“Hey, mom. I thought you did nudes.” My 23-year-old son called from the basement. I dried my hands on my terry-cloth apron as I descended the stairs.
Alan was leaning over a carton of oil paintings. My eyes caught the word basement spelled `bastment’ by the van packers. I smiled with remembrance of my desire, at the time, to fix the word. The yellowed cloth that had covered the old carton was carelessly pushed on the concrete. The box bottom was moist and showed mildew.
“Didn’t you do nudes once?” I nodded my head and mentioned I’d left them at the Milwaukee airport. My son, now in medical school, had squeezed in oil painting classes while maintaining pre-med courses and grades. How could I save these…he pulled out two landscapes…and not nudes!… ...continue reading
In those days, as the summer sun went down, our parents would gather on the half circle of benches in front of building 3 for an evening of gossip and laughter, chess and card games, and even though it was prohibited by the management office, maybe a cold beer or two. Thick curlicues of blue-gray cigarette smoke wafted under the conical sphere of a street lamp above the row of concrete checkerboard tables. Doo-wop oldies echoed from transistor radios. Kids played tag, or hide ‘n seek, or some other game that involved running and screaming, and occasionally crying because someone accidentally got hurt.
For a while, the best hide ‘n seek location was under the first bench, right behind Freddy’s father, Big Lou. Lou was a six foot six, two hundred and seventy-pound avalanche of a man with ham shank forearms and voice projection like a tuba. … ...continue reading
For my brother, one of the old stock who plays guitar and sings
What will happen when all of the real men are gone? The ones who can build, install, plumb, lay, and fix all manner of things with their own two hands – a dying breed of the old stock, they say. What will happen when all of the real men are gone? Will no buildings be built, no cars fixed, no oil changed, no lights installed? Everything broken and in disarray? What will happen when all of the real men are gone? When finally all of the hammers grow rusty, the wood rotting from their handles for lack of use. When nails fall from our shelves, and we just sweep them out into the ground for we know not what they’re for or from where they’ve come.… ...continue reading
My name is not Andrew Jackson. I was not the 7th president of the United States. My likeness does not appear on the twenty-dollar bill. However, in my quest to gain acceptance, I instituted my own “Removal Policy.” In the process, I carved out my personal “Trail of Tears.” Naturally, I walked it alone …
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In the summer of 1963, my parents discovered I was very near-sighted, nearly blind, actually. The moment the kindly lady put the first pair of glasses on my face at a tiny optician’s shop in Port Said was nothing short of a miracle. Thanks to two pieces of glass, ensconced in a thick ugly plastic frame, the world was changed. The fuzzy outline of objects was magically replaced with sharp, clearly defined edges.… ...continue reading
I took two pills and danced my way through Sunday swaying in the chapel. Life started here, she met dad in the basement by St. Marks stained glass votive. Bible study, 1956, two college kids in the basement of a church unable to tell cigarette smoke from incense. Fire in their psalms, tongues, and palms. Julie and I shared a moment there, half whispering prayers to a god you both deserted for the new lights in Missoula. We both left Montana, Julie and I, though we will always find it to be home. Sickly sweet small town kind of love. Everybody pours out of doors to head to the big things, weddings, funerals, baptisms. What they won’t tell you is how they peek out of windows for the little things, pregnancies, breakups, Lydia and Marie’s lavender garden.… ...continue reading
Time is short, so here is the heart of it: everything I own in my house is alive. My reading lamp ate T-rex, my kitty. I came home from work today to the lamp hunched over the remains, the cat’s belly ruptured. The bulb lay on the ground beside, and when I closed the door, the lamp twisted its shade to regard me. Teeth filled the bulb socket and hung with gore. It hissed electric.
The guilt I feel for poor T-rex is tremendous. While I’d been increasingly aware for some time that things were not right with my possessions, I’d been sure poor T could hold his own. It is, after all, hard to imagine him being outrun by an object.
In his defense, I don’t think it was the lamp that brought him down.… ...continue reading
Author’s Note: I spent much of my formative art-making years dabbling and being inquisitive about many art-making techniques including sculpture, architecture, furniture design, painting, and collage. I found that even though collage has become the art medium I am most comfortable utilizing on a daily basis, it is the ability to freely move from one interest to another that pushes me. In 2010, I took a mixed media art class at the local community college. This is where I began working more extensively in the medium of collage, utilizing both existing images and forming my own imagery with paper.
Sometimes these pieces will host only a few clippings from magazines to tell the story in my mind, other times it will take many clippings weaved together for the piece to take shape.… ...continue reading
