Tag: folk art

Near Miss

Near Miss

Some years ago, Cappi Quigley fetched me at the Nashville Airport to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her daughters and their families. She wore black to offset one of her imaginative, color-drenched, wow necklaces.

“Before we go to the house, we must stop at an art gallery downtown,” she said.

That was Cappi. She loved sharing our mutual folk art obsession. 

Cappi was visiting me in Chicago when feminist artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s whimsical, large-scale kaleidoscope animals, monsters, and figures were exhibited outside the Garfield Park Conservatory. She made her way to the west side on her own to see “the Niki.” And then couldn’t wait to take me there on the green line. 

Cappi Quigley, 2011, at Queen Califia’s Magical Circle, Escondido, CA

We had similar tastes in most everything. Whenever I visited her in California, we ate from the ripened fields around San Luis Obispo. On one visit, we dined for a week on nothing but fresh-picked strawberries and avocadoes.

Cappi hurried me through the large, tantalizing rooms at the Nashville Arts Company to the attached warehouse in the back. The floor and walls were full of metal sculptures of every size and dimension. Each one painted in rainbow colors. There were playful metal masks with flowers springing off their hats, some waving flags, some with large eyeglasses, and some holding birds. One wall was filled with life-size avant-garde metal guitars. On the floor, an arrangement of Picasso-type chairs sat around a mesmerizing metal table. 

The Arts Company in Nashville represented Brother Mel Meyer, a Marionist monk from St. Louis. Some of each of his creations were on display: metal sculptures, watercolors, stained glass, acrylic on canvas, handmade paper, and textiles. I cherish my Brother Mel metal wall sculpture of a woman with big red glasses, which I bought on the spot. Cappi and I bonded anew over our love and awe for Brother Mel. She subsequently visited his gallery and workshop in St. Louis. Brother Mel was well represented in her Central Coast home.

Brother Mel Meyer, St. Louis 20th Century

We got on the road in a state of hyperconsciousness. Tennessee red maples and golden ginkgoes illumined our spirits. Fireplace pine spritzed the air. Aware of the weekend schedule, we quickened our pace down West End Avenue. Out of nowhere and without warning, an ancient oak tree silently uprooted, toppled over, and bounced down, laying itself out across the road in front of us. The front of the car rested in leafy branches. 

I’m not sure how many times we screamed, ‘Oh my god,’ or when we stopped shaking. Without words, we exchanged seats. I backed up, turned around, and drove home. Throughout the weekend, we failed to get an attentive audience for the story of our near miss. Only Cappi and I could know we’d been spirited into a new dimension of living.

Niki de Saint Phalle died in 2002, around the time Cappi and I swooned over her work. We mourned for Brother Mel Meyer in 2013. Cappi Quigley joined them in September 2023. They all left us their own technicolor visions of Paradise.

How lucky we are.

Take My Breath Away: Love of Art

Take My Breath Away: Love of Art

Neatly arranged parchment sleeves hid small prints that slipped out and overwhelmed me like guests at a surprise party. The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art responded to my 7th grade request by sending a thick envelope with sacred works by Titian, Bosch, Jacometto, Raphael, Durer and Fra Angelico. As I gingerly sifted through this unexpected bounty, I gasped with awe and gratitude-grateful that God had given me such a gift and awe for beauty I had never before known.

IMG_1076 (1)Mother Ann Cleary at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in suburban Chicago set the class to writing a description of a classic painting including information about the artist and personal impressions of the artwork. In my 1959 mailing to the Met I simply re-stated the assignment and asked for help. I suppose the name of my school prompted the curator at the other end of my letter to choose representations of New Testament stories. That was the year I won the all-school prize for best writing.

After this intoxicating initiation into the eye-popping wonders of art I thirsted for more. I read the back section of Time Magazine every week for news on the art world and scoured the library for books on lives of the artists. I was prohibited from hanging anything on the rented walls of my bedroom so I made square cardboard boxes and pasted works of art on each side. I strung-up the art boxes from the overhead light, curtain rods, door hinges – any place where I could gaze at my magazine-clipped reproductions.

My first art purchase was a print of Picasso’s Boy with Pipe. It shared wall space with art posters from places I visited – a Roger Brown from the 1985 Navy Pier Art Expo, a Toulouse Lautrec from an Art Institute exhibition. In the 1990’s my job required frequent travel around the US and overseas. To protect myself from on-the-road temptations I stole free time and scurried through backstreet art galleries and street markets. I brought home img_0678suitcase-compatible originals such as a small clay maquette of an Easter Island head by Oslo artist Marian Heyerdahl, Thor’s daughter. In 1997 I signed on to EBay. Within hours I was hooked on outsider folk art, bidding on heart-stopping works like a multi-colored turtle made from a hubcap.

Love of art freed me from the inclination to decorate my home for the approval of
others. In my petite apartment the walls are crammed with oils, pastels, watercolors, shadow boxes, metal sculptures, retablos and ceramic tiles. There is so little unadorned wall space that I string up paintings from the curtain rods in my wall-to-wall windows. An oil of Johnny Depp as the Madhatter by Chicago artist Anne Brandt blocks the curiosity of neighboring eyes.

George Carlin once said “life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.” By that standard I surpassed my quota long ago.