As I’m not going to be posting for a while I’d like to leave you with this video about consumption on our planet and how we might all contribute to making this a green planet again. The video is by Annie Leonard and she does an amazing job of explaining the straight-line model of consumption we have had for the last fifty or sixty years, a pattern that must now change if our children and children all over the world are to live on a non-toxic planet with the possibility of happiness. There is so much that each of us can do right now, as she explains. So, this is a happy video and gives us all a way to contribute to the planet and create a new earth. Thanks for watching!

The Story of Stuff

My dear, beloved readers—When I started my wee blog two years ago I wanted to write about teaching my art class. I’d been an artist all my life but had never taught art before. I’d never made a living from anything but art and had explored it in many different ways and on different levels. I really didn’t know exactly what I was doing as a teacher but I knew I was not here to teach drawing ‘techniques.’ I don’t even know what they are. I believed and still believe that everyone has a creative core and that by going to that true creative place we liberate ourselves from all the things that hold us back from fully expressing who we are in this world—from expressing our laughter and wit, our insights, our compassion. And I believed that the humble art of drawing might yield far more than objects to hang on the wall.

Right from the start my wondrous students proved this and more. They did things that far exceeded their actual skill levels when given a set of parameters to explore. We worked together and gave ourselves room to do whatever it was we were going to do without judgment. We looked for the good in everything we did and found it. We also looked for just what it was we were doing and teased it out from a million possibilities and in the process came to know ourselves a little better, I think. Everyone’s skill levels increased rapidly because they weren’t splashing around in shallow waters but diving into the deep end and realizing that they could at least float if not swim a huge distance. But learning to swim is easy once you realize you can float.

It’s been so amazing for me to witness this and so affirming of what I think life is all about—becoming people of peace and joy. It’s been fun too and fun to me is a high art as is anything that creates good energy here on the planet. But class is out now for the summer and I’m going to take a break from blogging. There will be other things to write about, I’m sure, in time. Right now though there are many things that need doing—a writing project nearly done and another one in the works that involves art, a tiny garden that needs tending and which now includes pots of vegetables, and some greening of our old house. The latter involves starting a compost, installing a new side door to insulate better from the cold, even installing a stone panel in front of the living room window that will act as a passive solar heater when the sun pores in and the temperatures outside are frigid. There’s travel coming up too and visitors arriving from out of town.

So, for a while, I’ll be gone fishin.’ I’ll report in at the beginning of each month. Many things are changing and Artwala Road may or may not morph into something else, I’m not sure yet. I’m so grateful that you’ve shown up here and for your comments. They’ve been so interesting and fun. I love to hear from you so please email to stay in touch and wishing you all a happy, productive and relaxing summertime!

The art class met for the last session on Saturday. We’ll break now until mid-September. There were only two students who were able to make it as it’s a holiday weekend here and the others had trips planned or other gatherings. For the first part of class we just sat around and chatted. We do this every week and it’s one of my favorite parts of class. We often chat about personal stuff which is cool because not everyone knows each other well but I think we all like to share a little of whatever is going on. This is a women’s class after all! So great that everyone feels free to be themselves. Anyway in art we’re trying to get to what’s important and interesting to us in terms of what we create.

When we did get to drawing we each did something totally different. We worked large again and, curiously, what had been so energizing the previous couple of weeks seemed a bit daunting, even draining, this time. None of us did stellar work. We weren’t that focused and I didn’t give direction. Often direction really does help but it was good to see just what we would do without it too. On person did a kind of narrative drawing that told the story in a visual way of things she was thinking about. Another felt that her first attempt at a piece simply didn’t work so she stopped and started on something else. My own piece was the beginning of an exploration I will likely continue but in its first expression was way too busy and muddy. I’ll do some new things next time and the director of the center has offered to give us a model which will be great to draw from too.

So—Saturday was just a low-key kind of day. Now we break for summer and, as luck would have it, summer arrived today, right on time! So beautiful to be outside in the warm sunshine today. I pootled around the North End, the Italian area of Boston, with my wonderful daughter and had a great lunch at a tiny little place on Hanover Street. So many visual treats, especially the new park that now stands where that ugly overpass used to be. And tomorrow I’ll get some more soil and plant the last of my tomatoes and a few beans in pots on the patio, maybe even have dinner outside. It’s time to chill a little here!

