The Five‑Trick Pony Rides Down Memory Lane

Some stories don’t begin with inspiration; they begin with an itch. A tug. A little internal nudge that says, Hey, remember who you used to be? Today Jean follows that tug back to her art‑soaked past—marble dust, William Blake, big dreams, and the long undertow that pulled them out to sea. Along the way she picks up a few modern irritations, a MAGA fruit fly, and a reminder that kindness is sometimes a very slow weapon. It’s a walk down Memory Lane with a few sharp turns, a little humor, and the unmistakable voice of someone who’s lived enough life to tell it straight….AI

Some ponies are one‑trick ponies. Some are two‑trick ponies. If the topics I write about were a pony, I’d be a five‑trick pony. My subjects range from fellow residents in my independent living facility, my Mahjong obsession, my health‑care woes, politics, and—probably too often—I wander down Memory Lane.

Today I feel like wandering back to the days when I was obsessed with art, both making it and studying it. But like many people, dreams of greatness give way to life’s everyday struggles: making a living, building a life with a significant other, supporting parents as they need more and more help, and grieving when one of them dies. The heydays of my self‑indulgent art period drifted far out to sea, pulled down by an undertow so strong even Jacques Cousteau couldn’t have rescued it.

Etching print pulled from a metal plate

The print and poem above were created in the ’80s, shortly after my mom died suddenly, done in a printmaking class during my William Blake phase. For those who might not know Blake (1757–1827), Wikipedia describes him as “an English poet, painter, and printmaker…now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.” He was obviously a prolific saver of his work, because you can’t study printmaking or poetry without tripping over him. At least you couldn’t during my era of being a sponge in the world of art history. I admired him. I wanted to be him…or Michelangelo…or John Singer Sargent.

Etching done by William Blake

During my Michelangelo period, I actually tried marble carving in a sculpture class and I got an A for my efforts. If I had a photo of that unfinished sculpture of a woman’s breasts, I’d post it—but I don’t. I was in my twenties and I quickly learned I wasn’t physically equipped to haul slabs of marble around. I hadn’t met Don yet, and maybe that was a good thing. He was fascinated by my untested talents and would have gladly aided and abetted me continuing to carve marble. For a farm boy with no formal art training, he had a good eye, and in our early years together we went to a lot of art shows and galleries. But life has a way of changing, and we had to grow up and do adulting like everyone else.

If I could dig deep into my past and pull up one dream I still wish had happened, I’d choose to be John Singer Sargent. (That's a painting of his at the top.) But I never had the raw talent for that, nor do I have time left to develop the craftsmanship it would take to achieve even a tenth of his greatness. So I content myself with the occasional art class our Life Enrichment Director puts on our schedule. Last week she offered a video‑taught class on painting the Northern Lights, and it was very Mickey Mouse. Not even Disney‑quality Mickey Mouse — more like the knockoff version you’d find on a bootleg T‑shirt at a flea market. But I sign up for every art class she offers, just to support having an arts‑and‑crafts element on campus. The first painting below was done in my prime; the last one—of the Northern Lights—was done last week in whatever you’d call the opposite of my prime. My sub‑prime? 

One of my dogs sat for a formal portrait

 

The Northern Lights

A fellow resident bugs the heck out of me to start teaching a painting class here, and whenever our LED has a class, she always sits next to me. “So I can copy what you’re doing,” she says. Every time she brings up the idea of me teaching, I’m not wishy‑washy in saying no way will that ever happen. I don’t have the desire or the time to plan lessons on long‑forgotten techniques. But she is relentless. She tells people I’m shy (news to me) and she says, “I'm blowing Jean's horn because she's too shy to blow it herself.” She’s as annoying as fruit flies on a bunch of bananas. And she’s a die‑hard MAGA and Trump supporter to boot. She knows I’m part of the Liberal Ladies group here, and when Trump was reelected she said, “You just wait, you’re going to be really happy with how he’s going to turn this country around.”

Those words burn in my thoughts every so often when I’m sitting near her at our Monday Night farmhouse dinner table, biting my tongue at something she says. One of these days I’m going to buy a shirt I’ve had my eye on that says: “Killing them with kindness is taking longer than I expected.” If I wore that, I’d love to see how long it takes her to realize I’m not as nice as she thinks I am—that I’m a phony. That I don’t want to be her friend. That I’m not shy; I just don’t like her enough to teach her what I learned in over thirty years of being art‑obsessed. That if she wants a pedestrian teacher, she can hire Bob Ross’s ghost.

 Sometimes I get tired of holding back my words in the name of keeping peace in the community. I imagine most of us do it, no matter which side of the whatever fence we’re on, because we value a peaceful, harmonious environment. I worry, though, that someday the filter in my brain—the one they say gives out in elderly people—will fail and I’ll start saying whatever I’m thinking. Please take me out behind the barn and shoot me if it does. I’ve gotten along 84 years without purposely offending anyone, and I don’t want to wreck that record now. 

