An Afternoon at the Met with John Singer Sargent

In New York City - like anywhere else - it's easy to stay home on a Sunday afternoon. Clean the apartment, catch up on email, or fall asleep as that book you've been wanting to read slips out of your hands onto the floor. All admirable options. But then, there's that brochure from The Metropolitan Museum of Art on the table, the one that's been laying around all week. The one announcing the final two weeks of the "Sargent's: Portraits of Artists and Friends" exhibit. The Metropolitan Museum of Art!! It's a forty- five minute subway ride + walk away. I haven't been there in months.

What am I waiting for?

I enter the first exhibition room to find each painting encircled by at least five people, who have apparently asked themselves the same question. Some listen to audio guides, others read commentaries beside paintings, while a few quietly whisper comments to a companion. We all patiently wait our turns for the coveted spot in front of the next piece. If we bump a bag or brush against a hand poised to take a picture, we say a polite, "Excuse me," and move on.

John Singer Sargent,  Self-Portrait (1886)

John Singer Sargent received high praise during his own lifetime, but would undoubtedly be complimented by such reverent admirers, ninety years after his death. He is often referred to as "the leading American portraitist of his generation"(1856-1925). I'm unfamiliar with portrait painters who came before or after, but I can scarcely imagine any more gifted. Examples in the Met exhibit include:

Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau)

Carolus-Duran (one of Sargent's teachers)

William Butler Yeats

As admirers, we each pause longer in front of one painting than another, for reasons we might be hard-pressed to explain. Is it the subject, the technique, an expression or setting? Or a feeling, perhaps.

 I stopped at each of the ninety-two paintings, and returned to two.

A Gust of Wind

The first was a portrait of a woman - not seated in a chair, or posed as a statue - but on the move, outdoors, holding her hat in place as she strides through the grass. I want to know her story. Where is she going, and might I tag along? The commentary describes it as "one of Sargent's most daring compositions - freely painted and boldly abbreviated." Perhaps his subject was equally daring to move beyond a life of expectations.

The second could have been voted "The Most Unlikely To Get A Second Notice." It is unfinished.

Woman and Collie

A dog with his kind face and tongue hanging out; a faceless woman bending forward -- a friend, mistress, stranger? With only a few brushstrokes, Sargent began a portrait of companions, then "abandoned the composition before completing it." No reason why. He has left us to continue their story. As a writer, I'm intrigued by the challenge… yet more intrigued by Sargent's ability to capture my imagination, by what he has left undone.

I'm almost out the museum's front door when I turn around. I reach in my purse for my credit card, then walk to the membership desk. "I'd like to renew my membership, please."

 Next time, it's….

American Quilts and Folk Art
Ancient Egypt Transformed
Celebrating the Arts of Japan
Or
Or
Or





  

    

     

    

Clementine Hunter, Folk Artist

The book caught my eye the minute I walked into the children's section of the Harlem library, two years ago this month -- Black History Month.

Who was Clementine Hunter? The African American woman on the cover intrigued me. There was a directness to her stare, yet kindness in her eyes, humility in the way she cradled a collection of paintbrushes in her hands. Like she was proud, but uneasy with the attention.

When I removed the book from the shelf, settled into a child-size chair and started reading, I had no idea that Clementine would eventually lead me to Melrose Plantation in Louisiana.

She lived 85 of her 100 years (1888-1988) on the grounds of  Melrose, about 25 miles from Natchitoches, working as a manual laborer - picking cotton, harvesting pecans, cleaning, washing, cooking. Similar work that her Grandmother Idole had done, as a slave. She attended school for only ten days, and never learned to read or write.

Clementine had lived half her life before she painted her first picture on a window shade, using brushes and tubes of paint discarded by an artist staying at Melrose. Another guest at the plantation, Frances Mignon, encouraged her to paint more. For the next fifty years, she produced between four and five thousand paintings, on whatever she could find - bottles, cardboard, brown paper bags, roofing shingles, canvas. She drew what was in her memory.

The artist's first exhibit was on her porch and clothesline. The sign on the front of her house said,

C. Hunter

Artist

Paintings for Sale 

She sold her first paintings for 25 cents.

