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Maddie!
It was a lovely midwestern day, sunny, 73 degrees, a slight southwestern breeze, and big billowy white clouds in a robin-egg blue sky. I was ready to eat up the world. Yet I wasn’t prepared to consume what I was about to encounter. Zip! My emotions ran up and down.
My paintings were selling like pancakes at the Collect-O-Rama, part of the Intuit Black & White Ball Show. I am very very lucky that people understand my work and actually want to have it in their homes. Okay, I confess I was getting teary with every sale. Maybe I spend too much time with myself, painting, creating. When I meet my public I just get tremendously overwhelmed.
That part is tremendously good for me. I am fortunate.
Around 3, when the rush of people slowed down, I went into the gallery proper to see the show. First was the European show. Here I saw Wolfli, a real Wolflie. Previously I had only encountered his work in art books. To just be in the same room as these pieces was breathtaking. He is one of the originals in Outsider art. Lesage, Zinelli, Gill and a few others had work on view. It seems as if the Europeans work is much more obsessive, tiny lines everywhere, over and over.
The open gallery in the front just blew my ass right off the planet. I am a big Lee Godie fan. I love her drawings I love her “French Impressionist” style. I love her attitude. I somewhat see myself in her, although I don’t really want to end up being a bag lady selling my drawings on the steps of the Art Institute.
This wasn’t a showing of her drawings; it focused on her photographs, which I didn’t even know existed. They were 4”x 5” black and whites supposedly taken in a photo booth. The only photo booth pics I know of are those strips of four small format shots. I think the gallery cut them apart and blew them up.
Here’s the cool part: Godie acted out fantasies in the pictures. Sometimes she stained her face with instant tea; other times she used her paints to add happy cheeks or hats, or mysterious things. I really connected to these pieces since I am currently working on something very similar. I am using me. (The word solipsism was starting to erode my mind.)
But the real hit of the entire show for me was Eugene von Bruenchenhein. For the inside scoop, go here
Back at the Collect-O-Rama during the slow times the artists were all talking about the danger in being an Outsider. Once you are selling and being included in gallery shows, well, you are becoming an insider. Is that a death knell for the artist?
I was mostly thinking about how lucky I was to be selling my work while I was still alive. A lot of artists aren’t discovered until they are dead. That is true of all of the artists I mentioned above. So hooray!
After we packed up we drove a few miles down on Milwaukee Avenue. This is the so-called hip area of the city…Bucktown, Wicker Park, Old Town. Daniel parked himself at Nick’s Bar and I went to the resale shops. He could watch me from his window-side stool. Goodwill was a total blast. They had tag-on brand new stuff! I now have black Bass lace-up platform boots! A Beware stretch denim pencil dress with a thigh-high slit and a rhinestone star on the bodice! (It fits me the way black girls wear their dresses, cupped under the butt, I so admire that look!) and a pair of navy blue leather slides by Kenneth Cole! They price everything goofy…like $3.93. I spent a total of $12.72!!!!!!!!
I was thirsty, so I rejoined Daniel. We drank and talked about getting a loft down here…great bookstores, restaurants (Ear Wax Café, Flash Taco, a sushi place that starts with the letter “p”, lots of resale/antique/retro stores, music…well just everything!)
Time to get out of the city and back to my town…an hour drive in massive traffic. We caught the last hour of a wedding we were invited to. It was magical…a garden wedding. Twinkle lights everywhere. Tents of food. Tents of booze. We were drinking Whyte & MacKay scotch mostly because it was offered in a special way and because we were told that you couldn’t even get it in this country. It was smoooooooooth.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that this was a Scottish wedding. Yes, the groom wore a kilt on the clan pattern. He was dancing (kind of like a cool marionette) more than the bride. She was so beautiful…long real blonde hair. Her pure white gown was all cutwork along the bottom edge. They are beautiful together…same big smile, both wear glasses, an impish disposition, and they only eat hamburgers.
Daniel was “in his cups” and we danced and danced like romantic thespians. He would twirl me and then he would ask me to twirl him! It was just like in those dance competitions on teevee where they do the salsa and the merengay and passa dolba. (I’m sure I have misspelled all of those dances!) We had so much fun.
Last year the mother of the groom (who I must tell you was dressed in black leather!!!!) commissioned me to do one of my Bookhead paintings as a Christmas gift for her sister who is a librarian in Wisconsin. Just before we left I was introduced to the librarian. She was gushing over my painting. She said that the kids love it and that they call each other Bookheads (in a good way). She said she felt the painting encouraged kids to read. More tears. Right then I knew what I was supposed to be doing. To think I could encourage anyone to do something as powerful and mind opening as reading just grabbed my heart. Books have saved me. I plan to start a campaign to get a Bookhead print in all of the libraries in America. I will encourage reading. I will foot the bill. It is the way I can give back in a way true to myself. READ! YES!!!!! Whew!
We were back at my house by 9:30, and in bed asleep by 10! What a day!
Tell me about your weekeend...any lovemates? daydreams? videos???????? :)
Love you,
Me
