Mistwalker
Gold Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2007
- Messages
- 19,028
It started like most work days, me heading out to work on a couple of predetermined projects, while keeping an eye out for targets of opportunity for some of others, and having an eye toward materials for the blog.
One place was a swamp, where where the ground was wet and anything had to be sat down in creative ways when I needed to free my hands so I could work on the scene...
Then there was lunch
Later, after working until dark, I met a lady in the park who was dancing with a rainbow hula hoop. She dug the idea of experimenting with it photographically, and thought the images turned out pretty cool. We will probably work on it later this summer when we both have more time for it.
Then out of the park playing with some concept ideas for project shots
Then a late night dinner
The walk back to the park was when it went different. My route would take me past a coffee shop I have been patronizing almost daily now for over a decade. It was late, so the shop was already closed, but I could see from a distance that the entry lights were still on. I was headed there to look at walls I am preparing prints for currently. Two large prints, over 4 ft long, for the two brick walls at the sides of the entry. I have been displaying some of my smaller prints in the interior of the shop since last spring, and a few prints have sold since then. I was off in my own thoughts of how I'm making the frames for the larger prints as I approached the shop. Then suddenly I was remembering an intense conversation with Melissa Moffit, one of my art professors, back in the autumn of 1980, a couple of months before my life would take a turn for the surreal.
I was fifteen years old, I had long hair and wore knee high leather moccasins most of the time. I was usually somewhat sleep deprived, from all of the late night arguments between my mother and stepfather ...whom I assumed at that point had gone insane. I had no context yet for what drugs were and what they did. I had usually dealt with days on end of my mother's lunacy and my stepfather's anger and derision, so I wasn't always in the best of moods. I would day dream a lot. No-one at the school knew anything about the situation at home because I never talked about it.
Mrs. Moffit was lecturing me about my desire to do a different form of expressionist art. She was telling me how competitive the non-commercial art industry was. She was telling me how I was going to have to put forth a lot more effort than she had ever seen from me. She was telling me that it was going to take an extreme level of determination on my part if I was ever going to see a day when my art was on display in a gallery. And then the slide show on the big screen in my head started to play again as I walked up to the glass front of the entry way.
I remembered waking up that night in December, to pops and muzzle flashes. Then after the flurry of motion, and my first and only firefight to date, being the last one left standing. Standing in my bedroom room, where the pale blue walls in front of me and the white ceiling above me had just been painted with what had previously been the inside of my stepfather's head. He was laying on the floor in front of me, and I could feel drops of him dripping on me as I was staring out my bedroom door. I was looking into our kitchen, where my former stepfather had recently re-painted some of the brilliantly white walls with what had previously been the insides of my mother's head, with a .45 on his way in the house before coming after me. She was laying there in a dark pool. The room was alternating between complete darkness and being lit by the flashing colored lights of our Christmas tree.
I remembered times of running for my life from gangs and running from the authorities whose help I didn't want. After what had happened that night, and the years that had led up to it, the ability to trust any adults would take some time to sort out. I remembered walking through bitter cold un prepared for it. I remembered eating out of dumpsters, and sleeping in them. I remembered doing my best to doctor wounds, and doing my best to create some. I remembered being just sure I was going to die, and other times hoping I would. Life in the underbelly of a city is a good place to learn just how messed up some of the people in this world really can be, but it was very therapeutic actually. It's easy to forget that you yourself need rescuing when you're too busy rescuing a lot of other kids who had seen worse than you had. And I remembered the early attempts at reintegrating back into society at 19 when I enlisted in the army, and then spending the next several years processing everything that had happened, much of it living off grid away from people. I had forgotten all about my dream of being an artist.
Then several years later, after becoming a journeyman carpenter and a project manager, I was playing with a digital camera I had been issued for documenting the progress of a project. I was playing with light and reflection, which triggered a lot of memories of my youth. Then came the new art project as just a hobby at first. In time I won a few minor prizes in photography contests. Later I sold some of my work to people who saw it, and I was asked to produce some of it for showing.
As the slide show wound down I looked up and into the entry, and suddenly realized that the four pictures on lighted display in the entry of an otherwise darkened shop were my own. I wasn't aware that was going to be the case. It struck me then, that after all of those nights that I had sat on the outside in the cold and rain looking in. All the times I had stood there wishing I just could afford to go inside, I was now outside looking into one that was displaying my art. It dawned on me that I have been given the opportunity of using all three walls of the entry of the gallery to display my art. All I could do was smile, giggle like an idiot, and wipe the tears from my cheeks before the passersby could see them. And say to myself... damn Mrs. Moffit, you weren't kidding were you?
The point of this post, however, is not to brag. Rather it is to explain something. Because I need larger prints for all three walls now, and the timing of this opportunity is not exactly the greatest for me. Having spent the last year as my first as a single father of a pre-teen daughter, and doing it with a broken leg and torn tendons, I've barely been able to do enough work to keep our heads above water. But I am not going to let this opportunity pass without a fight to make it count. So if you see what are known to be some of my favorite knives, my Woodsman for an example, and tools pop up in the flea market or on the exchange, just know that it is has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about the tools. It's just me giving it my best shot to finish something that I started 40 years ago in another life, have now been blessed with the opportunity to re-visit, and I don't intend to just let it slip by now.