As the years passed, Mignon helped Clementine promote and sell her work. Her reputation as a folk artist grew, and her paintings were displayed in galleries miles from her front porch and clothesline. Today they can be found in museums and galleries all over the United States and sell for thousands, up to tens of thousands, of dollars. 

I ordered a copy of Art From Her Heart and placed it, cover-side out, on our bookshelf so I could see Clementine each time I sat down to write. A woman who didn't start painting to become wealthy, lauded, or to have a United States' president invite her to the White House. 
She painted because it was in her to do it.    

A year and half later, I was mapping my trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to visit the 49th labyrinth on my 50-state journey and interview its creator. I looked up at Clementine and wondered, "How far away is Melrose from Baton Rouge?" I had read that the plantation is now a National Historic Landmark and that several of Clementine's paintings are on display. "Two hours and thirty-two minutes," Google responded.

The morning of June 13, 2014, I drove along curvy Louisiana back roads from Natchitoches to Melrose, arriving fifteen minutes before the plantation opened. The day's first visitor, I parked in the dirt lot beside the gated entrance, got out and walked under huge pecan trees - ones from which Clementine had likely gathered sacks full of nuts. I joined the first tour and listened politely as the guide explained the plantation's history, eager for him to get to Clementine's part. As we stood on the upstairs porch, he walked over to a door, placed his hand on the knob and said that we were about to enter a room in which some of her paintings were displayed. "No photos, please," he added.

I walked in the sunlit room and instantly felt like I was surrounded by a rainbow. Clementine's bright colors sparkled, pure and honest, directly from their tubes onto canvas and bottle. The scenes of  every day life - picking cotton, getting married, playing cards - began telling their stories, as if delighted to have the door opened, new faces to greet. And the zinnias… purple, orange, white, yellow, red!

Without photos in my camera, I wanted something to take away with me, a reminder of the joy I experienced in the midst of Clementine's art. I stopped at the gift shop. Posters, muted notecards, nothing that felt real. Until… I spotted an original painting perched on a window ledge. Yellow zinnias in a red pot.

"Who painted this?" I asked the clerk.

"Clementine Hunter's grandson, James. She taught him how to paint," she answered.

"I'll take it!" I said, and gently took it off the ledge.

          

      

  

************

Three of Clementine's paintings shown in Art From Her Heart by Kathy Whitehead.

    

Holiday Wishes!

During this holiday season, I wish you a day as peaceful as I experienced last Saturday at The New York Botanical Garden, filled with….. 

Undisturbed solitude

Smooth transitions

                                                         Delightful companions

And a line of poetry that touches your soul

(Former United States Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, read selections from his newest collection, Aimless Love. His poems are dotted throughout the Garden during the holiday season.) 

Watercoloring

by Billy Collins

The sky began to tilt, 

a shift of light toward the higher clouds,

so I seized my brush

and dipped my little cup in the stream,

but once I streaked the paper gray

with a hint of green,

water began to slide down the page,

rivulets looking for a river.

And again, I was too late--

then the sky made anther turn,

this time as if to face a mirror

held in the outstretched arm of a god.

A Winding Road to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

I exited the #6 train on Spring Street with directions in hand to the Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. A ten-minute walk. Twenty minutes later I was ???
I should have crossed Delancey (isn't that a movie?), then taken a right on Orchard, but Delancey was no where in sight. Almost to Canal, I knew I was headed the wrong way, so I stopped in a jewelry store for directions. A helpful saleswoman pointed me down the sidewalk I had just walked. (She was Chinese. I'll explain why that is significant later.)
"It's the big, busy street. You can't miss it," she said.

I retraced my steps, carefully reading each street sign along the way, only to find myself back at the subway stop. No big, busy street. No Delancey sign.

Again, I asked for directions.
A man loading paint cans on a dolly, looked up when I said, "Excuse me. Can you tell me where Orchard Street is?" (Forget Delancey. It apparently had disappeared.)
In a pronounced Swedish accent, he said, "Let me look on my phone." After a couple of swipes, he pointed, "That way, toward Delancey."
"Thank you, but I just came from there, and no Delancey!" My morning mindfulness mediation was wearing thin, and I was already late to meet my friend, Marian, and her sister, Marjie.
"Oh, Kenmare turns into Delancey," he explained. "Follow Kenmare and you'll see it."