Boy, did I take a detour on my walk down Memory Lane. But I guess there’s only so much a person can say to explain away the lost dreams and hopes of our youth—and without that detour, I wouldn’t have written enough to call it a blog post. Besides at my age, detours are half the fun. You start out talking about one thing and end up with a tale worthy of a confession booth. But somehow it’s all connected—our youthful dreams, the people we tolerate who we wish came with a mute button, our fears for the future, and trying to hold on to the version of ourselves we show the world. ©

 

Post-script because I can't seem to let go of this topic: Below is a custom, paint-by-number I did last winter of my great-great niece. I plan to do two more this coming winter. As a kid I started with paint-by-numbers and I thought going back to them might help me re-learn to control the paints. When I found out you could send the company a photo to turn into a custom, paint-by-number I was sold. 

The Apocalypse, Books and Selling my House

I have stripped my house of so much stuff over the past year it looks naked. And I can’t believe I’m about to say that I kind of like the look. My library, though, still has eleven feet of totally empty bookshelves in it and my crafting and guest room just has an area rug, a small keyhole desk and two running board picnic baskets (circa 1910), one sitting on top of the other. Both of these rooms are actually bedrooms so the openness should help buyers visualize them that way. The open shelves in my guest bathroom that once housed a large collection of seashells now has neatly folded towels and covered baskets. The living room without the roll top desk, without eight pieces of art including three sculptures and without my husband’s collection of vintage western memorabilia it looks a lot less Old West. But because I still have six large prints on the walls---three of contemporary Native Americans and three of contemporary cowboys---the living and dinning rooms now look more New American West. A staging company would take them all down and put up a nondescript cityscape or an over-sized sunburst made of gold gilded plastic. I’m sorry, but if people are so dumb that they can’t look past my artwork to see their own stuff on the walls, then they’re too dumb to live here. (And yes, a staging company who gave me a quote last year raved about what the sunburst could do for my room, a sunburst I've seen a dozen times on HGTV and I disliked that lady from the minute she stepping into my house.)

In my dinning room, though, I still have all my keeper books that tells a story of who lives here---a no-no according to staging companies. Screw the staging companies! It’s a seller’s market. Besides, it’s not like I have a collection of military manuals for Navy SEALS or Delta Forces on Fifty Ways to Kill a Person or books on how to dissect and dispose of bodies from Psycho Press. No prepper books on how to live through an apocalypse either. Although I just finished reading a series of seven books by Kyla Stone that has me thinking I need a few. 

Ohmygod, those books were the perfect thing to keep me distracted from obsessing about my own life. The series is based on the premise that a high altitude nuclear bomb detonation caused an electromagnetic pulse that destroyed all the power grids and fried anything with computer chips in them---cars, planes, communications, media  and medical devices; sewer, power and water treatment plants, gas station and food distribution hubs. Even modern generators. All of it rendered useless across America and beyond.

 I’ve read a few dystrophy books in the past year but these books were set in my home state, all over the state, and featured a nasty-ass militia group not unlike our real-life militia group that tried to kidnap our governor because the candy-asses didn't want to wear masks during the pandemic. The books were action packed and full of villains and good guys and instructions for how to do things like build a solar powered oven, make hand-warmers and convert a mop pail and a swimming pool noodle into a toilet.

Threaded through the first five books a girl who’d been held in a basement prison for five years by a psychopath escaped when the power grid went out. It was in the dead of winter in the middle of the national forest and she was eight months pregnant. Yup, the psychopath was tracking her when her path crossed with an x-Delta Force guy armed to the teeth who was trying to get to his cabin in the middle of no where to ride out the chaos. It was just a little light, bedtime reading that made me forget to worry about how much my life is about to chance.

It’s a good thing so much of my reading fare is on my Kindle because I do wonder what kind of impression I’d make if someone were to see the titles of the books I’ve been reading since the pandemic started. Looking at my shelves of "real" books sitting in plain sight of the herd of Lookie-Loos who will invade my house in a few days, I’ve combed over the titles for anything that might turn off a perspective buyers. The staging companies turn all your titles to the back so no on can read them. Joanna Gaines on HGTV does that too when she does a remodel reveal. Drives me crazy. If the home owner doesn’t read, don’t use books for props, Joanna! I only turned one title to the wall, a book about back alley abortions that was written before Roe vs Wade and helped push the issue up to the Supreme Court.

It crossed my mind to dust that book with baby powder like I used to do with my diary when I was a teenager so I could tell if my brother touched it. The joke was on me because my brother was smart enough to know where my mom kept the baby powder. But a snoopy person wondering what I’m hiding with the title not showing probably wouldn’t notice that my Nancy Drew detective trick was in play. Just to be clear, I’m kidding. I’m not going to set up a trap. If a Right-to-Lifer finds that book she/he will steal it to destroy it like they do with pro-choice library books in my part of the county. That's the reason why I didn't donate to the library with my other women's history books. 

 Over the years my husband and I had looked at a dozen or two houses for sale and only once did a person’s art and reading influenced us enough to seriously consider putting in an offer. The guy was elderly and had drawn and written over every square inch of his walls in the style of William Blake. Mythical little creatures and poetry, so mind-blowingly strange and beautiful we wouldn’t have wanted to paint over it or to live with. We thought about cutting the walls out and selling sections as art. We researched him, hoping he was famous enough that his "walls" could end up paying for the mortgage. No such luck. His walls were also not sheet rock but rather the old style plaster lath and they would have fallen apart if you tried to preserve sections of it.