One place was a swamp, where where the ground was wet and anything had to be sat down in creative ways when I needed to free my hands so I could work on the scene...
Then there was lunch
Later, after working until dark, I met a lady in the park who was dancing with a rainbow hula hoop. She dug the idea of experimenting with it photographically, and thought the images turned out pretty cool. We will probably work on it later this summer when we both have more time for it.
Then out of the park playing with some concept ideas for project shots
Then a late night dinner
The walk back to the park was when it went different. My route would take me past a coffee shop I have been patronizing almost daily now for over a decade. It was late, so the shop was already closed, but I could see from a distance that the entry lights were still on. I was headed there to look at walls I am preparing prints for currently. Two large prints, over 4 ft long, for the two brick walls at the sides of the entry. I have been displaying some of my smaller prints in the interior of the shop since last spring, and a few prints have sold since then. I was off in my own thoughts of how I'm making the frames for the larger prints as I approached the shop. Then suddenly I was remembering an intense conversation with Melissa Moffit, one of my art professors, back in the autumn of 1980, a couple of months before my life would take a turn for the surreal.
I was fifteen years old, I had long hair and wore knee high leather moccasins most of the time. I was usually somewhat sleep deprived, from all of the late night arguments between my mother and stepfather ...whom I assumed at that point had gone insane. I had no context yet for what drugs were and what they did. I had usually dealt with days on end of my mother's lunacy and my stepfather's anger and derision, so I wasn't always in the best of moods. I would day dream a lot. No-one at the school knew anything about the situation at home because I never talked about it.
Mrs. Moffit was lecturing me about my desire to do a different form of expressionist art. She was telling me how competitive the non-commercial art industry was. She was telling me how I was going to have to put forth a lot more effort than she had ever seen from me. She was telling me that it was going to take an extreme level of determination on my part if I was ever going to see a day when my art was on display in a gallery. And then the slide show on the big screen in my head started to play again as I walked up to the glass front of the entry way.
I remembered waking up that night in December, to pops and muzzle flashes. Then after the flurry of motion, and my first and only firefight to date, being the last one left standing. Standing in my bedroom room, where the pale blue walls in front of me and the white ceiling above me had just been painted with what had previously been the inside of my stepfather's head. He was laying on the floor in front of me, and I could feel drops of him dripping on me as I was staring out my bedroom door. I was looking into our kitchen, where my former stepfather had recently re-painted some of the brilliantly white walls with what had previously been the insides of my mother's head, with a .45 on his way in the house before coming after me. She was laying there in a dark pool. The room was alternating between complete darkness and being lit by the flashing colored lights of our Christmas tree.
I remembered times of running for my life from gangs and running from the authorities whose help I didn't want. After what had happened that night, and the years that had led up to it, the ability to trust any adults would take some time to sort out. I remembered walking through bitter cold un prepared for it. I remembered eating out of dumpsters, and sleeping in them. I remembered doing my best to doctor wounds, and doing my best to create some. I remembered being just sure I was going to die, and other times hoping I would. Life in the underbelly of a city is a good place to learn just how messed up some of the people in this world really can be, but it was very therapeutic actually. It's easy to forget that you yourself need rescuing when you're too busy rescuing a lot of other kids who had seen worse than you had. And I remembered the early attempts at reintegrating back into society at 19 when I enlisted in the army, and then spending the next several years processing everything that had happened, much of it living off grid away from people. I had forgotten all about my dream of being an artist.
Then several years later, after becoming a journeyman carpenter and a project manager, I was playing with a digital camera I had been issued for documenting the progress of a project. I was playing with light and reflection, which triggered a lot of memories of my youth. Then came the new art project as just a hobby at first. In time I won a few minor prizes in photography contests. Later I sold some of my work to people who saw it, and I was asked to produce some of it for showing.
As the slide show wound down I looked up and into the entry, and suddenly realized that the four pictures on lighted display in the entry of an otherwise darkened shop were my own. I wasn't aware that was going to be the case. It struck me then, that after all of those nights that I had sat on the outside in the cold and rain looking in. All the times I had stood there wishing I just could afford to go inside, I was now outside looking into one that was displaying my art. It dawned on me that I have been given the opportunity of using all three walls of the entry of the gallery to display my art. All I could do was smile, giggle like an idiot, and wipe the tears from my cheeks before the passersby could see them. And say to myself... damn Mrs. Moffit, you weren't kidding were you?
The point of this post, however, is not to brag. Rather it is to explain something. Because I need larger prints for all three walls now, and the timing of this opportunity is not exactly the greatest for me. Having spent the last year as my first as a single father of a pre-teen daughter, and doing it with a broken leg and torn tendons, I've barely been able to do enough work to keep our heads above water. But I am not going to let this opportunity pass without a fight to make it count. So if you see what are known to be some of my favorite knives, my Woodsman for an example, and tools pop up in the flea market or on the exchange, just know that it is has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about the tools. It's just me giving it my best shot to finish something that I started 40 years ago in another life, have now been blessed with the opportunity to re-visit, and I don't intend to just let it slip by now.
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