Kenmare I had seen, twice.

A few blocks down Delancey, and I should have encountered Orchard, but…
Is this sounding familiar?

I stopped for a third time, entering a shoe store, where two African-American men greeted me from behind the counter.
"Am I anywhere close to the Tenement Museum on Orchard?" I asked.
"Sure, on the other side of Delancey," one of them answered.

Thanking them, I crossed Delancey, walked thirty seconds, and there - finally -  was my destination! Half an hour late, but still in time for our tour, "Sweatshop Workers."

Around the corner from the museum's visitor center, Marian, Marjie and I stood with a group of ten others in front of a door. The door to a five-story tenement building which housed nearly 7000 people from over 20 countries between 1863 and 1935.

A sign hung to our left, beginning the story we were to hear in the next hour.










When the door closed behind us, I imagined being one of the 7000 who walked into this dark, narrow hallway. Would have I been grateful to have a roof over my head? Would I have wanted to turn around and run? Pray? Rejoice? Where would I have summoned the strength, not only in my legs but in my heart, to climb the steep bannistered stairways to my tiny tenement home and my new life?

When Marian and I visited Ellis Island last month, we learned that as a result of the 12 million immigrants who traveled through its gates, approximately 100 million descendants populate this country. And their number continues to grow with each generation. As I stood in two of these family's apartments and heard their stories, I was inspired by the lives they created - despite the hardships they endured. I was proud of a country, my country, that provided them opportunities, and valued their contributions.

But America is not only my country.  It belongs as much to the Chinese woman, the Swedish man, the African-American men who pointed me along my way -- ironically, to an immigrant museum.
One building among hundreds like it, where people built their lives and the life of a nation.

************

Today's immigrants, like their predecessors, are transforming the neighborhood - and challenging us to provide new answers to old questions. Who is American? What does it mean to be a citizen? What is our responsibility to those in need? What should "home" look like? It is their future that gives the past  -  a past that this Museum studies and celebrates - such resonance.
-- A Tenement Story
{The History of 97 Orchard Street and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum}

Photo credit - Tenement Museum

 






  

"Voices of Millions" at Ellis Island

It's been a week since my friend, Marian, and I visited Ellis Island, and I am still haunted by it. Haunted in the same way that images of Titanic's vacant decks and abandoned staterooms beg that their stories  be told. In the same way that the stillness of a Civil War battlefield, now peaceful, holds thousands of stories within its silence.

There are 12 million stories in the halls of Ellis Island, 12 million! Immigrants - some alone, others with friends or family - who passed through the Great Hall from 1892-1954.  Each with a story.

Perhaps it was the artifacts on the 3rd floor of the Immigration Museum that triggered my  imagination. Encased in glass, preserved exactly as they were found before restoration began in 1999.

 




Who lay in the hospital bed?
 Was she frightened, separated from her family,
 suffering from tuberculosis?

Who sat in the chair - stamping papers, asking questions?
Did the faces across the desk follow him home at night, or blur into oneness?

Perhaps it was the windows, now smartly shaded, where views of Manhattan meant a new home to one, a dream denied to another.

Or perhaps it was the faces.

Eleni Mylonas, photographer/artist roamed the abandoned remains of Ellis Island for three months in 1983.  "I wandered around in silence, letting myself be guided by unknown forces compelling me to explore unlikely desolate corners of the endless mass," she wrote. One of her photographs hangs on the 3rd floor of the Immigration Museum.

Ellis Island, now empty of the immigrants who came and went,  continues to be alive with their dreams. Our country is alive with their ancestors, approximately 100 million of them.

As Eleni Mylonas described it, "….the voices of the millions of people who came through here, building a temple with their highest joys and deepest sorrows."  

Jane Franklin - One Woman's Story, Almost Forgotten

Have you heard of Jane Franklin? 

The picture on the cover of the book won't give you a clue. It is a portrait of her granddaughter, painted in 1765. 

No picture of Jane survives.  

