Go to your studio and make something

The past few weeks have been pretty challenging in most aspects of my life. 

When I want to scream in frustration, I try to remember a favorite saying of one of my art teachers. Whenever a student expressed frustration with events of their day, he would say "go into your studio and make something."

When the little voice in my head replayed that advice one afternoon, I pulled out a sheet of multimedia paper, watercolors, India ink, a brush, a fine-tipped drawing pen, and water. After cutting the paper to 8.5 by 11 inches. I folded it into eight equal rectangles and began painting. I made a two-sided copy of my painting onto regular paper. I folded it, cut it, nested the pages, and saddle-stitched it. Ta-Dah! Below is my first ever 'zine...a suggestion from an earlier Zoom roundtable. 

Grandma's Hoosier Cabinet

After Lizette Elizabeth Alt Beavin's funeral in 1968, her family gathered at her house near the church in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin to clear out her possessions. Some of my relatives were expressing their passionate disagreement over what Grandma had left to whom. I was distressed and walked out back with my new husband to take a deep breath and try to calm myself.

Grandma's 1916 oak "Hoosier" lay in the ally. It had been dismantled and awaited large item pickup. At the time my husband and I were still in college, living in a small efficiency apartment in Naperville, Illinois. When we asked if we could rescue the Hoosier, we got a quizzical look. "What do you want with that old thing?! How will you get it to your apartment?!" we were asked.

We took the Hoosier to Illinois on the top of the 1955 Ford we had bought for $1. Now, more than 50 years later, Grandma's Hoosier has earned a place of honor in the history of our marriage.

In our Naperville efficiency apartment, the Hoosier was placed behind our hide-a-bed couch to make a small office where I could study before sunrise and husband could study well after the sun had set.

After my graduation, we moved to Dekalb, Illinois where I taught speech and drama on the fine arts team at Huntly Middle School, while my husband finished his degree. The Hoosier took up residence in our study as a desk and craft space.

We moved to Denver in 1970. Our little apartment in the old house on Pearl Street had a kitchen so small I could stand in the center and reach all its walls. The Hoosier was our only kitchen cabinet. I actually used the built-in flour and sugar bins, and I kneaded homemade bread dough on its pullout surface every Monday night.

Our first house, a Dutch colonial on Denver's Northside, had a dining room! The Hoosier became a china and linen cabinet. Our next house, a haunted 1911 Craftsman with Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired windows, had a country kitchen that welcomed the Hoosier which once again provided a perfect surface for baking prep and good storage for spices.

Today we live in an early 1970's condo on the Southeast side of town. Our all-season studio/sitting room/lanai is sunny and east-facing. The Hoosier rests neatly along the north concrete wall holding printmaking screens, woodblocks, and a variety of other "clean and dry" art supplies. Its white porcelain surface is nice for photographing small prints.

So we have disassembled and reassembled the Hoosier many times. It still has its penciled delivery instruction to my great grandfather, its meal plans for a young married woman in 1916, and a perpetual calendar with hearts and the initials of my Auntie Dorothy and her girlhood crush. My Hoosier is still beautiful.

Following Georgia O'Keeffe

I ordered Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern yesterday. It was the winner of the 2018 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award. Now I have to wait two weeks for delivery.

A couple of years ago the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver exhibited perhaps three of O'Keeffe's paintings alongside many works by other artists whom she inspired. I was most fascinated by the film footage of O'Keeffe in her own surroundings. 

I hope it won't be too long before I can return to the O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Nearby Ghost Ranch is certainly on my bucket list. Although there is nothing about COVID 19 on the Ghost Ranch website ghostranch.org, I believe the ranch is one of the sites of the O'Keeffe Museum, so it is probably closed until further notice.

If life ever gets back to "normal"-this year or next- we will definitely plan a road trip to Santa Fe for our summer wedding anniversary. We often celebrate in New Mexico where my husband spent much of his boyhood. The 8-hour drive from Denver is beautiful and we usually see many American antelope not far from the highway in southern Colorado.

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I hope the Snooze on Colorado Boulevard survives.

We began eating Saturday breakfast in a restaurant almost 40 years ago when my love and I  were having heated discussions and decided to talk to each other in a restaurant because it would encourage us to be...civil. As our tensions subsided, we continued to have "family meetings" in a restaurant over breakfast. 

When we lived on Denver's North Side we breakfasted at the local Village Inn. We saw that location through numerous managers and had waitstaff competing to take us to their stations. Many folks on the North Side could tell you that if you were a regular, you'd see everyone in the neighborhood sooner or later.

Almost ten years ago we took up "temporary residence" in an apartment in Southeast Denver. By then we had become vegan and were sampling various restaurants to check out their vibe and their vegan-friendliness. One Saturday we walked into the Snooze on Colorado Boulevard. Although there was a 30-minute wait, we were greeted with smiles, shown to the free coffee, and the tent-like sidewalk annex with some extra chairs.

It would be hard to miss the niceness of the waitstaff. They were young and cool, and they treated everyone with cheerful attention. Everyone loved to eat at that Snooze: moms and dads with cranky kids, couples of every description, senior citizens with canes. And none of us minded a bit of a wait.

There is nothing vegan on the menu, but we were offered huge "veganized" breakfast burritos and assured that both their red and green chili sauces were vegan and would be good. If you think green chili needs pork (as I once did) to be delicious, you haven't eaten in the Snooze on Colorado Boulevard. We became regulars.

Denver is still sheltering at home. Who knows how long it will be before we'll be returning to Snooze on Saturday mornings. If that location survives. I hope it does.

digital photo:"Through the window on Colorado Boulevard"