another fine night

At The Art Center, This Friday's opening featured four artists. Notably Sean Manning had over a hundred pots vessel's and framed "slab paintings" he also put out a kick wheel with a pile of wet clay. People kept touching, reminding me how important touch is to art. Feel Something. The next room had elaborate figurative driftwood sculpture by Cheryl Bogdonovitch (sp?) and some tree paintings in a bright expressive style. The sculptures were hard to describe. colorful and sad. sort of painful like Daphne , The river gods daughter. One friend pointed out how the cut branches were painted red like wounds, and another person Said it was too organic for her. (perhaps she is a robot.) There was also a third room nearly empty of people. The paintings were Classically rendered oils with a surrealist or "magic realism" style. It was easy to recognize the little boy in the painting as a close relative of the artist himself. Cherokee and I talked about them quite a bit, but just as I was about to introduce him to the artist, a woman called over "Bill, remember me." It was Mary from Great Explorations. She introduced me To her daughter Kelly who was newborn when I was fired from the museum. I realized how bitter I was over the whole thing and how miss my friends. Mary realized also and moved away to get some wine. I left the opening and cried all the way home. I wanted to ask her about Elizabeth Marron, some things are to horrible to think of, people retell stories to create an acceptable version of the truth. Some one beat Liz until she suffered brain damage. One version was "It was a car accident." Another was that she was attacked by an ex-boyfriend. Someone else told me that her father did it. I think that she discovered some serious mishandling of money at the Museum and was beaten to keep her from talking. As far as I know, she still can't speak. I do know there is no medicine for the tears we both cried the last time I saw her, soon after she got out of the hospital. She borrowed a book from me just before the attack "Song of the Forest" by Colin Mackay
Everyone needs a soldier sometimes.

"The straths of Scotland were made by giants thousands of years ago, before the time of man. They carved them out with ploughs of ice harnessed to the rushing white clouds, then they strode over them, with storm pouches full, scattering grains of snow on the yawning rocks, and the snow sprouted from the rocks as water, down every cliff and rock-face it leapt singing and wherever it touched the gritty soil, seethed into life in a thousand glens.
And when the giants saw that there work was finished, they stood on the land that was theirs, and raising their faces to the sun, with the wind in their green hair, they became the mountains, and the hollows where their feet had trod were called lochs and new forests of birch and pine and elder grew about their massive thighs, and the waters of their creation sang through them and beyond, down to the distant sea"
Mackay, Colin "The Song of the Forest"