The fact that she ever lived would have long been forgotten, had it not been for her older brother, known to the majority of Americans (colonists) of his time and of ours.

Benjamin Franklin. 

I happened to hear the book's author, Jill Lepore, interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air almost a year ago.   I added the title to my "To Read" list, then forgot about it until July when I was searching for a book to take on vacation. Not quite a beach read for our beach vacation to Maui, but I was purposefully looking for a book of substance - about a woman of substance.
The trip to Hawaii was the culmination of my 2-year journey to visit a labyrinth envisioned and/or built by a woman in each state.  I carried their stories with me as I traveled to meet the 50th woman, walk her labyrinth and hear her story.

The power of stories 

Only through listening to women tell their stories 

have I learned how deeply another person's story can impact my own.

All we know of Jane Franklin's story is through Benjamin's letters to her, the few surviving letters of hers to him and other family members, and her Book of Ages, where she recorded the births and deaths of her children. It is surprising that Jane, born in 1712 "when the Massachusetts poor laws required that boys be taught to write and girls to read," learned to write at all. Benjamin taught her, before he ran away from home to write his own story.

While her brother became famous, Jane lived on the edge of poverty with a husband, constantly in debt,  and a total of twelve children, eleven of whom died. She cared for her ailing parents and took in boarders to help with expenses.

                                                    She worked hard, very hard. 

She loved, lost, and lost again. 

She read whenever she could 

and wrote her letters.

No one knows where she was buried. Perhaps near the 20-foot granite obelisk erected for Benjamin in Boston's Granary Burying Ground.

At the end of her book, Jill Lepore quotes Virginia Woolf's essay, "The Art of Biography":

The question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded. Is not anyone who has lived a life, and left a record of that life, worthy of biography -- the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? And what is greatness? And what is smallness?

It is Jane herself who answers Virginia's probing questions. In her own hand. In a letter to her brother.

"I am willing to Depart out of it [life] when ever my Grat Benifactor has no farther Use for me.
I know the most Insignificant creature on Earth may be made some Use of in the Scale of Beings, may Touch some Spring."

The first page of Jane's Book of Ages

 



  

The Elephant In the Room Needs Our Help

My husband, Drew, and I spent an evening recently learning about elephants, specifically African elephants, killed for their tusks. It's not an event we would have routinely attended had it not been for an Arkansas connection, Chelsea Clinton. Although she and her parents now live in New York, we shared the same state when President Clinton was Governor Clinton.  We have seen Chelsea grow up in the media and respect the work she does and causes she supports, particularly as Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation. Partnership to Save Africa's Elephants is a Clinton Global Initiative.

(photo credit Joshua Young)

The panel discussion, moderated by Chelsea, was held at the Deepak Chopra HomeBase at ABC Carpet and Home Store. This unique gathering space on the mezzanine of a busy retail store, is where I attended the exhibit of Thich Nhat Hanh's meditative calligraphy in December.  For the current event, the walls were lined with photographs of elephants taken by National Geographic Explorer in Residence, Beverly Joubert.  Elephants going about the daily business of their lives, unaware that their ivory tusks have marked them as targets by poachers.

 *Facts are staggering:
- The population of African elephants has dropped from 1.2 million in 1980 to 420,000 in 2012.
- Approximately one elephant is killed every 15 minutes for its tusks; at this rate, African elephants could  become extinct within the next decade.
- Savannah elephant tusks sell for up to $1000 per pound, with forest elephant ivory often fetching an even higher price.
- Within the last ten years, 1000 park rangers in 35 different countries have been killed in their efforts to stop poachers.
(*All facts reported and cited in Chelsea Clinton's blog, "How We Can End the Elephant Poaching Crisis.")

When I listen to such grand scale devastation, so far away and complex, I feel helpless -- as when I hear  of children killed in Syria, women raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,  rainforests destroyed in Africa, Asia, South America. . . and on  and on. I'm grateful that people with name recognition, power and resources heighten awareness and work toward change.

The African elephants' influential friends include the African Wildlife Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, International Fund for Animal Welfare, other NGOs, governments and concerned citizens.  All coordinated under the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action.

