Once again the time has flown and with this session we conclude our exploration of 
——ART—SPIRIT—NOW——

Time does keep slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future but this week our Mind Games instructions have us traveling
back from now,  
back to middle-age,
back to young adulthood, 
back to adolescence, 
back to schooldays,
back to childhood,
back to infancy. 

Back, back in our personal time, remembering experiences of our distant past. Stepping back so that instead of just slippin’ we can leap forward. 

The guided mediation is also posted on the Compass Rose page.

Years ago, when I was keen on organizing my time, when I was big on goal setting, I realized that the emphasis on planning did not account for the play of serendipity. Often the unexpected was far better than the prod of goals. Now on New Years Eve, I look back to reflect, so to be better able to look to the future.

We are at a juncture of historical proportions, a tumultuous time when much is being called into question. Much that was not told is being added to the story or the story itself is being rewritten. Ask most people to name an artist and it most likely it will be a white male. Fortunately, that is changing. We began this series with Hilma Af Klint as our standard bearer for the revision of art history. Artists who were not given their due are being brought into the canon. YAY!!! Rosa Bonheur!!!

In the public sphere there is a concerted effort to include differences of gender and culture. LGTBQIA2S+ is the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit, and the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify.

As an older white female it is a bit confounding (and heartening) as letters and numbers are added but I agree, let’s make sure that all varieties of human identity and sexuality are in the mix. Standing in the grocery line, I often feel almost invisible. My graying hair and wrinkled face, my cardigan sweater and white socks with sensible shoes, belie my spirited internal creative life. This camouflage of normality is its own masquerade, giving me a certain freedom…since nobody notices, I am free to think and do what I want. And, before the 6′ distance requirement, it was great for taking full advantange of my curiousity — listening in on the conversations of others AKA “eavesdropping.”

We are taking a step back to take a leap forward. Buildings are being renamed, statues are being removed, forbears are being acknowledged.

The Portland Art Museum (Oregon) recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the museum now stands. These include the Willamette Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities who made their homes along the Columbia River. We also want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, future—and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence. 

Chafing at my staid life as a teenager growing up in Sacramento, I longed for a wider and deeper world and North Beach was where I thought I would find it. During my high school years I made several trips alone via bus to San Francisco. I would walk the distance from the Greyhound terminal to North Beach where, hoping for a sighting of the likes of Ferlinghetti or maybe catching a glimpse of a beatnik donning a black turtleneck and a black beret, I would be, at least for a moment, at the epicenter of hip and cool.

At City Lights I would buy a book (the image-poems of Kenneth Patchen were a fave) then head for Caffe Trieste where I would linger all afternoon sipping cappuccinos and, with as much existential angst as I could muster, would sketch in my journal.

Although I had always wanted to experience a poetry reading in North Beach, my parents expected me home before dark. So after grand visions of myself as an artist were fueled with caffeine, I would troop back to the Greyhound and bus back home.

From my fascination with the Beat Era, I knew the name Jay Defeo and was familiar with her monumental The Rose that took her eight years to complete (’58-’66). It was exhibited at the Pasadena Museum in 1969 then languished for 25 years before it was conserved and is now on view at the Whitney. She had some notoriety back in the day…and with a name like Jay, it was possible to confuse her gender identification. After completeing The Rose she had several years hiatus and there were several years that she did not work for lack of studio space. She eventually continued to express independence in her art, photography, life and influence students at Mills College.

Tony Bravo’s review (10/16/20) in the SF Chronicle brought DeFeo back to mind and led me to the Gagosian website devoted to the exhibition Transcending Definition that presents a stunning slidehow of installation views and many of the mixed-media works in the exhibit.

To say that the revelations of these artworks “knocked my socks off” might be an understatement.

Serious scholarship considering DeFeo’s oeuvre continues to grow. In this conversation Natalie Dupecher from The Menil Collection and Leah Levy from The Jay DeFeo Foundation discuss the role that photography played in her experimental mixed-media works.

Let’s, one more time, take a step back to take a leap forward.

I was thrilled to learn about our Coleus connection. Now, I’m astonished to have found yet another connection in our dresses. Here we are… posing questions about: Where did we come from? and where we are going?

And anklets??? They are definitely knocked off!!!