Traveling Full Circle

Monologue of Grief series

I was inspired to start Project60 after seeing Laurie Anderson's film, Heart of A Dog. I wanted to mark my 60th year with something meaningful and connected to my art, hence the 60 paintings in six months chronicled by various forms of writing and painting. While I generally think age is a number, it does stand for something. I'd like to think the years have informed me, and the trade off for getting older is aquiring  a degree of wisdom, maturity and perspective. Time is difficult to quantify beyond counting birthdays and recalling events that mark the passages. What does 20 years really feel like? Or 10 or 30? Is time really flying by? We cannot clock it with a stop watch. I flip through photo albums, thousands of pictures on my computer, stockpiles of paintings and years of words compiled in journals and my unpublished book. Are our lives reflected in these collections or in the memories stored in our heart? When I look through the vast amounts of stuff that chronicle my life I realize how much I have forgotten. Paintings I painted, words I wrote, special moments, and people who meant a great deal at that time. I am grateful for the reminders; however, it is jolting to realize what the years bury to clear space for new experiences and people.

My mother Louise Gerstenblatt

When I sat in the theater at the Portland Museum of Art after watching Anderson's film, I had no idea I would soon face her same losses. My mother died at age 90 in late July 2016 and then my beloved Golden Retriever Pepsi at age 10 of cancer in December 2016. Those losses defined and altered my life. There is no recovery, just recalibration. I abandoned the Project60 blog and began the Pepsi Diaries blog the day she was diagnosed with cancer. http://pepsidiaries.blogspot.com The cancer came out of nowhere, on a night I was schedule to give a lecture at the university with Muhsana Ali on community art practice. We worked together for over a decade in West Africa, Mart Texas and now Portland Maine. Pepsi was breathing hard and would not get up. I rushed her to the emergency vet and called Muhsana and the curator as I frantically drove, tears streaming down my face. I am not coming I said, you can handle it and then hung up. If I had not brought her in she would have died. She had a pericardial effusion as a result of a mass on her heart that was inoperable. We began chemotherapy, acupuncture and other holistic treatments; however, we were warned it was terminal either way and the goal was to get more time as long as she was not in agony. The chemo was stopped three weeks later since the cancer spread to her lungs. From that point forward our efforts were focused on her comfort and being present and grateful for each minute. I eliminated all but the essential and stayed by her side. She was nearly normal five of the six weeks, with the exception of increased overall coughing and episodes of coughing up blood. The last week she slowed down dramatically and she then stopped eating. I slept beside her on the floor in the bathroom, living room or wherever she found a comfortable spot. I was told she would let me know when it was time and she did, with grace. How is it I never thought she would leave me?

Pepsi by the sea

Me and my girl 

I continued to write to Pepsi in the form of letters in the Pepsi Diaries blog. I began a series of paintings titled Monologue of Grief. I joined a dog cancer Facebook page and read the same story over and over. I posted my blogs for people who felt my feelings. Many said my blog posts expressed what they felt but couldn't say. It is not a happy club but we understand and support each other. I am so grateful to have my two other Goldens, Pearl and Pandy, and I love them with all my heart. But I want Pepsi back. I am not done writing to her. Perhaps it is my way of holding on, though I know she is still with me. We are an always and forever team. There is no return to "normal" life. This loss gutted me, reframed my perspective in ways large and small. I have retreated and removed the nonessential. Now I am careful about what is allowed back in. Her loss has made me realize not getting things isn't the worst possible outcome. I have little tolerance for bullshit and could take or leave most people with the exception of cherished family and friends. Sometimes, while listening to people go on and on about some inconsequential crap, I want to look them dead in the eyes and say Ask me if I care, but I haven't completely lost my decorum.

On my first bike

I have been traveling to the past lately. Thinking about the places I lived and who I was then. It feels like watching old home movie reels, crackly and fragmented. The child running free along the shore, awkward teenager wishing she were in the future, young woman walking the streets of Jerusalem, riding buses to think in Tel Aviv, scribbling poetry and prose, painting on any available surface, married and giving birth to my children and years later a rebirth of myself as I painted at China Camp, the Greek Island and South of France. Later Copenhagen and West Africa. So much urgency and energy. My children growing up though my missteps. Me falling down and getting up. Men I needed to define me. Bend, bend, bend, until I broke. And still I had no idea of all that was still to come. Bends in the road and corners to turn. Surprises. Liberation. Love remixed. When I was in my late thirties I spent Yom Kippur at an Orthodox Synagogue in Avignon France. I leaned my head on my elbows as I looked down from the balcony where I sat with the women to the men praying below. For some reason I thought about how I would never get to do everything I was capable of artistically. I thought about ceramic sculptures, etchings, books, and large scale canvases that might never be created. I wasn't particularly upset at the epiphany, just acknowledging the inevitable. Who gets to do everything they want anyway? I recall the woman I was then, driving around Provence in my tiny rental car through villages and vineyards. Stopping at the side of the road to sketch the landscapes with my soft pastels, even at dusk when the light was waining. I drew by instinct and emotion. A solo traveler covering vast territories.

Copenhagen circa 1998

When I began this blog and project, my intention was to complete 60 paintings in six months. That was the easy part. When I left Greece in June I had already reached that goal. I have always been prolific, yet despite the stockpile of work  I feel as if I am never working enough. Not for the sake of quantity but the hunger to create. How could it possibly be enough? It's like how could there ever have been enough time with Pepsi? I wanted to make a statement with Project60, in a similar way that Anderson did with Heart of A Dog. Perhaps create a seminal work with multi media. I recorded video to possibly incorporate; however, once I returned from Greece I had to deal with my mom's illness, her death a few weeks later and then Pepsi diagnosed with cancer in October. My hope was to use the vantage point of turning 60 to encapsulate the past and present with a forward glance. After all, we live in the contradiction that the list of possibilities is never exhaustive but time is finite. That day in Avignon I would never have predicted at age 56 I would get my my PhD and become a professor. It was not on my radar. What else can't I see now? New destinations, people who will become significant, and works I will create.