Together they are dedicated to:

• STOP the killing
• STOP the trafficking
• STOP the demand

To halt the decline of African elephants by the end of 2016.

Yet, the elephants need more friends, "everyday" friends.  As one of the people in the room that night, who is now aware of the situation, I have a choice. I can walk away, or commit to doing something, anything to help.

My feeling of  helplessness only becomes a reality if I choose to believe the whiny voice that says, "You can't do anything. You're just one person."

So I developed my own two-prong action plan --
- I will not purchase (or accept) any ivory products and will encourage others to do the same.
- I will write a blog posting (this one) to share what I have learned.

Now that you are aware, please consider passing on what you know to at least one other person. 

Share Chelsea's blog. 

Share this blog.

If you're in NYC, attend a function and learn more:

March 24, 6:30 pm -- "Living with Elephants: Stories From the Wild with Beverly and Derek Joubert"

Through March 31 - The African Elephant - photography exhibit (free) by Beverly Joubert 

 Both events at ABC Home in Deepak HomeBase - 888 Broadway

Thank you!

  

     

The Gift of a Poem

This week I received an envelope filled with poems from my friend, Mary, in Idaho.

Her yoga teacher shares a poem at each class, and Mary thoughtfully passed on a few of them to me.  I have savored them, reading one each day, writing down lines in my Quote Book that I want to remember.  Lines like. . .

. . .So I've thought about it tonight,
With the new moon dark
and double draped in cloud cover.
I will live.
I will live now.
I'll try to do better than I did yesterday.
I'll love better, cleaner, kinder, easier.
I'll give away little things.
Things I love.
I'll talk to strangers. . .
~Jan Sarchio from her poem, "Dire Predictions"

When I visited Mary and her husband, Doug, at their home in September, they turned on the radio each morning to listen to "The Writer's Almanac" with Garrison Keillor.

Warmed by the wood stove, we sipped tea at their kitchen table, while Keillor's distinctive voice kept us company for five minutes. On each program, he recounts highlights of significance, mostly literary, that occurred on that day in history, then reads a poem.

I've adopted my own version of Mary and Doug's morning ritual, not at the kitchen table but in the bathroom, while putting on my make-up. I place my laptop on the counter, download the day's program and listen. When Keillor begins reading the poem, I always pause, whether in the middle of mascara or blush, to be fully present to the poet's words. I bookmark my favorites and return to listen.

Many of the poets are unfamiliar to me, and I'm eager to read more of their work. Where could I possibly go to find collections by all of these poets, under one roof? Where else? New York City.

I can actually see Poets House across the Hudson River from our apartment. I can hop on a ferry and be there in 15 minutes, which is what I did yesterday.

I sat in a comfortable cushioned chair, facing the windows, with a book of poetry in hand and read. It felt like meditation.








Poets House contains 60,000 volumes of poetry. It is free and open to the public. Its collection "is among the most comprehensive, open-stacks of poetry in the United States."

Poems for adults                                                               Poems for children

                                                                               

                              Mary has inspired me to pass along favorite poems to others.

                          In the mail, with a handwritten note - just as I received hers. 

                                           After all, I have the perfect place to find them!

Following Your Bliss - Gary SchwARTz Style

I keep a journal of favorite quotes. A home for all those scraps of paper on which I've hastily written words I want to remember, snippets from newspapers, underlined sentences in books, poetry, prose, graffiti. The first quote I entered, my most favorite quote of all, is by Joseph Campbell.

Some people know what their bliss is early in life; others don't even know they have a bliss to follow until mid-life or after.  Fitting into the latter category and still finding my way as a writer, I'm inspired by others' stories. How did they follow their bliss?  Did Bliss always stay on the lighted path, where directions were clear and footing solid? Or did It sometimes disappear around a curve, up a mountain, or under a stack of rejection letters?

Last week I attended a one-man show by artist Gary Schwartz.

Gary teaches art in the Upper School at Léman Manhattan Preparatory School, and is a friend. He has invited me to tag along on field trips to the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where my art experience has expanded beyond what I know and like. To be an art student in one of his classes is the only reason I would want to be a teenager again!

