Fifty Years Ago Today

Fifty years ago on this day, at this time, I was riding an escalator at the Sears store in Las Vegas.   I had taken a break from studying for an English 101 test to take my mom, who was pregnant with my youngest sister, Katy, to Sears to buy a crib.   As we exited the escalator on the second floor we came out into a room full of televisions all broadcasting that President Kennedy had been shot.   We thought it was some horrible mistake that it could not really be happening.   My mom’s face was as white as a ghost and I walked over to a chair where she sat for a moment.  We knew we couldn’t shop so we returned home.   I remember watching Walter Cronkite announce the death of the President.  All these years later I still weep when I think of that day.  More than a president died that day, my generation’s innocence died and a new era of cynicism was born.

Magic in the Medium

I suspect that I am not the only artist who has supplies tucked away either because they were distracted by some new shiny medium or because they became frustrated trying to make that medium act in a way  they wanted and found instead resistance.  That is what had happened to my oil pastels.  I had heard people talking about how much they liked them and even the way they used them sometimes, yet no matter how hard I tried I could not find the magic.

I don’t use the term “magic” loosely.  I look at mediums as inanimate objects that allow artists to see their innermost properties and join the muse and the artist in a creative dervish whirling that results in explosions of colors, forms, movement and sound.  Unable to find that magic in my oil pastels, I had packed them away in container and tucked them into the back corner of a high shelf.

Saturday I found the magic.  While attending a Kansas City Friends of Jung workshop at VALA gallery, the morning session was led by Ken Buch, President of the KCFOJ and teacher and Master Media Artist Zigmunds Priede.  Participants sat at tables and in front of each participant was a large sheet of white paper, a box of 12 Pentel Arts Oil Pastels, and a hard eraser.   Ken began his introduction to the workshop and put slides on the screen with wonderful quotes, still I could not take my eyes off of those sticks of vibrant color.  I turned to a new page in my sketch/notebook and started playing with the color, the longer Ken talked the more color went on the page, the colors danced in front of my eyes, I picked up the eraser and used it to help blend the colors, I put on more color, did more blending, lost in my own color zone.

By the time Zig started his part of the presentation I was hooked on pastels.  I chuckled when Zig pointed out that of all the participants only two had “doodled” throughout Ken’s presentation. With that he gave us his first assignment, start doodling on that big sheet of white paper.  I got off on the wrong foot, with a big dark blue and a big orange something in the upper corner.   Zig told us to keep going and something would come.   I worked and worked on that sheet of paper and all of a sudden I could feel it and see it, images were appearing as I drew lines and circles, added color, blended, added more color, blended. The blue and orange problem had been solved. I was having so much fun, working with pastels was not work but a joyful act. Hooray for Zig for helping me find the magic.  This morning, I resurrected that tucked away box of pesky pastels and spent my studio time today dancing with the muse and finding the magic.

September Survival

Survived another Labor Day!   It is my least favorite holiday; too many memories, too sad of heart.   Yesterday during a good chunk of the morning and early afternoon I had my IPod playing through my Bose system.   Having decided to listen to all of the albums in alphabetical order it seemed fitting that Anne Murray’s Country Croonin’ was on deck on a day when I am naturally somewhat despondent.  How could I get so damn lucky, 30 crying in your beer songs in a row, all sung with a mellow country twang.  Is the universe being just a touch cruel or just another whack on the side of my heart telling me to get tough?

Tuesday morning, the last track played, moving on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.   Ah so much better, at least the emotions run the gamut from A to Z on this CD.   Not so much like the broken record of yesterday, when heartstring after heartstring was plucked.

And now we charge through September, time to open the books, go to school, learn, learn and learn some more.   Things run through my head like a sieve but at least I keep trying to fill it up in the hopes that something will stick.   

Poverty in Johnson County, Kansas, you must be kidding?

I just listened to a discussion on poverty in Johnson County, Kansas on Up to Date with Steve Kraske on my local public radio station KCUR.   Kraske, whose conservative leanings often bleeds  through to his interviews, was shocked to discover that there is poverty in what was once one of the most prosperous counties in America. 

Kansas through the past few years became the playground of the great Republican experiment where a reduction of wages and an increase in taxes for the working class along with tax breaks for the excessively rich increased income disparity and created a state that can no longer fund even rudimentary education for its children.   Higher wage white collar jobs (middle management, IT, business and finance) disappeared and were replaced by benefit free, low paid, jobs often filled by foreign contract workers.  Of course those onetime well paid white collar workers, who looked down on union workers, never made the connection that when the working class can buy products produced by companies, companies can hire more people, profits increase and the economy grows.   Eliminate decent wages for the working class and the ripple effect destroys the middle class and the economy in general resulting in a SPIKE IN POVERTY.

