Memories and accolades

I'll give some of my memories and accolades here, in my case having to do with art, but yours may be about another interest... please add your memories as you wish for whatever came to compel you in life.

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I've told a few people over the years some snippets about how I ever got interested in art - and/or crafts - as I'm less clear on distinctions on those as I age. I'm reminded of this as Diane and I were talking about it yesterday.

The only art classes I ever had in my youth were part of second grade and involved construction paper, which I never have liked. Plus we fingerpainted in kindergarten. I know that now children in kindergarten are off on an academic track, but we were all just fooling around and dribbling.

Around seventh grade, Annalee showed up at our school and we became friends. She doodled horses. Well, most of us scribbled or doodled a bit, but she could draw what were to me fantastic horses. And I simply could not, no chance. Hers looked as good or better than the drawings from the Black Stallion series. On our ineptitude, my mother enforced this by saying repeatedly over the years that she couldn't draw a straight line.

When I was sixteen, a guy who worked after school in medical records when I took mini xrays gave me a teddy bear for christmas (what? I was completely confused, was that his little brother's? such a dumpkopf I was.) On high school graduation, he drew a full page drawing of me as a washerwoman, waving a mop, for my so called yearbook, my high school's yearbooks being about 12 pages long, mostly gluge. I lost that in a later theft from my first gallery, but never mind, it was great. He went on to be an animator or something at Disney.

I took a one unit course in art history at my college - I had a first year at a catholic girls' college nearby. Nice slide show. I did like looking at posters in the local book store. Bought one, a Degas. Put varnish on it, no idea where I learned that could be something to do.

At university, I signed up for beginning bacteriology, later to be my major. In the first lab class, the teacher told us to bring in a tin can for our lab desk - to put in the loop, and pens, etc. Nineteen (or so) people showed up with tin cans, and one, Dee Dee, showed up with a painted can, all flowery. This was before hippies... probably '61. I think of Dee Dee as my first creative friend. Taught me to think outside the can..

Then I was in embryology lab. Well, the class had something like 190 guys and 5 women in the lecture hall. I was confused from the start but pretty much caught up. Never looked at slides in sections before. Anyway, another girl - which is what we called ourselves then - sought me out to go for coffee at break time, and she turned out to be a life long friend, Krista.

Krista had, as a child, emigrated from eastern europe after WWII. She had, at nineteen, myriad talents for painting and crafts, lacemaking, all sorts of intricate detailing. She still does, is off painting in Spain as I type. So she is my second friend to wake me up to art.

Then there was Audrey, our secretary who became a beginner tech who also painted and made rye bread early some mornings.

Somewhere around my late twenties, mad busy in the lab and mad busy with social life, I started copying the Brunhilde comics.

Somewhere around thirty, I had a tragic (sob) love affair. After x amount of time in total despair I signed up for art classes in the evening. I took class after class after class.. too many people to mention as getting me interested.

Mainly there was Beverly. She showed up for a job in our labs having a masters in both chemistry and art. I learned all sorts of things from her. The first night my later husband and I went out, it was with Beverly to a show at LAICA that she knew about, and which I then derided.... my first acquaintance with process art.

Sometime later, Jan. Jan showed up in our lives on a double date with a friend of my husband's. She was very surefooted with art, with curator friends and on her own she was art literate. (Me not).

I loved her dining room. She had her banana paintings in the dining room ... I later did a banana photo series. They are very lascivious, y'know (by themselves, no humans). So are cantalopes..


All these people I've named are women, the ones who pulled me in to art. I've known wonderful male artists.
That'll be the next list.