Random art i make

“Create. Not for money. Not for the fame. Not for the recognition. But for the pure joy of creating something and sharing it.” Ernest Barbaric

Five years ago Bill and I were in San Antonio, Texas visiting a friend and exploring the area. We wandered the shops along the San Antonio Riverwalk, looked at art in the Blue Star Arts Complex www.bluestarartscomplex.com, listened to music and hung out with my friend Ralph.

Ralph and I became friends through his beautiful, smart and kind wife. His wife and I had gone to 5th grade together back in the late 70s in the San Joanquin Valley, in Central California. As far as I was concerned she was my best friend after my family moved from cool, rainy Western Washington, and I didn’t know anyone or have the right clothes for 120 degrees.

It turned out she became a lot of people’s best friend. I only know that because almost 40 years after we both left the tiny town we met in, she reached out to me on facebook and we began to catch up on each other’s lives.

She was very happily married, she had two boys and she was in the hospitality industry and loving it. We talked and talked about getting together. Her husband and boys had always wanted to come to Seattle and check out the music scene and eat their way through Pike Place Market.

We never got that visit. My 10 year old best friend died a few months later, before I ever got to see her again. But before that she and her husband supported a project I was very passionate about. I had published a childrens’ art book title Art Baby, The Vocabulary of Fine Art for Young Children. I used a Kickstarter to raise the money to design, print and publish it and they were big supporters of that book.

I attended her memorial back in that small town and spent the afternoon in her childhood home with her friends and her family, listening to people share memories, but basically a stranger. When I introduced myself to her husband and boys we became fast friends, strangers together in this little town. We stayed in touch and this trip to San Antonio was our chance to share more memories and see the home they built together.

They had a wonderful visit planned for us. There was a gourmet dinner, a tour of the coffee roasting room where Ralph had started a roasting company and drinks on the sprawling back deck. And I had something for them.

When an artist feels strongly about something, they create art. It’s our way of coping with, and explaining life, to ourselves and sometimes others. So after losing my friend so unexpectedly I felt better when I made art. I felt even better making art for Ralph. It was something I could do when I felt so faraway and helpless.

This is the piece of art I created for him. And for her, but really for me.

It’s titled ‘Blackberries’.

It’s the back of a medicine cabinet pulled from an old home in Seattle. It had history, a practical use, a previous life and now it was my canvas.

Blackberries are my favorite food. I brought it with me when we came to visit because it was something from my home to his. I loved knowing a piece of art, a piece of myself, was living with them after I left as a reminder we cared about the same person and missed her, and that knowing her made us friends. But she did that for a lot of people in her life.

FOUND OBJECTS

Found objects are one of my favorite things. Broken, rusted or bent - even better. Like the medicine cabinet I did for Ralph this door is something I found.