ART TALKS

Thursday night I was the visiting artist for the art majors at Snow College. I have never done anything like it before and was VERY nervous. I showed images of my work (watercolor, oils, drawing and artist books) and discussed the meanings and reasons they exist. The class is is an hour long and I wondered how I could fill all that time, but I shouldn't have worried. My talkativeness kicked in and I took up the whole 60 minutes. I have shown most of my work on this blog that was discussed that night, but I don't think I have ever shown this book, so I thought I'd blog about it.

The title of this book is called 'Death.' I know that sounds fairly morbid for me, but it has a lot of meaning behind it.

As I have mentioned before in my writings, my father was killed in a plane crash when I was 17. It was a horrible time in my life and in the lives of my family. We were devastated. It took me years to accept that he wasn't coming back and I grieved for a long time.

Comparing that experience with the death of my mother is an interesting concept, and the subject of this work. About 4 years ago my mother passed away. She had been sick (multiple heart attacks and strokes) for quite a few years and we knew she was never going to recover. The illnesses changed her personality, warped her memories and her basic sweet-natured self was gone as well, not to mention her inability to be physically self-reliant. Needless to say, by then we were actually praying for her to go. My dad had been dead for 20 years at this point and we were thrilled they would be together again.

Obviously my experiences with death differed greatly in these two incidences. I wanted to express that visually in this book. One side says 'Dad' and one side says 'Mom'. They are separated by a 'wall' covered by different material on both sides to convey differing view points and expressing the idea that at different times and at different places we can view death in drastically opposing views.

There, you just attend a small segment of my lecture. Hope you're still awake! Some of the students didn't make it.