Here I am at my kitchen sink in Pittsfield, MA. Age 24? I lived alone in a sweet third floor apartment and gave over one of my bedrooms to painting. That seems like a different life.
Why didn’t I keep at it, you might wonder. Well, paints are really expensive for one thing and probably the more important other thing, in my family my sister was the painter. I was the writer. You know how potent those early designations can be!
I post the purple painting fragment to demonstrate the way motifs endure. I didn’t know when I painted Lady Liberty as a young woman that she would become an urgent symbol of American resistance later on. None of us could’ve known.
How fragile our democracy! How resilient white supremacy! How infecting to our institutions Christian theocratic tribalism! In those days I worried about HIV and how to create a reasonable worklife.
Just as a recent data point: Trump got booed at the US Open. His dictate to the Association to air clips of him with the sound off were foiled by — oh, I don’t know — the internet?
Do you hear that though? Not the booing, but the tyrannical imposition of his insecurity. He KNEW he would be booed. He KNEW the association would bend the knee.
Last summer when friend Lisa and I attended an indigo workshop we stayed very near my last college residence (above). Two Isabella Street, Northampton. Near the railroad tracks. From there I went to San Francisco for a short six-month sojourn before returning east. But while in SF, I worked in a copy shop and had access to what was then cutting edge technology: a color Xerox machine with a color dial. I got an employee discount! It allowed you to make endless variations by changing how color was laid down. To say I enjoyed making collages and then tinkering with them on the machine would be an understatement.
Also talked about here. I repeat myself. I give myself permission to repeat myself.
Anyway, there is that house motif. And below, a photograph I took while still in high school.
Sometimes I wonder (not at all to my credit), if my endless house creations indicate a profound loneliness and inability to connect. What no people? Not even a cat in the window? Or maybe they reveal artistic limitation — living creatures being much harder to render than walls and roofs after all.
At least they have gotten more richly rendered over time!
I was told that the House, Home images are used heavily by those who had had a difficult childhood or some deep painful connection with “home”. In my case, Home was not a safe space because of my mother’s dislike for me….could it be something to do with your sister???
This could apply to me — not just difficulties within the family, but we moved six or seven times before I turned 17.
Dee~ Love seeing the through line in who Dee is over the many years. I know I’ve fought against how I was seen as a child over the years. I was not the one who claimed “writer” first, so then does it ever belong to me? I work at that. The collage bug bit you long ago it seems and it’s so interesting to see and know as you, your style. As far as houses, I can see the ‘easier’ aspect (as that would be me!) and I can see the artistic box theory, as that would also be me (find what “works” and stick with it!), but I can also see a ‘making a home’ vision, as I reflect on how you have done that for your family through not only interior environment, but through food, parental participation, your garden and probably many more ways I don’t know or can’t think of at the moment. Perhaps you love the feeling of creating home for self and others? Maybe it is time to paint again? (((hugs)))
Well there is no doubt now is there that you’re a writer? In AWA, we like to say, “A writer is someone whose writes.” Period.
The “collage bug” as you call it might be the strongest thru line. Hadn’t really considered this before.
You paint with cloth, with your choices of color, design, etc. The fact that you quilt houses without people or animals or plants seems to me to show your open, welcoming heart. You let all who view your quilts, see whatever their definition of home is and also, these houses/homes connect in a deep way.
Life scripts- whether self imposed or given to us by our parents, they can distort our sense of self. As the eldest daughter of immigrant Spanish parents, their “script” for me was to reach the highest level of womanhood- that of wife and mother. My sister could be the one to go to college. Boy did I rebel but a funny thing happened on the way to creating my life, I did indeed become a wife at 22 and a mother at 23. Luckily for me, I married a caring, wise man who knew of my desire to get a college education and simply said, “go, we can make it work.” It took 12 years to get my degree as I only went part-time so I could be involved in my girls schools but I did get my degree. The thing that my parents could not understand is that you can be many things, not life-scripted into just one description. You can be a wife and mother rand college graduate and you can be a painter and a writer…and Dee, you are, for you not only paint with cloth but with words.
You exemplify the way that a person can both embody what is expected of them AND rise to their own destiny.
Thanks for your kind words. I appreciate them, as always.
What was your degree in?
I had what was known as a double major, journalism and political science. I also had a minor in business administration although I’m not sure why I carried a minor but I did have fun with my class on management and organizational behavior. I was awarded an internship at our state capitol and was placed in the Speaker of the Assembly’s office. I wrote a term paper for that class on the structure and “flow” in the Speaker’s office and the following year, my paper was used as part of the curriculum. So one way to look at this is that the paper combined all of my majors and minor!
Impressive
Since I had mentioned this a while ago, thought I would bring you up to date What is impressive is my granddaughter’s determination to work on her high school newspaper. She did not get the position of editor in chief for her high school newspaper, (she is a junior and that honor usually is given to a senior) but she was chosen to be features editor for the newspaper. She is proud and happy of this accomplishment, as are we, and grinned and said, “onto next year!”
really enjoyed learning more about you Dee
I remember wanting ‘personal motifs’ when I started working as a proper artist (ha!) and have come to realise, they evolve over the years and looking back you ‘see’ them
the houses[symbols/objects] hold multitudes, to me anyway, all that has been described in previous posts, and also they allow the viewer to project their own world, interpretation et cetera…..there is a space to enter and look at your work and then at oneself and the world again, maybe in a new or dlightly different way…
I’ll stop the ramble, love what you do Dee
Thanks so much. I can’t tell who this is?
Saskia!