On Saturday we once again drew on big paper taped to the wall.  We used photographs to spark ideas and, once again, everyone did work that was bold.  My own piece was not successful.  I mucked up a figure I was drawing by trying to ‘capture’ the actual features a little too closely.  What works better for me is to try to internalize the image and then just draw from my mind.  But the point is not to get a great finished piece but to explore—to just see where we are.  So it was good information.

But the others all did brilliant stuff and amazed themselves, I think.  Something about working big has liberated everyone from excessive care and fiddly obsessiveness, especially when we are working with time constraints.  This time we spent a couple of hours just drawing on our usual pads before attacking our larger piece so that left just an hour to spend on that.  There was no time to worry.  Besides we’d already immersed ourselves in the flow by loosening up on the smaller paper.  It’s always a question of getting out of the way of the mind and just relaxing into whatever is happening without judgment of the work or self.

One of our members said—”This is art yoga.”  It is!  We’re drawing but not forcing, not pushing beyond our limits.  We’re just going as close to our edge as possible, each week nudging ourselves just a little further.  We’re accepting ourselves just where we are.  It’s all perfect, all fine.  And we’re smiling.  Amazing things happen when we get out of our way.

Next Saturday is the last class then we break for the summer.  I hope the class will continue to work on their own until we meet again in September.  To me it’s not about producing art but actually practicing.  The practice is just as great as any object we make.  If we’re doing this in a yogic way we develop presence, being totally in the moment.  We develop non-judgment, total acceptance of what is— the messes we make and ourselves where we are.  And if we make messes we get to see where our edge is and  discern where we might go next time.  Plus, and I think this might be the best of all, we develop a little humor, which really is delight just being who and where we are.  All this from drawing!  These are pretty cool things to be able to take with you into whatever your world is.

I’ll report next week on the last class.  I’m in the final, final leg of my writing project which I hope to finish by mid-June.  Then it’s onto something new and I’ll report on that as the summer goes on.  Meanwhile the wee garden I envisioned is now being planted in pots.  With luck I’ll get the tomatoes in today then sit back and wait for the harvest!

I’ve just discovered that Cy Twombley will be at Tate Modern in London from mid-June to mid-September. I love his work. Monumental scribbles and splashes of pure color. Words that can barely be read and some that can be read quite clearly. Dribbles of paint. Thoughts and explorations. Repetition. The human hand writ large. All that freedom and carelessness. All that open space and yet within it a rather loopy daring. We saw a few of his pieces at MOMA in New York this spring and they filled me with a great sense of expansiveness and what the heck. There was nothing careful about them and I know I can get caught in that game of excessive care as an artist and a writer. I can get caught in thinking something has to conform to form—to be a careful version of what already exists. I’m really trying to break free of that in everything I do and get to that experimental place where I’m just following what comes to me.

I had that freedom once, as a kid, we all did. I had it as a very young artist, for a very short time. For all sorts of reasons I side-stepped away from the open declaration of whatever it was I cared about then. I became an observer, a studier of life, and that’s okay too. I like to think it’s all perfect and I’m thinking about it a fair amount because I will soon be sixty and that seems like so many years. Yes, it is a little odd to say it. It will take practice and I am starting here. I want to be open about who I am even if women were not appreciated for so long as they aged. I feel more creative and alive and centered now than ever. I do not think I’m too old to do the things I am doing. I still want to do things! It feels vital to me to contribute somehow to this world, especially now. And I still think, as I did in my twenties, that when I get up in the morning I get to make art and write about things that matter! I still think how I might send these things into the world as little tokens of lightness and I still send them. I think it’s all just right even though it is not quite as I thought it might be back then. Like every other artist I envisioned a rather grander kind of success than the one I achieved which has been fine and well-rounded and a little cagey. And I know, now that I’m almost sixty, just how lucky I was not to get the kind of success I envisioned back then! And when I really think about it I know I envisioned the big bucks rolling in rather later in life. Ahem. Well, never mind—now I feel rich anyway. I have so much that’s good in my life!

But I’m aware too that what I do now can never have the innocent freedom of my younger days. I feel a little nostalgia but can’t stop there. It doesn’t take us very far to dwell on or in the past. I’m just giving it a small nod as it sails by—like, it was nice knowing you, you wild, sweet, crazy girl!

