Seeking the Sublime in the Everyday

    How did I get interested in art?  I never got uninterested.  I drew pictures like all kids but I never gave it up and nothing more compelling appeared.     I taught art for fifteen years. I loved my students but eventually realized that teaching, along with raising my children, left little time for Art. I couldn’t give up the children so I gave my notice and went back to the Art Students League.  My friend, Rosina Florio, the director of the school, arranged for me to receive a grant that paid tuition for one class and an allowance for supplies. She insisted I study with Leo Manso, an abstractionist.      I resisted, thinking I wouldn’t get anything from a teacher whose aesthetic was so different from mine. I was mainly afraid that he’d be dismissive of my work. For a month I took a sculpture class. I was hiding out really, afraid to go to Manso. It was good to work in three dimensions, to use my hands and ...

    Arthur and I met on May 11, 1973, the day after the New York Knicks won the NBA championship. Things haven’t gone well for the Knicks since then but Arthur and I are doing fine.     I am often asked how I, coming from such a religious background, with a deep commitment to the Bible and Jesus, could marry a Jewish man?  Arthur doesn’t get it either.  When I tried to tell him about my relationship with Jesus he replied,     “I don’t know, Barbara,  I felt a lot better about you when you talked this way about Elvis.”  Irreverent, yes, but his skepticism made me look at my faith from a different angle and I came away with a stronger, clearer commitment.     When it was time to introduce Arthur to the family I made a date to meet my father at a steak house near Madison Square Garden.     Arthur arrived first and called me.  Knowing Dad’s punctuality, I said, “My father’s there-...

In church last week the lesson was the first Psalm: it says that the righteous are "like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and its leaves do not wither."  One of the hymns we sang had a line about a whale roaming the seas and an eagle soaring the skies. You know how something just grabs you? those two images reminded me of this quote: "Whether it be the soaring eagle in his flight, or the open apple blossom, the toiling work horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak,the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun,  Form ever follows function and that is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change." Who said that?   Louis Sullivan, 1856-1924, called the father of modern architecture.  He believed, and acted upon that belief, that a building must be solid, useful and beautiful, and designed from the inside out, with its purpose ...