The Weekend

It's March already, and here on the northeast we have most likely escaped the worst of any possible harsh winter weather.  Let's see . . . only 2 more weeks till SPRING arrives.  Somehow it feels like we missed a season somewhere, but frankly I have been too busy to notice much.   Just BEing part of this complicated world we all live in sometimes takes much more than we think we have. But incredibly, things always seem to right themselves, in someway, somehow.  Patience.  Love.  Prayer.  My 3 favorite words.


For someone like me who really doesn't get out much ( I need to change that I think), this past weekend was like the super bowl.  On Friday night I had an opening reception for a show I'm participating in at s.h.e. gallery http://shegallery.com/ in Boonton NJ.  The theme calls attention to women artists of the abstract expressionist movement and their battle to win their place in art history.  Great event, met lots of very interesting people, and was honored to pay tribute in a small way to the much larger group of women artists who have been long overlooked.  I used to wonder why, except for some of the more  obvious and well know painters like . . .


Mary Cassatt

Mother and Child

 Georgia O'Keefe

Red Poppy

and my personal favorite 
Helen Frankenthaler

The Bay

most of the names associated with the "artists" we all know,  are men.  Not to take anything away from their accomplishments, but heck.  Without getting into a long discussion on the reasons why, (which I think we all know anyway) let's just say that men traveled, sought patrons, and painted because they could.  It was, and still is in many ways, a path that women are not as free to spend their entire lives on.  

Featured in the exhibit at s.h.e. gallery was a photo by Nina Leen (1909-1995), The Iracibles, capturing this group of prominent abstract impressionists,  who were protesting a juried exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was, at the time, stacked with jurors who were according to them, "hostile to advanced art".  Among the artists pictured were Ad Reinhardt, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Wilem de Kooning, Mark Rothko & the sole woman standing prominently in the back, Hedda Sterne.  Go Hedda!


That being said,  I'd like to salute those women who in many ways, opened the doors for many of us. To BE able to persue our creativity in the arts, when and if, the time becomes the right time.  

The second night of my weekend was spent in the most wonderful way. . . at (dare I say it) my 40th high school reunion.  
Re-connecting with so many great high school friends was something like going back in time for a few hours.  Despite all of us changing in so many ways since those carefree days, there is still a bond. Even if it's just the happenstance of all of us growing up in one place,  at one time in history, it's enough to be able to share it once again now, years later.  Though sadly we are missing far too many faces who were so much a part of our lives then, we still remember.  And we love them as well.

LOL.  In 1972, our class was called out and reprimanded for pulling this prank on the administration.  Imagine.  We were so rad, even then.

The smiles are still the same, the memories are still intact, but mostly it's the heart of those friends who were all part of something which shaped us as a class then, and brought us back to where we are now.  Especially today,  I can't help but remember and cherish those words etched on our yearbook, by Henry David Thoreau so many years ago: 

We have taken different paths, but we can all always remember where the path began.  And I'm grateful that it did.  Love you all!