Which brings me back to Cy Twombley. He’s even older than I am, for one thing, twenty years older, and he’s doing this amazing art still. Imagine. Art is fabulous like that—the gift that keeps on giving. If you give to it it gives back, over and over. We are very, very lucky those of us who have these things we love to do.

There were times when people thought Cy’s work was just scribbles, that it made no sense. He just kept doing it and, in fact, he used bigger and bigger canvases. Let’s take note of that. He was bold and brave. What an inspiration! If we’re going to try something new do it big! Make big mistakes if that’s what they’re going to be or maybe there’s no such thing as a mistake. Maybe there are just experiments. Maybe every honest gesture of our hand is worth something. I think Cy may be saying that too.

Because of this I’d really like to see this show. My mother-in-law lives in London so I go most years to visit. But now the exchange rate has become so unfavorable it seems almost prohibitive even when we have a place to stay. I will ponder a little more. There is work to be done here. Even if I don’t actually make it over I’m very excited because there will be a catalogue. I gave a Cy Twombley book I once owned to a dear artist friend some years ago and now it sells for $300. on Amazon. There’s nothing else affordable in print but soon there will be!

A chore-based day here and now almost supper time with absolutely no work done save for cutting the grass and planting a few blooms which does not count as work work. The soil test report came in this morning from U Mass regarding the quality of the earth in our back garden where I had grand visions of a small vegetable garden this summer. It was not good. Our plot has a medium lead content and our friend and neighbor Sally’s is even worse. The note said that it was recommended we NOT plant vegetables unless we want to grow an extra nose or something.

I emailed Sal who is on her way to China for work. Then I went to a fabulous Italian vegetable / plant market in our town called Russo’s to do some food shopping. It makes me happy just to be in that place because they have varieties of vegetables and fruits that I hardly recognize, all piled high and oh so fresh. AND it’s half the price of Whole Foods Market which has become so ridiculously overpriced. Why do they have to charge more for something than another place? Well, beats me. Anyway, back to Russo’s. They have almost but not quite everything that Whole Foods does, even goat’s milk and a wondrous cheese counter with hand-made tortellini stuffed with various cheeses and spinach etc. They have fresh baked bread too, whole grain, and sweet little tea cakes which are extremely yummy. I bought a tiny banana-pineapple one and had a slice with a cup of green tea late this afternoon just to make a good day even better. (I’d been for a long walk so the guilt factor did not intrude too much.)

AND outside at Russo’s they have rows and rows of pots and trays with herbs and veggies and flowers. I needed to buy a few geraniums and other annuals to put in pots around the place but, given the news about the soil, I did not expect to end up buying little parsley plants, cilantro, mint, basil, sage, several varieties of tomatoes and even lettuce—but I did! Tomorrow I will buy big pots for them and fill them with organic matter then hope that they’ll thrive. Gardening is a tad challenging in the city and after a winter indoors I just need to get out into the dirt. I’m hoping that a container garden on the patio will satisfy this yearning for nature and the desire to grow some of our own food. With luck, we’ll get to pick our own salads and even get a tomato sandwich or two!  Could be a $500. sandwich by the time I’m done with all these pots etc. but whatever.  All part of the fun!
Sal called from the airport in Chicago after she picked up the soil test news on her laptop. I was out at Russo’s so missed the call. I do hope she isn’t too disappointed but really it will give us lots more opportunities to support our local farmers at the markets this summer and that too is pretty damned fine. So, on we go. Tomorrow I’ll pick up a few more pots then post a photo or two next time when things are planted. It’s a rainy day here and looks like the weekend is meant to be the same. Perfect for my little plants! And maybe it will force me to do some work work tomorrow after the drawing class.

I scooted out to the art store after tea and bought some really big paper for everyone on sale at $1.29 a sheet. (Amazing price.)  Can’t wait to draw big again tomorrow. It’s our second to last class then the summer off to tend the plants and other things.

Eliza Petrow, who put on the wonderful fundraiser for AIDS orphans in China last week in Cambridge, wrote to give me accurate details about the project. This is the project where they are working to care for AIDS orphans from a small village in China where the adults were infected by HIV when they gave blood to make money and the needles used were unsterilized. I thought some of you might like to know and also to hear that Eliza received a gift of $1,300. yesterday from a woman who was not even at the fundraiser.

