This weekend we flew to Aspen for my mother’s “Celebration of Life.” I forgot to take photographs at the Celebration, but I did take a couple when we arrived or I should say, barely arrived. We were the last flight to get in. When we landed one of the guys unloading the bags said to me, “you are SO lucky!” I thought he was referring to our bags and said, “Really? You mean our bags almost didn’t make the flight?”
“No! Ten more minutes and the plane would have had to turn around and go back.”
Evidently the visibility was deteriorating by the minute. So yeah.
Arriving in Aspen
Herbert Bayer Sculpture outside the Aspen Institute
Surrounded by family and good friends, the Celebration of Life was a beautiful tribute to my mother with an outpouring of love, memories, laughter and sadness. But mostly joy. Joy that I am fortunate enough to have such a big, wonderful family, with lots of siblings, and extended family, all of whom I love and am close to. I was able to spend time with one of my nieces that I haven’t seen in ages, and spend time with cousins, distant cousins, extended family and many, many friends. And then, dancing around the edges of all of that was my mother. My beautiful, smart, complicated, funny mother.
Mom in her 30’s
Prior to flying out west I was feeling a bit grumbly about the whole thing. It’s not easy flying out, it’s expensive, I didn’t want to go, but lurking under all of that grumbling was the feeling that this was the final goodbye. By coming out to where she lived and having this very public “ceremony” we were closing a chapter. And that… that felt far too painful to contemplate, much less really feel and be acutely in touch with. That we also arrived in a snow storm, with flight delays and everything else that comes with traveling with four other people, it seemed to confirm my feelings that all of this should have been done via Zoom. And then something bizarre happened. On the final leg of our trip getting there, I was seated next to a young man who was going through a really, really difficult, as in life transformative, time. He kept apologizing to me for spilling his “guts” and reassured me that he never does this. He poured out his troubles during our 45 minute flight and told me what was going on with him and it made me realize how important rituals are. How ceremonies aren’t for any one person, but more for the collective group, the family, the community and in our recognition and attendance we heal individually, but also together.
My mother dressed in a Tweety Bird Costume during one of her many costume parties that we had up at the ranch.
Mom deadpanning while wearing her polar bear hat one Christmas on the ranch.
As it turned out, one of my brothers was quarantined in Brussels with Covid and so couldn’t get out and another of my brothers was unable to come, but attended via Zoom, as did a number of other people.
We started the ceremony with a pianist playing Mozart and ended with Ragtime, one of her favorite genres. Everyone who spoke, spoke eloquently about my mother and there was laughter and memories and sadness and connection. The following day I fell apart. It was as though I’d been holding things together up until that point, but then couldn’t keep it up. I felt exhausted and completely and utterly overwhelmed with feelings: grief, sadness, love, gratitude and everything in between. Thankfully I was with family. Family my mother was once the matriarch of. She is gone now and yet she resides in all of us. I can just hear her adding, “a dubious distinction…” I’m so, so grateful to her, and to all that she left behind.
During this bizarre time of Covid any gathering has the potential to be a superspreader event and while I am keeping my fingers crossed that this was not one of those events, I have already heard that 6 people who attended have now tested positive. My immediate family has not, at least not yet, but we will continue to monitor ourselves.
Have you ever noticed how when you’re traveling, time seems to move differently? The days go by both faster and slower, and once home, it can feel as though you never left. Yet simultaneously seem like you were gone for months?
That’s where I am right now. My trip to France seems like a dream, while also remains deeply embedded in my mind. It’s both real and unreal. The piece I created while at the artist’s residency, a physical reminder of my time there.
La Bete turned vertically!
Isn’t it interesting how a piece can change, often quite radically by turning it. This was done by pure accident because I needed to clear the desk it had been resting on horizontally and the only way to prop it up was to turn it vertically. I didn’t think much of it, but then my husband called to me and said, “Look!”
We both decided that we liked it better this way, so this is how it will now be! A little like time, everything shifts when you change things up and view from a different perspective.
And in the middle of teaching a workshop this week, but thought I’d grab these few free minutes that I have to write a post. First off, if you haven’t seen my other videos and posts about my artist’s residency, it was AMAZING! Truly beyond anything I had imagined. Being immersed in art, living with a group of artists for two weeks was just incredible. I had no distractions other than self imposed deadlines, and the occasional load of laundry, but otherwise I was free to explore, create, learn and be inspired by everything and everyone around me. It was magical. And added plus, in a group of 16 artists, there wasn’t a single prima donna! Not a one. Everyone was beyond lovely.