The greedy billionaires David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch have bought and paid for the Kansas governorship and most of the seats in the Republican ruled Kansas legislature   The paid off officials are diligent in executing the Koch campaign to destroy union jobs, decent minimum wage legislation, education and the middle class. Increasing taxes on the poor and reducing them for the rich ensures that an uneducated easily manipulated workforce. All of this impacts Johnson County where salaries are decreasing and decent paying jobs are disappearing.

Poverty in Johnson County unthought-of a decade ago, is a fact of life today.   Left to the puppets that are currently at play in Topeka it will do nothing more than increase until the county becomes a mirror of Jackson County, Missouri.   Kansans can turn this around but it will take the will of heroes to take on the super-rich and overthrow a state government that is not working for the majority but for a very rich very few.

Note: In his article Wealth, Income, and Power,  G. William Domhoff writes “In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2010, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%.” (http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html)

Does the name BOSE still stand for quality?

Ever bought a product from what you thought was a “stand up” company and after completing the purchase discover that the company was nearly impossible to deal with on any kind of rational level?  Recently my CD player died. My search of possible replacements led me to the BOSE WAVE System, because my generation knows, the very word BOSE means quality right? And besides, I figured when my sisters send me off to the “Home” I would have this great portable sound system that could go with me. I order the system, although, I must say I was slightly chagrined that Bluetooth technology was not built in feature  and is instead a $100 add-on. 

I am delighted when my new system arrives, however, the joy is dampened a bit when I see the dreadful words “Made in China”.  I open the Acoustic Wave System Box, next the box containing the 5-CD changer and last the small box containing the Connect Kit. In under an hour, I have the system unpacked and assembled, my favorite radio stations programmed, and I am listening to the demo CD. The sound is impeccable.

Ah what to listen to first, I put in a mix of CD’s and hit Random.  An hour into playing there is a crunching sound.   I remove one of the CD’ s, that has a brand new gash in it.  I recheck installation put in another CD into slot number 2 and CRUNCH GRINNNNNND the most gawd awful sound comes blaring through the speakers.   A second CD is destroyed.  Wow, the new CD player, brand new out of the box, straight from China is a CD destroyer.

I call BOSE, a very nice young man (#1) me to remove all CD’s  (I already had) tells me how to unplug the CD player and plug the power cord to the Wave unit (I already had) and instructs me to pack up the unit in its original packaging.   Next tells me how he is going to have UPS email me a pre-paid UPS label that I can put on the box and simply drop it off at my nearest UPS store, but oh wait, he can’t contact UPS until Monday because BOSE systems are down for maintenance so I will get the label early Monday afternoon at the latest. 

Monday afternoon I check my email, no sign of the magic label so I call in to BOSE when I finally get a rep (#2) on the line I am told that my email must not be accepting the emails that UPS is sending, please check the SPAM folder….I check no label, check the Trash folder, I check no label, well it must surely be my email because it has been sent and another will be sent out and I will receive it in two hours.   The scenario is repeated 2 more times on Monday. Young  man (#4) says wait a minute I think the rep before me sent a message to UPS that they should pick up the package from you.   NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That means I have to be at home for up to 3 days during all business hours waiting for the UPS truck to pull up that is why UPS is emailing me the label.

It is now after 7 PM on Monday and I know that in all likelihood UPS is not going to send me a return shipping label via email on this day.  Tuesday morning, I turn on my computer, no label from BOSE/UPS.  No label, call BOSE, rep says oh it must be your email is not accepting UPS labels.  At this point I have had it, I tell the young man on the phone that if I don’t have an email label by 5 PM this evening, I am boxing up all of the Wave components to ship back to BOSE, calling American Express to put a stop on payment. 

Tuesday, 1 PM, I get home from the dentist and there in my email box is a pre-paid UPS label.  Somehow that nasty email account of mine let this email come through (LMAO) to my Inbox.  I affix the label to the box and I am just about ready to leave for my next appointment of the day when the doorbell rings.  There stands a nice young woman from UPS with FOUR pre-paid labels to ship FOUR boxes back to BOSE. She was quite surprised to see that I already had a duplicate label of the ones she was delivering already on the box and asked if I had 3 more boxes!   It appears that all of the young men at BOSE have been requesting pick up labels instead of drop off labels (sent via email). 