Here is what Eliza wrote—

“The organization in China is called the AIDS Orphan Salvation Association (AOS). Because they do not have NGO status in the States, we borrowed another NGO, The Alliance for Children Foundation of Wellesley, who agreed to take donations on their behalf and not take any overhead. They have done that for AOS in the past so they agreed to do it again.

AOS was founded by a Chinese woman, Zhang Ying in 2004, but Dr. Kay Johnson gave Zhang Ying funds from her first book as a way to help Zhang Ying have the finances to start AOS. Kay has been working with AOS as kind of a volunteer since then, helping to get meds for the kids from the states as needed, and linking up other student volunteers to the organization.

My project, the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Treatment Support Project, is part of AOS- kind of a program within a program. It just focuses on the 36 HIV+ kids currently in AOS (there are over 500 kids in the organization but the others are not HIV+). Since they are the most vulnerable and needed the most support, I decided to focus my work on them. Kay has been a great help to me since she is the one who has the contacts to get the second line AIDS medications from the US and so I have left that part of the job to her.

There are two websites for the AIDS Orphan Salvation Association. The English version of the organization’s Chinese website is:

faaids.com

The organization in the US handling the donation also has a site and has some information about AOS on this site:

afcfoundation.org

Neither site has been updated in a long time to include specific information about the medical treatment support project, but they have a lot of information about the organization in general for those who want to read up on it. There are also some great photos and they explain the history of doing AIDS work with this population.

For those who would like to make a donation, the best way is to send a check to:

Alliance for Children Foundation
55 William Street, Suite G10
Wellesley, MA 02481

May sure to mark 5/8 AOS fundraiser on the check memo so that they will give 100% of donations (and take no overhead) to this project.

Alliance will send a letter to you for tax purposes once they receive the donation so be sure to include your address.”

So, this gives an idea of the way the support is structured and how you can make a donation!

The $1,300. Eliza received yesterday will care for 1.5 children for one whole year—that is housing, food, education, and medical supervision. The medication is provided by the Chinese government unless second line drugs are needed should resistance to first line drugs develop. In this case the drugs are provided by the U.S. With proper care they will be able to live full productive lives. If any of you, my fine, good readers, wish to make a contribution, small or large according to your means, it will be most welcome, for sure.
Eliza’s email ended with a little poem from Emily Dickinson—

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Such a nice gift to read those words. Sometimes it’s the small simple things we do that so enrich our own lives as well as those of others. Thanks Emily! And Eliza!!

Well, one thing for sure, I’m learning more in my drawing class than I’m teaching. On Saturday I brought in a roll of large white paper and cut off a piece about 3′ by 5′ for each person to draw on. We taped the paper onto the walls so we could actually look around and see what our fellow artists were doing as we drew. I brought in some new photographs culled from magazines—innocuous stuff like room interiors, landscapes, objects, people. Something for people to use to get going if they needed to.  But I told the class that we’d continue with our efforts in going towards abstraction—even if they proved to be efforts towards pushing a ‘realistic’ drawing towards expressive style. Too often we get caught up in thinking that drawing is about putting down some realistic image of something when, really, it’s just making marks and seeing what those marks might convey.

One thing the class has shown me is that when we see drawing as making marks then everyone can draw. And when people stop thinking about realism they free themselves to play around and appreciate their own hand in whatever it’s doing. It takes that appreciation to free ourselves from the awful constraints of judgment that really inhibit artistic development. I love realism in, say, an Edward Hopper. He could not have achieved what he did with a photograph or without the skills that he developed. He found something vital and moving to express with realism. He gave us something to think about with it and marked a moment in the evolution of cities and urban living, perhaps a universal moment. He saw a beauty in loneliness—that the person, in whatever state, can be dignified and may be perched even on the edge of communion with something larger than self. I feel that in his paintings.

But, unless we are called to express something in terms of realism it is not necessary to master it. Not to my mind anyway. We don’t need to get hung up on it. It is useful to practice drawing but I think it’s most useful to practice the pleasure that comes from doing. That’s where the creative process really works its magic.  The pleasure is something that fuels all of our lives.
Anyway, I ramble, but what really amazed me on Saturday was that working really big with just the suggestion that we consider moving towards abstraction opened everyone right up. Amazing drawings emerged. This is the second time this term we’ve worked really big and the same thing happened both times. I’m kind of gobsmacked. It’s making me think that we need to always think bigger and act bigger. It’s more freeing and more fun.

