A Simple Green Stain. Blog 4.

Georgia O'Keeffe, young and old, with Poppy painting from 1927

Our daughter, Rachel, weaves her web around Grandma.

 

Georgia O’Keeffe

 

Exposure to art was one of the greatest gifts my mother gave my brother and I. Weekly lessons at the Vancouver Art Gallery from a very early age were essential in her mind. Despite the fact that she was neither artist nor performer: art, dance, and music were always encouraged. When our young children got into her knitting basket and let loose with a giant and intricate web of all her wool throughout the house, a mess through which none of us could move, they were not admonished, instead they were celebrated for their sculptural abilities and encouraged in their art play. A few days before she died, in a moment of lucidity for both of us, I thanked my mother for all the art, the dance lessons, the piano, the attention to detail, all those gifts. Life and art a web... woven, intertwined.

Tekla's poppy, the day she died.

The Georgia O’Keeffe t-shirt, I believe, was purchased while visiting a close artist friend in O’Keeffe’s beloved New Mexico. Desert rocks, bones, skulls, flowers... poppies that burst orgiastically from their pods. I particularly love the fact that there is a stain of green paint across the Georgia O’Keeffe signature on the t-shirt. 

O'Keeffe Poppy t-shirt block.

 

 

The Dirt

 

The Dirt Shirt from my mother's beloved Costa Rica.

Mom in the garden, a celebration of dirt.

The block that I made from the Costa Rican “Dirt” shirt was fast and fun. Dirt: hands in endless dirt, the smell, the goodness, the creatures, the start and end of life... giver of food, flowers, trees then air. Love dirt.  

Woman’s Faces

Beautiful face.

This is the first t-shirt which I did not cut up, instead, I left the image intact. These sad women’s faces showing so many aspects of grieving. An often worn t-shirt with haunting empty eyes, I hadn’t seen the sadness in it all those years my mother wore it. Until now.

Women's Faces... needs a few more patches.

 

MMMMM... Mother, Mourning, Menopause, Metatarsal, Madness

 

My left foot: first metatarsal good and screwed.

If life comes in waves, then this year has been a tsunami of sorts. My frankly tiresome Lisfranc foot fracture heals with no great aplomb, just little by little, testing my patience each tiny step of the way (or lack thereof) . I swear to stop reading about bone loss in menopausal women in front of the computer. It does not help 'them bones' to heal. Instead, I crutch my way to my little city garden and take what sun there is and munch on something not yet killed by frost.... recommended vitamins D, K, and F-ing whatever! Am I angry at my broken foot?... hell ya! It’s a good thing that it was me and only me who fixed the ladder when it slid off the roof’s edge with yours truly riding it all the way down (sound effect: ladder crashing). Am I angry that my mother died?... I suppose I was, but anger just becomes a kind of helpless sadness. I AM angry still at her unrelenting addiction to nicotine. That sense of anger and betrayal and disappointment of her endless smoking will never go away. They say that smoking takes ten years off your life. Despite any anger, I could have used another ten years of her. 

Mother does not always know best.