January 2024
Happy New Year! I hope your new year is off to a great start. “Simplify” is my motto for the year, and I’m doing everything possible to stick with it. In addition to purging a lot old stuff around the house, I am doing my best to keep my schedule and responsibilities as simplified as possible. More work to do, but making progress.
January began on a major high note. Scott and I flew to New York to catch the last days of the blockbuster Manet Degas exhibition at The Met. If you know me, you know that Manet is my man, my numero uno, so this was a real treat. Not to mention that I LOVE New York and we hadn’t been since January 2020. It felt so great to be back in one of my all time favorite places. It was truly one of the best weekends of all time. We kicked things off with cocktails at the St Regis. And I’m mentioning that for a reason - back in 1995/96, my roommate owned a travel agency. She took me to NYC for the very first time. We flew AirSouth out of Columbia, thanks to a friend of ours, Tom Volz, who ran PR for AirSouth at the time.
(Side note: if you don’t know AirSouth, here’s a quote from Tom on the airline: "The legacy of Air South will be that you couldn't rely on it and it wasn't on time," Tom Volz, the vice president of marketing who helped found the airline in 1994, told TheState newspaper in a 1997 post-mortem. "We were like the town drunk who, every six months, would promise to sober up and then, inevitably, fall off the wagon.") Tom was one of the funniest, kindest people I’ve ever known.
Anyway, on that trip so many years ago, my roommate took me to the St Regis for a $17 Bloody Mary, which was invented at The King Cole Bar, and it’s a memory I’ve never forgotten. Little southern girl Beth, broke as a joke, wide-eyed, drinking a $17 Bloody Mary in New York at the St Regis. Wow. So when Scott told me that the St Regis was right around the corner from our hotel, I said YESSS! We have to go. No surprise, it hasn’t changed. The cocktails are still outrageously expensive, but it was such a fun way to begin the weekend.
Manet-Degas was outstanding, despite the insane crowds. It is helpful, as an artist, to see such a wide range of subject matter across the years from an artist I’ve always admired. You can see that there were drawing issues with several pieces. There’s something very comforting about seeing mistakes made by the very best.
I love Manet, but this drawing is all kinds of wrong … I’ve spent so much time looking at this painting and giggling. The size of the hand, the tiny little pea head… the drifting leg … wow.
Manet gets dinged for his draftsmanship, but the man could paint circles around almost anyone.
Love The Spanish Singer! But, there are a few funny things about this painting, too. It turns out the left handed singer is holding a guitar strung for a right handed player and he’s not exactly holding the guitar correctly. It was a staged painting, painted in Manet’s studio. I love the placement of the still life in the bottom right corner. The objects point back up to the singer.
It was surprising that Musee d’Orsay lent Olympia to the exhibition. Easily one of the most iconic paintings in art history and one of the most popular paintings at Musee d’Orsay. Imagine if you went to that museum to see Olympia and found out she was on loan. Luncheon in the Grass was not loaned for this exhibition, by the way.
If you’re interested in learning more about Manet - Degas and their friendship/rivalry, I highly recommend The Art of Rivalry.
We wandered around the museum for hours, had lunch and waited on the snow to start falling. Of course, I can’t go to The Met without seeing another of my all time favorite paintings, this beast by Philip Guston.
Sunday morning we dashed over to MoMA and caught the Ed Ruscha exhibit as well as a phenomenal Picasso display from his time at Fontainebleau. I got to see The Three Musicians, one of my favorite pieces, and there were a number of drawings that I found fascinating.
I do these types of drawings ALL THE TIME! It’s incredibly reassuring to know that some of the legendary artists practiced drawing the same things that we do. I seriously doubt that Picasso was trying to create a drawing that would eventually end up in a museum. He most likely just enjoyed doodling and practicing. Picasso! He’s just like us :)
After lunch we hopped on a plane and came home. A whirlwind trip, but one of the very best!