Over the years we’d often wondered what happened to the art inside. I used to tell my husband that when I got to be his age I was going to throw convention to the winds and do the same thing with my walls. He’d scowl at me, trying to gauge if I was serious. I never told him that if I had half the talent that old guy had I would have done it in heart beat and not wait until I'm the age I am now, but I’m not so the walls in my new place are safe. ©

 "Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life." 

William Blake 

 

William Blake, an artist and poet who was often labeled insane, genius and prophet all rolled into one.

Doilies and Drawings

My mom, like other moms in the 1940s and ‘50s, was prolific at crocheting and embroidery and while emptying out the basement I ran into a dozen or so pieces she made. They sat in my garage for a week, making me feel impotent because I couldn’t decide what to do with them. The local auction house would have ended up selling the entire lot for a dollar and after the fees were paid I’d get a whole eighty-two cents and e-Bay doesn’t have a strong market for that sort of thing either. Throughout the week the Salvation Army with it cardboard box labeled as such sat on the garage floor mocking me for my inability to let go. I had already given my nieces some of her handiwork last summer, thinking that was all I had until these pieces showed up so passing them on to them wasn’t a strong possibility either. 

Sometimes what goes on in the back of my mind surprises me. With seemingly no forethought I woke up one morning, marched directly to the garage still in my nightgown and I took some pictures of the embroidery, posted them on Facebook and tagged some of mom’s nieces to offer the handcrafts up as gifts. By nightfall they were all spoken for including things I hadn't even photographed and I mailed everything to various relatives the next day and, boy, did that feel good. One of my cousin’s collects crocheted doilies which I didn’t know and she ended up with an entire bridal party of dolls in dresses that mom made back in 1950. Another shirt-tail relative from out of state who I’ve never met offered to take some of Mom’s handiwork for the museum she runs and I gladly complied with her request for a photo of Mom and a small write-up about her to display with them. One cousin who had an terribly abusive childhood came to the give-away post late and she ended up with a couple of things I had planned to keep for myself. She and my mom had a special relationship and I figured she needed the physical connection to my mom more than I do.

It was an emotional week in the Department of Downsizing. Another task I had in the garage was sorting through decade’s worth of art supplies plus drawings from classes I took back in the 1980s. I don’t know why I thought it was important back then to save every edition of prints I’d pulled off metal plates, wood blocks and lithograph stones in a printmaking class or all the drawings of every naked person who stood before me in figure drawing classes. Judging by the style of some of my prints I was trying to be the next William Blake. My mom had died the year before---under traumatic circumstances---and apparently I was trying to make peace with her death by writing cryptic poetry and committing then to etching plates. I hate the color orange with a passion, always have, so for me spend time making an etching plate and pulling twenty orange editions off it---the class requirement---boggles my 2019 sensibilities. I was in a very dark place.

Not all my prints were weird poetry, some had pedestrian subjects. Thankfully, we were graded on learning the process, not the subject matter of our projects.

For those who might not know of William Blake (1757-1827) according to Wikipedia he was “an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.” Obviously, he was a prolific saver of his work because you can’t study printmaking or poetry without falling all over him. At least you couldn’t during my age of being a sponge in the world of art history. I admired him. I wanted to be him…or Michelangelo. Among the other art supplies I still hoarded in the basement was my set of marble cutting chisels---my 1960s period. I ended up sending all the usable art supplies to Goodwill---enough pastels, charcoals, chalks and tablets for half a classroom and just in time for back to school. And trust me when it say it hurt to send a large set of portrait, oil pastels off because I also dreamed of being another John Singer Sargent. All my expensive printmaking blotters went to recycling. That hurt too. Dried up oil and watercolor paints and printer inks were set aside for another trip to hazardous waste. My art room upstairs already has my prim pencils and acrylic paints and I hope to be able to take up art again once I move, so they will go with me. I'll have an eight foot long closet to divide up between art, quilting and/or knitting supplies plus out of season coats, the vacuum and whatever else I can get in there and still close the doors.

I had two whole boxes of drawings folded up for recycling before I thought about taking a few photos.

 

People say that downsizing must make me feel “lighter” or “freer” and at times those words apply. But downsizing also reminds me that most of my life is in the rear view mirror and there is no turning back, no making up for lost time during my caregiving years. Other times downsizing makes me angry for having kept so much or spent so much money on stuff that I abandoned---wasted cash that could have been growing in the bank. Often times downsizing makes me worry I won't be me anymore without the visual queues from my past to remind me of where I've been, what I've done. And this week of downsizing chastised me for not living up to my youthful fantasies. Did I not work hard enough, not have enough raw talent? Or worse yet, did I have talent that I let gather rust to the point that it’s lost forever? Downsizing is like going to a funeral. Sometimes the mourners stand up and tell funny or sweet stories, sometimes they stand up and share their tears and fears. Either way they confirm the fact that the past is really past. ©

Part two of downsizing my art stuff will be posted on Saturday.