My PhD graduation, University of Texas at Austin

Jonathan, me, Rena and Tommy Davis 

My artistic path has been atypical. A few months back, a woman in my Pilates class who is having success exhibiting her work complimented the paintings I posted on Facebook. She said something to the effect of your figurative work is really developing well. I thanked her and then she asked me where I "trained". I must have looked at her with some bewilderment, and then as if she overestimated my art education, asked if I had taken "classes". This particular woman has been fortunate to come from wealth and be able to dedicate herself to things other than worrying about paying bills. I told her I had "trained" at San Francisco Art Institute; however, I have been doing this my whole life, since I could hold a crayon. The figures I posted were many years old, not in the development process. A similar thing happened in 1994 when I was part of a group show at the Richmond Art Center that included some well known artists, including Roy DeForest. I was nervous and excited. Paintings and windows from China Camp with poetry and images would be shown. I remember rushing to the gallery after work to give my input on installation. The other artists looked the part in their paint splattered clothes, chatting among themselves. I wore a dress, blazer, and heels. They stared at me as if to say who is this person and why is she here? Later a friend confirmed my suspicion, she knew one of the artists and they asked why I was included in the show. I hadn't gone the BFA, MFA, then teaching art at the college level route. I had to fight for painting time between working full time and raising my kids. I had no residencies, grants or outside support. But I had a burning passion and imagination that could not be denied. I had China Camp and Folegandros and France and Denmark and Ghana and Senegal. I had my kids and interesting people who enriched my life with their stories and friendship. I rose above a troubled childhood. Somehow I managed to pay the mortgage. I worked in jobs that revealed narratives far different and more difficult than mine. I had nature and magic and tenacity, laughter and adventure. When the Artists in Residence Program brought students from the public school to see the exhibit at the Richmond Art Center and do an art project, it was my windows they choose to replicate. Windows made of cardboard frames and clear plastic panes with poetry and images drawn by the children lined the walls of the student exhibition. The curator called me to come see the magical array of windows. I stood there reading the poetry, admiring the drawings. We looked at each other and smiled. He asked if I still felt I didn't belong in the show.

Live model painting in Paris, 2002

Once I asked a master artist to mentor me. He agreed to look at my work and after some thought said he couldn't teach me anything, what I did could not be taught and he didn't want to interfere with my process. I was disappointed, I wanted a teacher, perhaps a fellow traveler to navigate and collaborate with. Creating is such a solitary and dense experience. I could easily fall off the face of the earth if not for the realities of life beckoning me. I straddled the fence for years with a foot in the practical and the other in my creative world. In retrospect it all seems so bewildering and enormous. I have an exhibit at the Jewish Museum next spring themed on journeys; geographic, spiritual, developmental. My first scroll will be included, as well as a window or two, with a sampling of paintings on paper and canvas. An artist friend joked with me after seeing the abundance of my work that it will be a challenge for the curator to select pieces for the show. I told her this is not the half of it, there is more work in California. I get overwhelmed by myself and have no idea what the hell to do with it all. If someone would back a truck in the driveway and hand me a check with the right amount of zeros, it might solve a few problems at once.

Senegal and Ghana series exhibit at University of New England, 2014

Jeanette, me and Erica

I feel ready to wrap up this Project60 and blog. Letting go is not my strong point but here goes. In a small torn cardboard box is 406 pages of the book I wrote and completed in 1997. I shopped it around and got some positive responses. I never pushed it any further, life got busy as it always did and there were new paintings to work on, kids to raise, a day job and the next trip to Greece or France for unfettered time to work on my art. When people asked me about the book I told them it felt behind me already, though it gave me the most wonderful year and a half of rapture writing it. I packed it away and didn't look at it until this year. I scanned through it today and felt amazed by my life some twenty years later in the rear view mirror. I want to tell the author there is so much more to come. Heartbreak and glory and redemption. Your children will survive and thrive. You will become best friends and remarry the father of your children in an act of love and friendship that defies the notion of romance you desperately sought for so many years. Some people will drop out of sight but others more worthy will emerge. You will move away from your children twice and eventually land back in New England where you began 60 years ago. You will become an adult child without parents. New adventures continue and you will return to your beloved island. You will mentor many students who go on to do great things. You will give your heart to a Golden Retriever who will unexpectedly and abruptly die and render you grief-stricken. Luckily two others will remain behind to comfort you and together you will rebuild life in her shadow. Love will always be a double bind and hard to resist. The complicated flawed mysteries will remain unsolved yet worth investing in. We will travel full circle when all is said and done. But until then, enjoy the ride.


Post Script
Pinole 1997

In my daughter life
I needed to fly away
far and fast

In my mother life I felt frozen
cemented in an inexplicable
frame of time

In my woman life I looked through the bars
of a self imposed prison cell
I hid the key that would release me
but found it when I was ready

In my art life I became all that I feared I would be
not held back
no shadows to run from
sunlight filtering, exposing me

In my whole life I quilt together all the pieces
embossed by past and present
loose threads safely tucked
into fullness

My son Jonathan and I in Monterey, 2004

My daughter Rena and I in York Maine, 2014