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26 march 2002

legacies come in all sizes

One more little thing...

I spoke with Nathan (my director for Girl Next Door Runs Amok) tonight. Look for my new follow-up play in October or November! We think it will be a good kick-off for the 2002-2003 theatre season, and audiences will be good and ready for another show. Something tells me it will be here before I know it.

I know that these announcement-y things sound like life in the Den is a bit frantic. It's not, really. This is simply an opportunity-laden time of year with publishers, since they do everything at least a year in advance. This is also the time in which theatres evaluate their fall and winter seasons, so I need to get things in place now.

So that's the end of those little tidbits. Everything is swell.

I never did tell you guys about this big art opening I attended a couple of weeks ago. Salem College currently has a wonderful show entitled Full Circle, a 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Five Winston-Salam Printmakers. They are: Virginia Ingram, Ann Carter Pollard, Susan Moore, Anne Kesler Shields, and Martha Dunigan. It will run in the Salem College Fine Arts Center Galleries through April 29, 2002, and I highly recommend a visit if you're in the area.

From the exhibit book, this is their story:

"Organized in 1962, the original Five Winston-Salem Printmakers joined forces to promote their work, share ideas, and establish a core of professional support. In addition to their commitment as artists, they led busy, demanding lives raising families and holding down jobs...Over the years the women allowed the pace of life to determine the amount of activity and interaction of the group. Its longevity attests to the wisdom of choosing a loosely formed organization that allowed each artist to follow her own direction. The intention of the goup was to exhibit together as printmakers but eventually they exhibited work in a variety of media."

The Introduction then goes on to make what I think is an important and relevant statement:

"For these women art is as natural as breathing. Art chooses you; you get up in the morning and you make art or you think about art. Art is the indispensable companion of your daily life."

Full Circle was not what I expected. It was better, and it was more--more than "just prints", and more than images from a life I didn't live, understand, or identify with. It was image after sculpture after painting, representative of five women who struggle with and question the same stuff that I do. From items with a sense of humor, such as the "Winston-Salem Absolut" [vodka] image, to "16 percent" (a full-size print of the World Trade Towers, made entirely from photos of 16 percent of the victims)--I got to see the past and the relevant present through their eyes. The show was an awe-inspiring juxtaposition of the mundane and the incredulous.

It was yet another evening of "I want to be like them when I grow up."

I am proud to know that these women not only chose Winston-Salem as their home, but chose to stay here. I've alluded to this before, but let me say it real clearly--the Piedmont Triad is undergoing some tough times. Each year, we lose a lot of young people to Raleigh and Charlotte. We lose them to higher-paying corporations, more sports bars, and more land razed in the name of McMansion Meadows' Gated Homesteads.

You would be amazed, however, at the artists and entrepreneurs that stay here, in Greensboro, and in High Point. They stay, and they make their way amid the quiet, eclectic beauty of this place. They stay, and cultivate the hum instead of the roar. They stay, and turn their lifetime and their home into a work of art. It is what these women have done.

Some people are under the mistaken impression that you somehow fail by not living in a big city, or aspiring to make the world your oyster. I can't count the number of talented artists and writers who have been asked, "what are you doing here?" We discuss it over coffee sometimes, laugh a little, and purse our lips in a frown. "They" just don't get it. People who believe that we can only maximize our potential by moving to New York, don't realize that New York already has plenty of people like us.

Many of us local artists have done the big-city thing, if only to get away for awhile, get our chops, and bring the results back home. Between the bunch of us who serve as this town's artistic core, we've done Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and San Francisco. We've traveled to different countries and seen what the world has to offer us--just like the Five Printmakers did.

And then we came back home. We chose this place. If we don't create a legacy of art in our towns, who will?

Few things irk me more than those dunderheads who gripe that "there's nothing to do" here. And they're probably right. After all, their idea of entertainment is spending most of their evenings doing stuff they don't remember the next day. To be real honest with you, I find more to do here than I've got time for, because I know where to look. A lot of us do, and we're willing to try new things.

I think that what the Five Printmakers realized is that this is a perfect place to be an artist. It's an ideal place to live your life in peace, and quietly observe the lives of others and of the world. It's where I can make a decent living doing honest work that I enjoy, without a mind-boggling commute. It's where I can gather with my friends in a matter of minutes. Then, I can go home to focus without interruption or excessive noise on my own projects. We feel safe here, safe enough to allow our imaginations to run around in the backyard of our minds.

Like our art, living here is as natural as breathing. We chose this place as our constant companion. I don't believe in life imitating art. I belive that, done correctly, life is art. You linger and you love in it.