Moment of Pure Seeing

The show is up.
It looks beautiful.
Stop by the Loading Dock Gallery for a moment of tranquility.

 

At the Loading Dock Gallery, 122 Western Avenue, Lowell, MA, from July 29 through August 28.   Artists Reception will be held Friday, August 5, 6-9pm.

Remember: Lowell offers many reasons to visit in August.

August 6, studios will be open for you to visit at   Western Avenue Open Studios .

The weekend of August 13 and 14, don't miss the Quilt Festival, with special events at galleries and museums around town.

 

 

work keeps coming

Echos - work in progress

 In David Bayels' fine book, Art and Fear, there is the parable about the ceramics class. Students are divided into two groups. One group's grade depends only on quality: they must submit their one best piece for their grade. The other is told they will be measured only on quantity.  At the end of term, each student's work for the semester will be weighed: the heavier the load, the better the grade.

The outcome is that the students searching for one, best piece become stuck. The students producing in quantity make discoveries and produce better work.

So it's no surprise that the hardest part of getting ready for the upcoming show is having to stop. Ideas spread like honey, rise like saplings.  They are the children of the work that's already finished, the parents of work still to come. 

Lost in the Garden - work in progress

Moment of Pure Seeing

 This is the last week before "Moment of Pure Seeing" hangs. I am wrapping, stapling, sawing, hammering away. Another trip to the photographers is in order. The work itself gets more enigmatic. One piece leads to the next.

 The image of these two girls - my mother and her sister - weaves in and out of several pieces. My mother turns 84 this year.

 Her sister died decades ago, in childbirth. My mom is, I believe,  the only person who remembers her now.

I think a lot about time and memory: how memory changes, how its source disappears, the life it has inside our heads. When I work with my nursing home patients, I try to see past the surface to the memories they share. I hope some of this comes through in this show.

There and Back Again

 Last week my daughter and I went to London: her first trip there, and my first since before she was born. We shared a flat in Fulham, about 20 minutes outside the city center, with my sister and her husband.

The view out my window

The song "One Short Day" from Wicked kept popping up in my head: we had six short days to see as much as possible.

 We walked everywhere. We started at the British Museum the day we arrived. Where the I remembered a dark entrance,  this vast space now greets you. It is the largest enclosed atrium in Europe:

So large the hordes of visitors seem small

We took a random turn and walked smack into "Ram in Thicket" from Ur, in southern Iraq.

Dates from about 2500 BC

It was the first in a seemingly endless stream of amazements, to be in the presence of places and objects we've known only through books for so long. 

London's museums are free. So the next day we began what would be our pattern throughout the week, of returning to where we left off, to take in still more. This is the Egyptian wing:

There are few guards; much of the work is within reach. You can stand nose-to-nose (or more often with the monumental works, nose-to-toe) with ancient masterpieces:

A quartet of serene goddesses

 Throughout the week, an unplanned turn, a mistake navigating, would lead us into something we'd spend the next two or three hours on. Lost at one point, we stumbled on James Smith And Sons, a world -famous, 3-story purveyor of walking sticks and umbrellas:

In business for almost 200 years

We were looking for old, for the past. We spent a great deal of time at museums. On the streets, it was often the  "unimportant" that captured our eye:

graves stones along an alley

A wonderful store sign

 1930's  ceiling at Harrods

Random street corner

Parlor window, Fortnum and Mason

 Because my sister is a Shakespeare scholar, we went to the Globe theater twice.

Wonderful

This was our last vista, at the end of a long day, approaching Westminster to hear evensong. It is the view from Buckingham palace, across St. James Park - the oldest of royal parks in London - to the London Eye.

 

We have started saving for the next trip.