A Meditation on Memories

This February, as I have done for the past 10 years or so, I picked a theme of visual meditation to explore as my Lenten introspection.  I was a bit slow in developing the vignettes with their individual images for this endeavor, as I stayed open and responding to various stimuli that jogged significant memories. Therefore, this journey took longer than the 40 days of Lent, and longer than the additional 50 days from Easter to Pentecost.  I have often said, ‘the wine in its own time’ and applied it to this visual meditation process.   It is July 7 and my visual meditation journey is completed.  Each of the paintings in this series reflects a specific memory and has an ethereal quality, as if time stood still for me to capture the moment and preserve it for eternity.

When I started this last February, it was loosely thought through and began with early memories.  In this blog post I will attempt to tell you why I chose to depict a particular memory, what it meant then and why I remember it as special, as well as the significance it has in my life today.

Let me begin with a memory from first grade.  My teacher, Mrs. Hartzell, was a jolly young woman who made me feel at home and comfortable in my classroom.  She was a loving and caring person, and as her name might imply, had a special affinity for Valentine’s Day.  She made the most beautiful heart box and covered it with pink crepe paper.  It was my first encounter with this medium, and in her hands, I thought it was magical.  She then made lighter pink and rose colored roses out of the paper, complete with stems and leaves.  They were exquisite.  She completed the box on the last day of January so our classroom Valentine box would be ready to receive our many cards beginning the next day.  I fell in love with hearts, roses and all the romantic notions that Valentine’s Day holds.  It is still one of my favorite holidays.    The Valentine box is captured in a dream-like state, not so much as I remember its details but at its caring core.  I call it Romance, with the memory of the excitement and anticipation the holiday held at its roots.

In second grade, the local steel workers went on strike and the new elementary school remained unfinished, so my class was going to be held in the Sunday school rooms of First Baptist Church of Groves.  It was around the corner and 3 blocks down on Grant Avenue.  Becky Gonsoulin (Bell), who was to become my lifetime best friend, lived on Grant Avenue and walked to Parochial school at ICS.  She was often ahead of me, walking with her brother and sister.  I had an opportunity to observe her walking and was quite fascinated with the fact that she wore a hat.  I wore a hat on Sunday but I did not wear one to school.  Her hat was navy blue and had white and yellow flowers across its brim.  The net was knotted in the back of the hat and it swung back and forth as she walked along.  She was a friend of a girl in my Blue Bird Troop and I had met her at Pam’s birthday party but I did not know her then.  I call this painting of Becky’s blue hat Fascination, to celebrate the curiosity that a child wearing a hat to school held for me at the age of 7.

School brought to the forefront a problem with my eyes.  I had ‘lazy eye’ or a muscle imbalance from birth that became more noticeable as I grew, causing my left eye to grow tired when focusing on a subject, i.e.: a blackboard, words in a book, or flash cards, etc.   When my eye grew tired, it would literally wander off in another direction, causing my right eye to do all the work of seeing, learning and guiding.  Over time, the vision in my left eye had weakened to the point that my doctor was concerned that I would literally loose the vision in it. By third grade, I was very cognizant of the problem and worked mightily to learn to read.  My mother had placed me with a reading expert, Mrs. McMahan, as my third grade teacher. I’m not sure what she did or how she did it, but I found my focus and learned to read, and read well.  About that same time, I discovered the game of Jacks!  It was a game of concentration and coordination and helped me focus.  Over time, I became pretty proficient at Jacks, which was a triumph of mind over matter.    Depicted here is the magic circle where I played Jacks under the sheltering Cedar trees, next to the old Groves Elementary.  This painting honors concentration and determination and is called Focus.

During the summer between third and fourth grade, I had the surgical procedure to correct the lazy eye.  Dr. Keith tightened the muscles in both eyes so that I could focus and continue to read and generally get on with life.  At that time metal shoe skates were the rage and I, like most soon-to-be 9 year olds, wanted a pair.  There was only one problem – due to my eye surgery, my summer was spent healing, applying warm compresses and doing eye exercises.  I was not allowed to get overheated, and most summer fun in the form of running, swimming…or skating… was denied.  I was given the skates because I longed for them, but I was not allowed to use them.  By the time my eyes had recovered and I could skate again, my feet had grown and the skates no longer fit.  My skate painting is called Patience, and celebrates the items we long for in life but for whatever reason are denied.

