back to school

Summer is ostensibly over; school started last Wednesday so students line up at my door, antsy to draw and paint and tell stories. I spend the first class reminded them why we do art in the first place; but I think, without words they may understand this intuitively, in bone and muscle. We do art, they seem to know, because we are human.

Our new principal gave us teachers a copy of ‘Brain Rules’ during our in-service week, a book about the way our minds work. This read has made me think that although we are often asked to justify art and music and physical education, our so-called peripheral subjects—their core tasks of moving and making and imagining—are at the core of our evolutionary memory, our ways of living and surviving.

Photos by Billy

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polaroid

Last week I ventured off alone to a writer’s retreat at an old hunting lodge turned rustic camp in bucolic Virginia. This meant of course leaving my own family. My departure was not as tearful as going to to Tinhouse when William was one years old, still there was that same bittersweet quality to being away—indulgence and ease and loneliness all at once.

For six nights I slept in an upstairs room of an old farm house under threadbare blankets. I set up the desk I brought myself by a window, and sat the fat square fan in a chair, facing me, to hasten my words or else lull me to sleep. I ate family style with the other writers, ten or so women– beautiful, bawdy, with a mean age of maybe 65. These writer women had done things: had attended wedding of now grown children, cared for and buried aged parents, held grand-babies older than my own only son. Their writing told that your relationships continue to pull and tug at you over the decades, even after your loved-ones have left this great green earth.

I pinned a Polaroid of Billy and William over my desk by the window. I offered their images and images of the things they’ve done to the other writers whenever the internet caught and held and I had my laptop over dinner. At lunch, over fresh ears of corn, I mumbled to myself, ‘This is sweet, William would like this.’ I guess it shouldn’t be surprising how much their presence pulled and tugged on me across miles. Even then.

Polaroid above by Billy, Checkerboard of Billy, William, and me, plus our friend (and Billy’s assistant) John.
Images of Nimrod Hall below: Painting by Judith Guy and photograph by a fellow writer. Thanks ladies!

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you as your own art project

This is William’s tree. I chose and photographed and painted it back in the spring as part of a graduate color class. This tree, its versions, and all the things I learned while making it are forever linked to William.

The thing about art projects, I tell WIlliam and my students, is that the real result is you. You are your own project, I try to tell them.

And all those hours, choices, struggles—even those framed final pictures up on the wall or packed away—none of it matters as much in the end as what the making of it does in you.

Snapshots of student masks and tree by me; photo of painting by Billy

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first fridays

Baby Landscape by Billy Hunt

First Fridays in Charlottesville mean wine, cheese, and art openings; this Friday, June 4th, our family and friends are well represented. Check out Billy’s (and William’s) show of Baby Landscapes, photographs of our boy between one and a half and three years old, in local landscapes, overlaid with William’s own drawings. Downtown at Cafe Cubano, 5-7.

Also, my mug is featured in two, count ‘em two shows, thanks to local photographer Sarah Cramer. Her striking portraits will be on display at the Women in the Arts Auction and Show, to benefit the Piedmont Council of the Arts (Auction Thursday June 3rd and opening Friday June 4th). Click here for details.

AND, another set of Sarah’s work, Portraits of Talent, will be exhibited at NPR Radio IQ’s new gallery.

There are many other strong shows worth checking out, Stacy Evans and Aaron Farrington to name a few. So I hope to see you gazing at art downtown this Friday, or sometime during these longest days of June.

Portrait by Sarah Cramer

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on my own

I went out on my own at night, last sunday, leaving Billy at home with William. I had to practically force myself to go, to forge out my own life away from them. To let them miss me or not miss me. To keep a part just for myself.

That night I went to Secretly Y’all, a local story telling event where brave folks like Cathy Harding got on stage and told true stories that made me laugh and cry. Check out their site, listen, or attend the next event, themed ‘Consumed’ slated for June 13th, 7pm, at Random Row Book in Charlottesville, Virginia. What true story would you tell?

Photo by Maria Manzione! Thanks Maria

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women who make things happen (in art)

This month the Piedmont Council of the Arts is shining a spotlight on women in the arts–a proclamation far less controversial than Virginia Governor Rob McDonnell shining his spotlight on the honor of the Confederacy.

Or is it? There is something brassy, audacious even, about making art— especially if you are are a woman; the one who is still supposed to take care of and clean up after and support everyone else.

For my part, I’m going support this local powerhouse of a female theater company take their all woman show—Our American Ann-sisters— on the road.

For 5 bucks or more, pledged safely on Kickstarter you can help them reach their goal of raising the cash, but act quick if you want to help!

