From Ashes to Art Shows

FROM ASHES TO ART SHOWS (79) Your art needs to speak for itself. It needs to speak for you. And it’s supposed to speak to the person experiencing it for the first time.  That’s why it’s so important to know what story you want to tell.  The Pancake and Booze Art show is coming up this weekend (yes, that’s a real show, with real pancakes, and, well, booze) and it’s time to bring a collection of just six drawings for them to display.  So, here’s a little insight into the ones I chose and why… (Starting with the big picture...

Breaking the Silence and Sins of our Fathers When my father was a boy, his father never spoke directly to him. He would always turn to the mom and say, “tell the boys to do this!” When I was a boy, my father would sit in his oversized chair, staring at the TV at anything that moved. I remember handing him a report card to sign. It was nearly straight A’s, with maybe a B thrown in. My proud smile faded as he looked down, signed it, and handed it back in silence. “What’s it going to take to get...

The Way Out Now that the holidays are upon us (i.e., Off from Work) I decided to reorganize my place (i.e., Clean Up). I bought two dozen banker boxes, with the intention of moving everything into them. (They stack so nicely that I can understand why Bankers like them so much). Everything was going along smoothly when I opened one of the old boxes. It stopped me in my tracks. Among a lot of old, unnecessary papers was a To Do list. It really didn’t look any different from the others, but I knew right away how special this one...

Hello, Goodbye. Every turn was like seeing an old friend. I knew this trail now, unlike five years ago when I had no idea what lay ahead. Ironically, or perhaps symbolically, the fog was so heavy that I could not see the sky above, or ground below. Much like our future, we’re not allowed to see the details. I was OK with that. I was more than OK with it… I was firmly in the present; taking in all the sights and sounds that surrounded me. It was within the silence that I could hear my heart. I repeated the...

Return to Goodbyes On the way to the airport, I asked the Uber driver to stop at 7 Bedford Place, where I had gone to school.  Even though it was a short visit, I wanted to grab a photo with me and the guys. It was important to return with them, as I had said goodbye to the place some 40 years earlier. It was also important because it was the 5-year anniversary of a day that changed everything. Had that fateful day not happened, we would have been standing in the doorstep. Six months after that, Oct 25, 2018,...