About this same time, I developed a new relationship with glasses and they became my best friends. Thank goodness, my mother let me pick them out, and of course I chose some of the most glitzy, over-decorated frames on the planet. That didn't matter to me, I loved them!  Early on I had been prescribed glasses in first grade but hated their round gold frames and did not wear them.  They were created to reduce my eye strain and not much else.  They certainly would not have cured my lazy eye…so I carried them around in my satchel but did not wear them.  This painting celebrates the somewhat out-of-focus view that I had of the world early in my life.  Seeing what I wanted to see and leaving the rest behind created a rose-colored view that I have retained to be pulled up on occasion.  I have learned to face the dragon of reality square in the face, but put on my rosy glasses to see the goodness that abounds if we take the time to look. This painting is called Clarity.

I love color.  I always have, and most likely always will.  That is a fact.  I love how Crayolas look, how they smell and how they feel in my hand.   When I was young, a Crayola Box of 64 represented all the luscious color in my world and oh, how I longed to own that assortment!  The next painting, Choices, represents those colors and all the time that I have spent making art with them.  Crayolas still mean a great deal to me, as that is the media I chose so long ago to begin my artist’s journey.   I keep a pristine box of them in my studio to remind me of all the possibilities, then…and now.

We just celebrated the Fourth of July, America’s birthday.  When I think of that holiday, I am reminded that the figs are ripe and need to be picked.  I spent many an early Independence Day on a ladder in the top of my dad’s tallest fig tree picking figs.  I did not care for them but my mom was a mother who canned and preserved fruit for winter cooking and baking.  Figs were her favorite!  She loved them but did not like to pick them because it was an itchy, scratchy job…and besides, she had her minions to do it for her.  I call this painting Itchy to celebrate the tradition and time spent with my dad climbing around in the fig trees on Jefferson Street.  The irony is today, I have a fig tree and I treasure that itchy memory.

When I was in fifth grade I received a brand new blue Schwinn bicycle for my summer birthday, to my utter delight.  I call this painting Freedom, as it celebrates the feeling of riding wherever I wanted to in Groves with the wind in my hair and a sense of true happiness in my heart.  Those wheels opened up my world and let me see how others lived and played in our little town.  Today, I’ve traded in my bike for a chili-pepper red hardtop Miata but the feeling is the same…with wind in my hair and such a sense of well-being filling my heart and soul.  As the Suzy Bogguss song 'Give me some wheels' goes, “If I can’t have wings, then give me wheels and a man who will let me drive!”

Music has always played an important part in my life and when I am happy, I sing...off-key and a bit flat, but making a joyful noise all the same!  I sang, ‘hello, mellow, Jax little darling’ (not knowing or caring one bit that it was from a radio beer commercial) to my dolly because I liked the sound of the words.  I sing today most often in my car where most folks can’t hear me...often to Mark Viator and Susan Maxey on ‘The bottom of the blues’ or ‘If you were a bluebird’, singing along with my car CD player.  I really love music!  I learned to play the flute and managed to qualify for the marching band in junior high and high school.  I still get chill bumps when I hear Sousa’s ‘March grandiose’ or ‘The Stars and Stripes forever’.  I love music…all kinds, and although this painting was inspired by the song ‘Autumn Leaves’.  It was originally a 1945 French tune entitled 'Les feuilles mortes', written by Joseph Kosma and lyrics by Jacques Prevert and whose English lyrics were written by Johnny Mercer and recorded by many singers, including Nat King Cole.  It celebrates the various musical elements of jazz, and the chromatic relationship between music and color as well. I call this painting The Song in my Heart.  It illustrates how music lifts me up.  How fortunate I am to have friends who love music even more than I do, who play, who write and sing for and to me and celebrate the gift that music is, right along with me.

Last, but not least, let me pay homage to what it meant to attend a high school that received a charter from the Cherokee Nation, indigenous to the banks of the Neches River, where our school (called The Reservation) was located.  We had a fight song called ‘Cherokee’.  No one took it lightly, and being allowed to represent the school, our tribe, was an honor.  This spring, Don Dorsey, a friend who was a classmate in high school, was presented an Eagle feather by Native Americans for his work in securing their representation in the Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument that honors all Texans who served in Vietnam.  There are many alumni of Port Neches - Groves High Scool who carry that same spirit today and fight the good fight for the good of others.  We are older and wiser but each one is A Warrior Still.  We may not all have an Eagle feather encased on our mantel, but we celebrate the brave warrior spirit just the same.

Memories are precious.  These painting meditations cannot do the memories justice. However, when I look at them, I am transported back to a different time when life was simpler and less commercial.  They were good times, filled with special people.  Our memories are a collage of our experiences.  They make us who we are, what we feel and how we choose to live our lives.  I hope you have enjoyed this stroll through some of my most treasured memories, simple and plain.  I have tried to encapsulate the emotions and true joy these memories bring to me through these visually conceptual paintings.