I’ve been home now for just over a week and already it’s all beginning to fade into the background. In many ways it feels as though I was just there, as in yesterday, and in other ways it feels as though it was all a dream and never happened at all or if it did, it was years ago. Time is strange like that. Still I have both Paris and Orquevaux on my weather app, so everyday I look to see what the weather is like over there. It’s a tenuous thread that still attaches me to that magical place and time. One of these days I’ll remove them both, but for now, it’s a bit like listening to an old phone message from my mother. I know she’s gone, but I can’t bare to delete it.
The piece I created while at the residency is pinned precariously to a large foam board and propped up on a desk until I can put together a more permanent solution for it. I started referring to it as The Beast until someone suggested I use the french word for beast, which is La Bête, and they’re right it does sound better, a bit less jarring, a little softer. Still, there’s something about the forcefulness of “The Beast” that I rather like, so I alternate between the two depending on my mood. My friends in Paris suggested I call it Genesis, particularly since I’m doing a series. I’ve bookmarked that idea for now.
Once this workshop that I’m teaching is over, I’ll get back to it, but for now, it waits for me patiently.
While at the artist’s residency I interviewed a few of the other artists and then ran out of time and so was only able to interview six of them. If you’d like to see what some of the other artists were doing while at the residency, you can watch those interviews on my youtube channel. They are all under the Interviews! playlist.
I also had time to create a number of videos on the process or more accurately my process. Here are a couple of those videos:
A documentation of the process… I’ve come to rely upon this documentation as it helps me figure the next step out. So this is how it began when I arrived and then I realized – Oh! I can create something SO much bigger!! Once that idea hit, I took all the other stuff off and began adding fabric. In fact, I doubled the size of the original piece, which was very, very exciting!!!
Beginning
An idea occurs to me: I can go bigger!
Bigger it is!
Now I have to find a sewing machine so that I can piece it together…
And then I took another photograph once it was all pieced, so that I could put it up on my computer to annotate it. This step is crucial and one that I’ve come to rely on. I find it makes all the difference in the world as I can literally draw on top of the photograph, delete, play, try any number of things, play some more, move shapes around, see what I think, before committing to anything.
Where do I go from here? Annotating makes all the difference in the world!
Testing the annotated ideas…
Continuing to look, play, try out ideas…
Stepping away. Zooming back in, stepping away… this is all part of the process.
Adding a bit of blue in the upper left corner.
Now what?
Who knows?! And that’s all part of the fun of the process. Adding, moving, playing, trying out other ideas…
It’s time for lunch, and then I will return and play some more, but all in all I’m loving the process and enjoying the movement of this piece. The trick is to keep going and not allow oneself to get bogged down with doubt! Continuing is key!! And loving every moment helps as well.
I cannot begin to describe how incredibly grateful and fortunate I am to be able to do this 2-week residency in this Chateau in Orquevaux. It is beyond anything I could have imagined. I have a studio, a real studio where I can splash paint around and create pieces that are much, much bigger than anything I could have dared imagine back in my workspace in New York City. It is like being in a dream. Seriously. And here’s the thing, I’m practically in tears because I’m just overwhelmed at how lucky I am to be able to do this, to have this opportunity, to have this kind of space, to be able to create without distractions, to be able to make a mess… it really is a dream come true.
My view…
My studio for the next 2 weeks.
This is the piece I brought with me and have begun working on…
Yesterday I did more wandering and in doing so got a bit turned around and so approached a woman of a certain age, who, in reply to my question, “Excusez moi, parlez vous anglais?” said, “Très mal!” Which means, “very badly!” I was just thrilled. No, seriously, my heart skipped a beat because I knew this meant that she would put up with my fumbling attempts to speak french AND would probably forgive my butchering of her beautiful language. I was then able to tell her I was lost and was trying to find the metro and did she know where the correct metro line was. Thankfully I was even able to understand her directions. Yay and Yay!
Later I had some trouble with my metro day pass and was able to get help from two lovely gentlemen who informed me (in French) that I mustn’t keep my metro ticket next to my cell phone as it deactivates it, but they issued me a new one, and off I went to visit the Catacombs! This last conversation was spoken in a combination of French and English, which I’m getting quite good at and people seem to understand, and are very kind and patient with me. Oh how I love France!
As I was a bit early for my tour of the Catacombs, I went to an exhibit of female photojournalists and another on the occupation of Paris during World War II.
Christine Spengler
Lee Miller
Catherine Leroy
Susan Meiselas
The exhibit on the occupation of Paris was also powerful.
And then it was time for my tour of the Catacombs!
I was supposed to then go to the Sacre Coeur, but I got onto the wrong train and didn’t realize until it was too late to get there in time, so that will have to be another day.
I spent the evening with friends. And on the way to their home I stopped in one of the many beautiful flower shops in Paris and brought them these.
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