Just sitting in the late afternoon sun drinking a simple white wine and listening to yet another Elizabeth George novel. I love how the light came through the base of the wine glass. The cats sit in the window and put nose prints on the glass while waiting for me to get up and mention something about treats.
The sunroom, formerly porch, is finished but I will save that for later after a friend returns to help bring the furniture back in and clean off the windows. So many stickers on new windows. I might not hang the six fish back in there. But instead put them outside. If I have a get together and five people can sit out there, no need to have them knock themselves out on those glass fish with rocks for anchors.
This time of day I am more tired and look forward to dinner and bed with the Dr. Blake mysteries. I like that it is filmed in Ballarat with all those gingerbread storefronts and vast flat lands outside of town. I would love to pop back into the pub there and have a dark beer. But the memories of that are enough now….and that lovely flea market outside of town where I bought my favorite oil can…a heavy low silver-colored can with brass bits attached. The fellow who took me there asked, “Don’t you have oil cans in the states?”….”Yes, but not like this!”
I have missed seeing political art works. It seems the time is so right for that now. And I can only stay quiet so long. The early nineties and four years of making work about the victims of Sarajevo, then on to the invasion of Iraq under the guise of “weapons of mass destruction”, which led to even more anti war work. Next we had that blessed eight years of Barack Obama. But while he was running for office his placards were trampled in my neighborhood. I rescued one to cut into pieces to make a small artist book. After that we were stuck in four years of a vile, bigoted swing that was welcomed into the Republican party with open arms. When that blessedly ended, there was the mending of a country suffering the ravages of Covid…and a very decent human being calming us down. I did art work to stay connected during the worst of all those years. One of my favorite was the Cultural Exchange board game where different cultures actually wanted to experience the lives of those at the opposite end and try on their shoes. When the two cultures needed an arbiter to settle stepped on toes, the Jimmy was sent in…named for the late Jimmy Carter. I will put a collection of images below this paragraph. What work I did not save for myself after it was documented and often exhibited, I buried.
None of this work was ever made for the market. It was my way of coping and expressing myself on the situations at the time. I thought it was what all artists did…take a stand visually against the wrongness of things. I had more company in the George W days than now in this impossibly difficult period in our history. So this weekend I had my own installation in the garage, complete with artist statement and a private drink for myself/by myself.
This is likely the last of my political artworks.
Til later with images of a very fine sunroom to think about things done with determination and passion.