I called BOSE and asked to speak to a supervisor, something they really don’t want you to do.  Once I had a young man on the phone that identified himself as a Supervisor, he would not let me talk.  His arrogance was really quite unbelievable.  All I wanted to tell him was that perhaps there was a programming error in that system maintenance software that had been loaded over the weekend and that something funky was happening when his reps requested a drop off label causing it to read on the other end at UPS as a pick up label.   Mr. Arrogance  did not want to hear what I had to say and instead explained to me that it was my email’s fault that I had not received the labels.   So this is how I am grading BOSE (please keep in mind I have had the product only a few days).

Quality on product  = D- (having to return a brand new product hours after receiving it BOOO)

Attempts to give good customer service:

            First Rep = A

            Second Rep = C

            Third Rep = C

            Fourth Rep = B

            Fifth Rep = A  (he actually gets the label to me)

            Supervisor = F

Recommendation to BOSE:   Maybe you should hire some detail oriented women who can actually provide Excellent Customer Service.

Postscript: Tuesday  afternoon: UPS showed up wanting to pick up 4 more boxes from me and the beat goes on....LOL

Postscript: Wednesday UPS again showed up wanting to pick up 4 more boxes from me and the beat goes on....LMAO I suspect I will see them a couple of more times this week.  

Postscript Thursday:  My shipment to UPS has been received and my replacement CD player is supposed to be delivered on Friday.  Praying that this one actually works.

Several years ago while reading Abstract Expressionism I discovered a small volume Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky , Russian painter, art theorist, and modern abstractionist. I know this is a core book in beginning art classes, however, at the time for me it was the entrance into a new way of thinking about objects, color, lines, and circles and their relationship to the soul. I was enraptured and inspired. To this day, I keep my dog eared, marked up copy close at hand even when I travel. Then I discovered Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art and that pushed me even further into the realm of this extraordinary artist.

In early October of 2009 I discovered that the NYC Guggenheim as part of their 50th anniversary celebration had mounted, what has been heralded as a land mark exhibition, Kandinsky a full scale retrospective. At that point in time I also was facing the possibility of immediate unemployment, no matter, I had to see this exhibit. Kandinsky in the building that was designed to show his work, how could I not attend? Plans were made, plane ticket purchased, a hotel room reserved, I would see this exhibit!

After months of anticipation, January 9th arrived and I stood in the center of that magnificent Frank Lloyd Wright building, heart pounding, mind racing, about to descend into the art and soul of Kandinsky. The color, oh the color, the delicious mixture of pastels and primaries juxtaposed pulling, pushing, dancing from image to image. My eyes were filled with movement, circles within circles, and the exploration of infinity on a canvas. Then I was standing in front of Composition IX , an explosion of color, a modern symphony of rainbows. I hadn’t expected to find so many rainbows, yet there they were in painting after painting. The intensity of color, the haunting image, a door into the unconscious, Yellow, Red, Blue was stunning.

Every new image invoked a myriad of emotions. From my notebook:

After hearing the first public presentation of Prometheus by Arnold Schönberg Kandinsky was inspired Kandinsky to paint the Red Tuba and made him want to figure out a way to have lights hooked up to piano strings so that when music was played the colors would change...first conception of a laser light show to music?

I am sitting here crying, overwhelmed by the color in Black Lines. Purity of color, it is life at its happiest. I can hardly bear to leave it. No printed reproduction even comes close!

In watercolor rooms -- impossible to take in every image, there are so many, my brain is on fire.
Studies for many of the large works started here. Incredible!

Back in the main galleries – Black Arch –again the juxtaposition of pastels in the upper right to the dark blue in the lower left with the purple precariously balanced in between. How does he do it? Improvisation VI , oh my God what color, it is almost more than a person can see!

The entries go on for several pages. At times I found myself smiling, laughing inside at the pure joy of color, at other moments I was weeping, overwhelmed by the beauty, and at times tyranny the images provoked. Even re-visiting old friends like the 4 panels that Kandinsky painted for Edward R. Campbell that I have spent so much time gazing at in their home at MOMA felt brand new. To see this body of work was a rare privilege and has proven to me again that there are just some things in life that I have to do.

For me, this show was food for the soul, nourishment for the spirit, and inspiration to go on with my painting. To be able to feast my eyes on such images proves to me again that I do indeed live a charmed life. Thank you Mr. Kandinsky, thank you Guggenheim!

Note: First I want to thank friends Mary and Teresa for sharing this experience.
Second, through the years I have been inspired by Kandinsky. To see some of the paintings that were completed while reading his books please visit my Inspired by Kandinsky Album at

http://picasaweb.google.com/elainem64/InspiredbyKandinsky#