Happy Valentine's Day

-

 


My Valentine's birthday is February 15 so we always have a double celebration. I've already told the story of the bear several times so I won't repeat it but here's another Valentine story.  On February 13 a few years ago I saw a Police car parked outside Lilac, the elegant chocolate shop in my neighborhood.  The driver had hopped out of the car and run inside. I said to his partner, waiting outside,

"I hope he's getting something for you in there."

He replied, "Yes, but I have to wait until tomorrow to open it."  Love was in the air.  I hope it still is.

I'm announcing my solo debut as a curator!  

Art at First at First Presbyterian Church

Presents

7 Days: Artists View the Creation

In the Great Hall Gallery, 

12 West 12th Street at Fifth Avenue

Featuring work by


Fran Beallor, Lois Bender, Colleen Deery, Karen Fitzgerald, Barbara Hermor, 

Lori Horowitz, Donna Levinstone, Malcolm Ritter, Rob Swanson,

 Elizabeth White-Pultz, Alice Zinne

There will be an artists' reception Sunday, March 5, from Noon to Four and  a Zoom gathering and artists talk to be announced.  So mark you calendar. 

One more new start for me: I'm doing a portrait!


This will be a take off on the Pelican Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.  You know how I feel about the Pelican soI think it's a good fit.  In the original, she's wearing a jeweled brooch in the shape of a pelican--I think I'll have a little more fun with it. So keep tuned!

You know who else has a birthday on the fifteenth?  Frederick Douglas. To celebrate him, here's a poem by Robert Hayden.

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more  

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   

this man, superb in love and logic, this man   

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Location: 87867WCV+PC

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Does Inspiration Come?

-
Image
“One’s work is nothing but the long journey through life to recover, through the detours of art, the one or two great and simple images that first gained access to one’s heart.”                                                                                                       Robert Beverly Hale quoting Albert Camus The first time I heard this quote, at an Art Student's League dinner, I thought, "Well, that doesn't apply to me." I was deep into my bird period; drawing their feather patterns was great practice for my pen technique but I wasn't a bird watcher or anything.  Then I went home for a visit and my mother said, "Let's have a slideshow. She pulled out all the old family ...
Read more

I'm Keeping' on the Sunny Side

-
Image
 Good Morning!  I was thinking about posting a reprise of an old post about PINK, to keep the Barbie vibe going; I understand that in London they've painted all the red telephone booths pink and the great Ferris wheel has pink lights in honor of Her Plasticness but I had a better idea--you could say the Sun came up! You know I have a granddaughter named Sunny, right? I wanted to do a drawing for her and what else could I start with? The Sun and sunflowers--not very original but she's two and a half--to her everything's new and it's her name! Filling in the sky I see that it looks like the way I draw water, but that's OK.  I added Batchelor Buttons beneath the Sunflowers and I like the way the blue makes the yellow pop.  I'm not sure how to handle the transition from flowers to sky so I won't think about it.  Remember Mickey Rivers; "I don't worry about what I can control because if I can control it why worry?" And I'm in control! I used som...
Read more

Summer Reading

-
Image
What are you Reading?  I love it when someone asks me that. The Times Book Review has a column that asks what's on your night table?  Does everybody read in bed?  If I have a good book I can't wait to say good-night. But as reading and writing has made me focus on language an abyss of bad grammar has opened before   me and I cry out in anguish. Will I ever become inured to hearing Ivy League graduates on NPR saying, "Him and Me are gonna..." and "Please reach out to John or I?" Terry Gross never corrects anyone's grammar and I respect  that,  it's not a good interviewing technique,  but where are the mothers and teachers?  How has it come to this? And another thing! The misplaced modifier!   In a biography of Willa Cather I read, "At the age of eight, school began to bore Willa."  Really? School was eight years old?  Miss Cather is rolling over in her grave.  And this, from Elle Decor; "As a young girl, her father affectionatel...
Read more