Gary has followed his bliss as a painter for many years, often disguised as someone else. In an artist's talk at B&M Fine Art Studios, he shared his story.

Aside from a bank security guard disguise, this painter might have still been recognized under a broad artist's hat. At least his other jobs - graphic designer in advertising ("Mad Men" style, as he puts it), origami teacher at the Greenwich Village Children's Aid Society, information guy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, visitors service assistant at the Museum of Modern Art, and art teacher for 20 years - are in the ballpark.

It was in that one job, where Bliss had no desire to hang out in a bank, that Gary said, "I felt dead inside. Things stopped creatively."

Perhaps it takes those moments, those "depths of despair" moments, to put it a tad too dramatically, that we learn where we truly need to be. The questions, of course, are Do we listen? Do we follow?

Gary did. Following the advice of a co-worker at the bank who said, "Be an art teacher," he quit.

As long as Gary has been connected to art, he has continued to learn, to paint, and develop his own style, within a genre - Photorealism.  A style that one of his co-workers at Léman called "a Schwartz," at the gallery's opening of his current collection.

  

"B&B Carousel"

(on Coney Island where Gary grew up)

"Chestnut Seller of Rome" 

(inspired by a trip to Rome on his 50th birthday)

              

      "Paul's" 

(on Coney Island)

Admirers of Gary's art, like me, express a common gratitude that he shares his work with us and the world.  Less selfishly, I applaud him for following his own bliss, for himself first, 

his creative self.

Turning the page in my Book of Quotes, I find one by Mary Oliver, whose quotes could fill my entire journal.

"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."

************************

The exhibit runs through January 31st. 

    

For more information about Gary's story and art, please refer to:

The Léman Manhattan Bullhorn article, "Gary Schwartz, Art Teacher, Discusses His Passion Projects"

Gary's website 

The Mindful Art of Thich Nhat Hanh - in Manhattan

I learned about Thich Nhat Hanh from our son, Jason, who spent a week at the Zen master's Plum Village Mindfulness Practice Centre in France. Otherwise, I wonder whether my life and that of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk would have ever crossed paths . Perhaps I would have stumbled across an inspiring quote, discovered one of his books in the spirituality section of Barnes and Noble.

Perhaps not.

And what a loss that would have been.






When I saw the announcement in "Time Out New York" that Thich Nhat Hanh's art was exhibited at Deepak Chopra's HomeBase at ABC Carpet and Home, my eyes would have normally kept skimming. But because I had a connection, I stopped, read, cut out the brief paragraph, and stuck it on the refrigerator door.







Then I went out of town.

Six weeks later the small piece of paper was still hanging around, reminding me each time I reached for  milk or eggs, that the exhibit was there, waiting, soon to be filed under "missed opportunities."

Opportunity Requires Effort 

could have appeared on the wall alongside Thich Nhat Hanh's mindfulness meditations. Or maybe it does in a broad interpretation of. . .

So I bundled in my warmest, took the PATH train to World Trade Center, walked 3 blocks to the 5 train, got off at14th and Union, walked 3 or 4 blocks, entered ABC Carpet and Home among a swarm of holiday shoppers and a line-out-the door of parents and children awaiting a glimpse of Santa.  Not the meditative mood I was expecting.

"Up the steps, on the mezzanine," the door greeter pointed, when I asked about the Thich Nhat Hanh exhibit. I edged my way past the glitz and baubles to a wide staircase in the back, topped by a picture of the Buddhist monk, his pose an invitation to enter, quieten.

The large room had a warehouse feel about it, exposed pipes and brick.  Simple. Open. Light. Chanting softly filled in the empty spaces with sound.  I entered and was at once enveloped in solitude, the only person in the space. I consciously breathed for the first time since leaving home.

  

I walked to each piece of calligraphic art, stood, read.

Each message beyond a meditation. 

Almost too much to absorb.

Each life affirming.

Life changing.

Then I came to the one that reminded me of my connection, Jason to Thich Nhat Hanh to me.

The words, 

the book

 Jason gave me after his week at Plum Village.

                                                

      In gratitude, I felt that I had come 

full circle.

(The exhibit ends December 31.)