TEACHING
My Drawing Fundamentals course at Acworth Arts Alliance is in full swing! It is so cool to see this group of artists make so much progress just over the course of a few weeks. This shows that a) anyone can learn to draw and b) if you practice what you learn in class, you will see improvements. Some of my private students don’t practice between sessions so it always feels like starting over. I hate to see that because I know it’s frustrating for them, but drawing is like anything else … you have to put in the reps. I see so many paintings that could be improved if the artist just worked on drawing. It happened (still happens!) to me. That is why in 2019, I took a huge step back from painting and studying drawing with George Morton at Atelier South.
I love sharing what I learned with my students.
POTTERY
A whole new world … I don’t know any other way to describe it. It is exhilarating. Wish I understand the psychology, the “why” behind the fascination and excitement, but surely has to do with the act of turning a lump of dirt into a vase/mug/tray, etc. Maybe it’s not that different than seeing oil paint squeezed out of a tube, then manipulated into a portrait or landscape. It’s magical. Initially I thought this might be a way to pass the time between plein air seasons, but there’s more to it. This is something I want to continue to explore.
These are my very first pieces. Next week we are learning how to glaze.
PAINTING and DRAWING
Of course, I’m still painting :) A few pastels, a few oils here and there. My friend Kathy and I hung a new show at the Ponce Library. There are about 30 paintings up by the VHPAP. We’ve had two sales and I’m hoping for a few more before the show wraps on Feb 17. I’m also going to Atlanta Artists Center on days I can squeeze it into my schedule.
BOOKS
I finally finished G-Man, a 700+ page biography of J. Edgar Hoover. When I read a book like that I tend to go down a lot of rabbit holes on some of the figures and events, so it took a long time to finish. One of the key takeaways is this: nothing changes. They were fighting racism, homophobia, political extremes, people vs cops, power struggles, shady shit in Washington, cover ups, etc just like we deal with them today. NOTHING CHANGES. We think because we’re living in it that it’s worse than it was back then. Wrong. So many people in this world are corrupt, conniving, self serving and dishonest. Some just hide it better than others.
I just began reading Carolina Clay a few days ago and cannot put it down. This book is amazing. It is the story of David Drake, an enslaved man who lived in Edgefield, South Carolina in the 1800s. Mr. Drake was a highly skilled pottery maker and his magnificent stoneware pots are a key part of an upcoming exhibition at the High Museum, Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina. David Drake had an incredibly difficult life and remarkably, he was one of the few enslaved people who learned how to read and write. There were many times he pretended to be illiterate so that he wouldn’t be a target of violence. His family was, like many enslaved families, broken apart and scattered numerous times. He went through so much hardship. And now people are learning about it, thanks to the fact that his beautiful pottery has survived all this time and has been on view at The Met and now, coming to Atlanta.
I grew up about 45 minutes from Edgefield, so this book is hitting home in many ways. There are numerous references to key figures in SC history that I recall - names of racist men whose names are on countless streets, buildings and schools across the state. It also helps me understand why South Carolinians are the way they are. Stubborn as hell, stuck in their old ways. Yes, I was born in South Carolina, but I don’t agree at all with the way so many South Carolinians treated and continue to treat others. This book explains a lot, and it was written by a white man who grew up in Edgefield, a man whose ancestors owned David Drake. READ THIS BOOK.
OTIS and JUJU
The boys had their annual check up at Peachtree Hills Animal Hospital. I jokingly mentioned to the vet that Otis had “matured” a little and had not scaled the kitchen cabinets in quite some time. She checked his flexibility and said he may have a bit of arthritis. This is not the vet we’ve seen for years, so I was skeptical about the arthritis thing. And to prove to everyone that he is just fine, a few days later, O-doggie found his way back up to the top of the cabinets.
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| JuJu loves playing on the sink in the mornings |
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| Naps on the guest bed, snuggling with clean laundry |
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| Otis rules our bed and JuJu knows it |
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| My sweet, sweet boy |
FEBRUARY
Two fun trips!!! I can hardly wait. More docent tours, more teaching, more pottery, more drawing, more painting.
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