I say your names like prayers.

I loved being a teacher. With confidence I say, “I was good at it!”, too.

As a child, I played school with my little brother. He was my only student and wanted my help with his homework but part of the game was to try to be as disruptive as possible. Our classroom was pretty official with real desks salvaged from the dump. My grandmother was a teacher and sent me dittos still smelling like the mimeograph machine. We had workbooks and posters on the wall.

I adored my middle school art teacher and would start college again as an adult to become an art teacher, too.

During student teaching, my cooperating teacher said. “You go this” and left me alone in the classroom on the first day.

I won an award for the most promising art teacher candidate from my college. I would continue on to get a master’s in using the arts to teach all subjects because we know learning happens most when we sing and dance and play.

 I had a dream job in Maine. My students dedicated the yearbook to me.

 Then, I came to Charleston.

I thought that I was smart enough, kind enough. I survived teaching my brother! Struggled to read as a child gave me empathy. My parents were divorced, and we were poor so I could relate. I had been a self-employed single parent, so juggling was easy. And I was a unitarian!

I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

My awards, dedication, education, creativity, stamina, patience, were no match for the obstacles.

In the current news systemic racism, underserved students, school to prison pipeline are trending terms. My school was proof it is all true.

South Carolina ranks 44th in education. In the 2 years that I was at that school, there were 3 different principles. 30 kids or more in a classroom. No supplies. Monthly standardized tests. Inadequate interventions. 800 students and 1 nurse, 1 guidance counselor, and 1 social worker. 72 fire alarms, countless fights and melt downs, thefts and vandalism.

There were experiences that I have difficulty talking about still and I have been out for 8 years.

Oh, but those faces. Those beautiful faces.

I occasionally run into students. Bryanna is a waitress at the local BBQ joint. J’Que came to the gallery. Jirah worked for me. And Monterris worked for Steve.  

 I hear stories. EJ is in jail. So I pray.

I pray I didn’t fail you. I pray I made a difference. I pray you are safe.  Sometimes all I can do is say your names like prayers.

Click here to purchase the first piece or here to purchase the second.

Imagine

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

One day some kids cut through our yard and my step father went ballistic posturing and yelling
“ours not yours”. The kids kept walking. I kept quiet about my brothers and me, cutting through in the opposite direction when we wanted to get to the field with the big hill that had the best sledding. My house had an atmosphere of discord. I retreated to my room and my radio.

It was 1971. John Lennon sang to me. “Imagine there’s no countries”. My fascination with maps and charts and diagrams changed. Once I loved the aesthetic of a map; the colors and the shapes, but especially the order and definition of all the spaces organized into patterns like a quilt. Suddenly, I saw “our not yours” and I did begin to imagine a world without these constructed boundaries.

My abstracted landscapes often depict compositions inspired by old school maps with imaginary fluid edges. Here, the six panels represent the six places I have lived from childhood until now, New England to South Carolina. Where you come from, what you hear and see, shapes you.

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’ not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one. 

Colláge

The only math project I ever really enjoyed as a child was an attempt to integrate art into the curriculum. The teacher had us scour newspapers for numbers. We cut them out and reassembled them into a hodge podge sticky mess. Obviously, it stuck with me even though the adult art teacher cringes at the lack of learning objectives. But this was art and I loved the fancy French word: Colláge.

I have always loved words and text. I have appreciated the repurposing of common household items into art materials long before upcycle was a word. Even as a small child I saw the merit in the banal. Bits of things: scraps of paper with interesting text, stamps, and maps, anything with patterns found a way into my collection. I never did anything other than amass that stuff. Still it was transported from home to home. 

When I worked with encaustic, the objects of my obsession found homes fused into the compositions of many pieces. But it wasn’t colláge. Colláge was that genre of Matisse, Braque, and Bearden.

In graduate school there was a unit in storytelling. This wonderfully wacky whirlwind of a teacher came in with countless giant leaf bags overstuffed with her lifelong collection of bits and scraps. She dumped everything on the floor in the middle of the classroom and urged us to hunt and gather. I felt like a kid at Christmas. My art cohorts were equally delighted and a  frenzy ensued. So many fantastic pieces. We needed to create something from nothing and we could use only these fragments to tell our stories. 

During my days of Fabulon, I was fortunate to meet and come to know Hampton R. Olfus, Jr. In my less than humble opinion, he is the new master of colláge. His work, in general, engages the viewer to pause for a deeper introspection. But his colláge work is remarkable. Often guests would exclaim as they realized what they were seeing was really fabric, string, or shredded credit cards.

Just now, colláge as an artform, is really speaking to me. This was supposed to be the year of Italy. Although I am easily amused in isolation, I have always had severe cases of wanderlust. See blog post about Running Away.

Quarantine has also brought the urge to purge. Yet there are these remnants of which I cannot part as the GoodWill bin fills with clothing, dishes, and a few antiques.   

They shall make their way into paintings. Many of my paintings have underlying currents of holding on and letting go and the passage of time.

Ironically, in a really good colláge the paint is barely discernible from the paper scrap or embedded bit. Still, it soothes me to think my treasures are a bonus gift to the new owner of a painting.