Mother' Art

    My mothers art. 

    Now that I have discovered how to put picture files onto these pages I will try to put them here.

    My Mother was a prodigious artist. There was NO medium of art that she set her hand to that she did not Excel. My first memories of her art were of her oil painting. She did a very large portrait of mt father in his Marine Corp Drill Instructor uniform and Campaign Cover. He looked every bit as Hard as A marine Corps Drill instructor did. Very Stern. Then when epoxy came commercially available the dabbled in that. She always kept her hand in clay work. One of the very first clay works was a sort of imaginative work. She called it an "Elf's House". She always seemed to be right on the forefront of what was artistic. When Alexander Calder was making Mobiles and Stabiles in the early '60's she was making great and glorious creations that could have hung in any art gallery anywhere in the world. One of her biggest and most glorious creations she gave to her friend because we were moving and this particular piece was not going to survive a move. I imagine that she simply gave away the rest over time. She was an amazing sculptress. She did sculptures of me throughout my life. When a friend of hers took an interest in her sculptures of me she started doing sculptures of all the neighborhoods kids. She did her friends kids for free the rest she began charging for her work. She charged the paltry sum of $100.00 for a life size full bust of the neighborhood kids. I could fill a full page describing her work. She held an estate sale because she was moving from her home to a one bedroom apartment. She told me of this impending sale and subsequent move. But for what ever damn stupid reason I did not take her seriously enough. Before I could arrive to collect those things that I might have wanted of hers the sale was well under way. I 'chose' to push it out of my thoughts much like you might push back getting a book report done until the very last minute. I was very prone to doing this very thing in school. I did one book report on the book "To Kill a Mockingbird". I really regretted having pushed that back. When I finally did read it I very much enjoyed the read and wished that I had more time to write a better report for that book.

 

This is an example of a Calder Stabile  This link is to some Calder Mobiles