What female artists do you admire?

Me alongside Jenn Tidwell, of Our American Ann-sister, Performers Exchange-Project, CLAW and more.

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climate change

Today it feels nearly like spring, but more snow is in our forecast. This has been the snowiest winter in my memory, and William’s first memories of what winter means.

-Spring is my favorite season, William proclaims.

Climatologists say that along with hotter average temperatures, Climate change means more capacity for moisture in the air, which potentially means more snow in the winter, and shorter winters too.

Luckily, we have artists to keep us cozy, like BirdLips, our local downbeat duo who have moved West. Good Luck Birdlips!

Photos by Billy

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stream of songs

And then, Mama, my boy William says, the plane is like crashing in the water, but then it swoops up, all the way to the moon.

With this, he flies his lego creation by me, guiding it out toward the lamp. Stories like this one spill from William now, strung together like patchwork quilts, odd patches, unexpected combinations.

I feel the same when I re-read a story I’ve written. Months passed and I wonder where those particular characters came from. They may have started with real life: a sliver of conversation overhead or an image. (Like that beautiful morbidly obese black girl, 8 years old, who always waves at me from 1st street). But in the stories, they inevitably become something different. Something I myself could have never imagined.

Maybe there’s stream of songs from which artists scoop, or sip, or siphon. It would be fast moving, a million unsong songs rushing past. And the painter, the singers, the poet, the musician, well she’s just the one curious enough to stand there by the water, struggling to decipher those odd high notes, brazen enough to plunge herself fingers into the wet dark cold.

Photo by Billy

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art and immortality

Computer drawing by me.

Mimi’s house is a monument to remembering; the stairwell lined with old faded pictures, and those silhouettes cut from black paper, inscrutable profiles. There jutting out like a mast is the youngest family member: our boy William.

Having children has always been the time honored path to immortality, and it’s no different for us. William’s arrival shifted our sense of scope, like plate tectonics, unseen but massive. All at once we felt ourselves balanced between antiquity and the future that we see in him.

Nonetheless, I think there is another, less talked about way to connect to the future. In short, by making things. Not monumental best selling things, but small, careful, strange, awkward things. Artifacts of being here.

Art, even art with a lower case ‘a’, has a way of remaining in the world. I’m generally taken aback when I reunite with an old friend and they mention some forgotten paintings that still lives on some wall in other their house, occupying some small framed corner, and their mind each time they pass it.

But why should I be surprised? I have threadbare mixed tapes, and scraps of old songs stuck in my head that play in loops if I wake in the middle of the night; that I sing sometimes to William when he can’t sleep. I’ve got stories, even stories from forgotten friends— a girl I met one summer when I was 15, for example, whose poem is embossed in me. Her name was Stephanie and the silver feather-shaped earrings she wrote about still shines in my memory, catches the light, reflects some sliver of her back to me.

My friend Sara Owen does this beautiful ‘house’ painting. Check out her painted portraits by clicking on her link.

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a true weekend

Special edition C.L.A.W, Charlottesville Ladies Arm Wrestlers, with Jennifer dressed in honor of celebrity attendee: John Waters

Photos by Billy

Getting ready and going to the Live Art’s Gala and Afterglow

copyright Will May
Gala overview by the lovely, talented Will May

Wednesday has always been ‘humpday’, but since motherhood I’ve lost my sense of the arc of the workweek; that uphill climb beginning begrudgingly Monday morning and ending with a precipitous fall into Friday night. For me, parenthood integrated work and play and week and end into one wide-eyed thing. It wove even those dark hours when one ought to be mindlessly asleep into a new kind of vigilance: What if the baby wakes?

But this past weekend was like a true weekend. The old school kind. The kind when from Friday through Sunday you completely lose your everyday self. And you stay up late, or sleep in, or take a nap. And giddy on sleep or sleeplessness, you see people and go places and polish your nails and coat your lashes.

I can’t say for sure which is better. Enlightened types might say the integrated, woven week, and some rainy Mondays I’m inclined to agree. It’s all time, Monday through Sunday, and all the same ticking.

But the girl in me, the lost and irrelevant and sometimes impatient one is sure that a true weekend is better. Better, she says, to have that unevenness; that mind numbing grind of the regular week, and then the free fall into Friday night.

This weekend we attended C.L.A.W, went to the Live Arts Gala, enjoyed Mimi as master babysitter, and spent Sunday afternoon at the park. What did you do this weekend? What is a true weekend to you?

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Quintessential fall day romping in a leaf pile at the park