Thursday night I attended an artist reception at the Chisholm Trail Arts Council. There were two artists showing their work. One was a photographer and the other was a pastel artist. You can figure out which one I was more interested in. The pastel artist was excellent. Kim Rowgow is new to pastels and learning at the Cedar Cove art studio in Duncan. I thought she was awesome. The photographer, Margaret Schick was good, I am sure, but I'm just not that into photography. Don't get me wrong. I like looking at beautiful photos. I tend to look at them and think, "How would that work as a painting?" I rarely think, "I'd like to buy that and put it on my wall." I think I may have a serious bias towards photography as art. This lady had some beautiful photos - jillions of them, but they were not "artsy". They were well done, but nothing that I could not have done myself - not anything different or new or interesting. I have seen photographers who do really amazing photos - things well thought out. They try new and different things - now those are art. Maybe I should strive more in my own art to do work that is unique and different and not just the same old stuff every other artist can do.
We attended a funeral and a wedding on Saturday. The funeral or visitation was for an old friend whom I had not kept up with very well. Fritz was my age and we had grown up together. Our dads had been childhood friends, too. In the last ten years, I had not kept up with his family or him. My mom had kept up with his mom until the dementia thing. I kind of hate that I had not checked up on Fritz, but such is life. I will remember him as an easy-going guy whose laugh was sincere. I will remember him cocking his head to the side and speaking in that slow West Texas accent calling me Loulou. His life was a bit of a mess, but he always had time for me and made me feel loved.
The wedding was for one of my past art girls. Katie is an excellent artist. She will continue to do art, because it is in her to do so. The wedding was beautiful, because Katie is beautiful. They had a dessert reception, which was nice and then went to a wedding supper and dance for close family and friends. I like it that they started with dessert first.
Last night was ceramics. I threw a couple of pots and did a bunch of glaze work on other pots. I have been taking clay home with me and throwing pots out in the barn while the weather is nice. The wind has been howling, but the temps have not been so bad. Working in the barn is iffy - weather permitting. Soon it will get too hot. Winter is too cold. I guess I am a fair weather potter. Class will be over soon and I need to finish up what I have started. Maybe I will continue to take the class this summer. Alberto, our teacher, will be moving on and a new teacher will be coming. Last night I visited with Steve, the ceramics professor, and asked him how his hunt for a new resident artist was going. He said he had 40 applicants to weed through and interview. I asked him it was difficult to lure artist to come to Wichita Falls in the summer. "Do you tell them that it gets hot here - so hot that you don't need a kiln - you can just set the pots outside?"
This morning I'm going to the local coffee shop, Frank and Joes's, to meet up with an old friend. I thought I would see her more while I am coming for ceramics, but I have not really seen her much. She has a life too - imagine that! Keeping up with old friends and new ones too, is something that has to be worked at. It is not that I mind seeing them - that is not the work. The work is in making myself make time and getter done. My dad was always good at making time for friends. In fact, when my brother called last week to say that Fritz had died, we both debated on going to the funeral. We both had busy weekends and didn't really want to have one more thing added to our day. But then Pete said, "It's like I hear Dad from another dimension saying, 'Go! It is Doug's son!' And Dad would have gone for his old friend. So Pete and I went. And I am glad I did. It was good to see Fritz' mom. In her slow West Texas drawl she said, "Well, Loulou and Petey..."
No comments:
Post a Comment