We also noted how great it was to be able to wander around the room and see what each person was doing, take a little inspiration and go back to our own work. We noted that none of us would have done the drawings we did if we hadn’t been working there together. There is a synergy that comes from working together that takes you further as Picasso and Matisse proved in their artistic friendship. It totally doesn’t matter that we become Picasso or Matisse. What matters to me is that we come to know our own free, fun selves. And, on Saturday, we did. Thanks to the wondrous artists in my class!!

Last night we wet to a screening of a documentary film, ‘The Blood of Yangzhou District,’ about Aids orphans in China. The film won an Oscar for best short documentary on 2006 and tells the story of an impoverished rural village in China where residents sold their blood for money. The needles with which the blood was extracted were not sterilized and soon most of the adults in the village were infected with HIV/Aids. Some of their children were infected at birth and are, sadly, now orphans. When American aid workers arrived in this village they encountered squalid living conditions and people dying without any medical help at all. It was mostly children who were left and no one wanted to care for them because they have Aids.

It was heartbreaking to see these stories and to see the truly distressing conditions in which these people live. Although the Chinese government now provides medicine so that these children may become healthy and live normal lives there was still no one to care for them properly and to oversee their medical regimen until the arrival of the American organization, The Alliance For Children Salvation Association, founded by Dr. Kay Johnson in Boston. They designed a program in which the children were placed in foster families in cities so they might be situated near a hospital should they need help. They are each assigned a health worker to oversee compliance when it comes to taking the regular doses of medication they need to stay healthy. Their lives are vastly improved now from when they were first discovered in their villages, neglected and ill.

The film was presented as part of a fund-raiser for the kids by my daughter’s childhood friend, Eliza Petrow, who was instrumental in designing the program for their care. I felt so proud to know Eliza and to see the way she has grown into such a compassionate, wise and effective advocate for these kids and others. It’s the kind of thing that gives me a great deal of hope for this world. When I was a young woman few people thought of service careers. I’m truly in awe of what so many young people like Eliza and my own daughter, who is a teacher, are accomplishing.

There are so many worthy causes, it’s hard to know sometimes which to give to. I’ve decided to give to the ones that come my way as this has done. 100% of the donations go to helping these children. If you’d like to contribute please go to The Alliance For Children Foundation website. Pretty amazing to look at those smiling little faces.

Today I dug up samples of earth to be sent for soil testing from both my friend Sally’s garden and mine. We are planning to try our hands at growing vegetables, trying to go a bit green here in the city, a bit self-reliant and to cut our use of the car running to the shops etc. I called a man at the University of Massachusetts and he instructed me to take 12 samples from each garden and to dry the soil on newspaper in the sun then sift it and send one cup’s worth of each garden. Right now the soil is spread out on paper on the grass in my back garden and I hope it will be really sunny and warm tomorrow to dry it out. It’s important to test it for nasty things like lead, of course. No point planting seeds in poisonous earth.
The garden is part of my increasing interest in what’s happening to our planet. It’s a small thing but if we all did small things there would be a shift in the way we use energy. There are now 6 billion of us on the planet, that’s 4 billion more since I was a child and I can totally feel it. I think of the city of Toronto where I grew up. Next to our cluster of houses were farms on all sides. They were gone by the time I was a teenager and our house which was on the edge of the city limits is now considered a prime city location. I can only imagine how places like Calcutta have changed.
The man at the lab was rather funny and vague—the absent-minded scientist! He was in the midst of testing soil! He’ll tell us what we need to know. If we get the go-ahead we’ll be building raised beds next week and getting started.

Meanwhile, Allan found an injured cardinal beside the busy road today. The poor thing has a gash in its head and we think it may have been hit by a car. Allan came home, retrieved a cardboard box, gently lifted the bird into it and brought him home. He set the box on the table on the deck outside our kitchen door and gave it a little dish of water and a crust of bread. But it’s not moving much. I think he may soon leave this life but he’s comfortable and safe right now and we got to stand very near him without him flinching. Maybe he could see that we were friends. I have to hand it to my dear Allan for noticing this wee bird and going to his rescue. Now we wait to see how his life will unfold and wish him luck.