Utopia

 The New York Times Acrostic for May 7 had this quote;

Art is memory made public. Books turn to dust, negatives decay, civilizations burn.  As long as art endures a song or a view someone once thought worth keeping is saved and stays shareable.  Others can say, "I feel that too." 

I love that.  It comes from the novel, Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell.

That rang a bell for me because Joseph Cornell, one of the stars in my pantheon of art heroes, lived on Utopia Parkway, in the borough of Queens, New York City.

This collage is a tribute to Cornell--you can see that the doormat has his name--with a drawing of his home on Utopia (!) Parkway--an ordinary little house in which extraordinary things were created. 

 I downloaded Utopia Avenue onto my iPhone and found that there's more to the passage; it was edited to fit the acrostic form and one sentence left out was, "Time wins in the long run."  TIME.  Having just passed my birthday I find that time is on my mind.  Is it on my side?  I hope so because I still have a lot to do. For instance, this drawing has been on my table since January.  I'm really feeling timid about the color choices and I don't know why. I started out with a lot of pastels but the browns seem to be taking over.  I think I'm ok with that.  We'll see.

I've always considered art to be thought made concrete but public is a good term too and I love the word shareable. To think that someone could look at my drawing and say, "Yes, I feel that" is one reason why I, an extravert who works alone, keep on keeping on. 

I'm happy to report that I struck a small blow in the war against plastic at the dentist's office today.   Charlene, after a great cleaning, offered me a gift pack-- a plastic bag with a plastic toothbrush, plastic floss container, plastic toothpaste tube and a chapstick and I said, "No, thank you, I'm abstaining as much as I can from plastic.  I use a bamboo toothbrush, a refillable floss jar and tablets that come in a paper packet instead of paste." It's a tiny stone in the dam against the plastic tide but we've gotta start somewhere.

And, before I go, Rest In Peace, Tina Turner.