to be on my mailing list, and he said, "No, I'd like you to give me a call, so we can get together." So I asked him if he was an art dealer, and he leaned in even closer and said, "No, but I find you incredibly attractive." I couldn't think of a thing to say, and luckily someone else came up to me just then, so I turned and started talking to them. The rest of the evening, he kept returning and buzzing around me like a fly, but I never took my eyes off whoever I was talking to at the time, and eventually he went away. (Later three other women told me he hit on them, too.)
Near the end of the evening, a drunken woman (she probably had been making the rounds of "First Thursday" openings) dropped a glass of red wine on the floor right in front of the paintings. It splattered everywhere, leaving huge streaks of maroon over 25 square feet of wall, and a giant puddle on the floor. Miraculously, only one of the paintings was damaged. I brought my paints and solvents to the gallery the next day and was able to repair it. Now I know why a lot of galleries only serve white wine.
The show will be up for three weeks, so now I wait to see how many will sell and how much money I'll have to live on this winter. Next, I have some commissions to start on, and they will keep me busy for a couple of months, at least. After I'm done with them, I'll have a better idea of what I want to work on next.
|
