I painted a bit yesterday before we went to Kim’s baby shower. It was lovely, and she’s ready to have the kid. She had amazing ultrasound photos. Today I worked on both paintings. So, the first photo is from Sun.
May 31
Last night “On Golden Pond” opened at HART. It was funny and thank goodness they didn’t have the character Norman, die at the end. Donna was shocked when I said we had to hurry out to serve. She had steeled herself for a death scene. She did not need that. I had some good feedback on my work. The opening night party is usually a madhouse, we were told, and this was no different. The caterers from Sunset fixed food that was mentioned in the play. It was the first time we had seen milk and cookies on a buffet! I think painting today was productive.
Kim’s baby present
I offered to make a painting for Kim and Sonexay’s baby girl, due in June. We decided on a theme of cherry blossoms. I did a paper collage, an idea I will follow. But I got interested and started a slightly different idea. This one is on a panel, a hollow core door that Gregg cut in half then added a support at the bottom. The size is 24″ x 40″. I’ve been exploring textures and this should be a challenge; blossoms, trunks, leaves, water, light and dark. I thought Kim would like to follow my progress, so if you’re reading this, you are a voyeur!
Installing my art show at HART
Gregg and Bobbi installed my show, and I just sat there. We agreed on placement, and got 25 pieces hung in less than two hours. We had a nice lunch with Bobbi and caught up on her treatment for breast cancer. I’ve already had an inquiry, and sold a piece. The show “On Golden Pond” opens tomorrow night and we will be there with bells on.
Eulogy to Robert Rauschenberg
Rauschenberg was 82 when he died Monday. Do you ever wonder about the Port Arthur, Beaumont area of Texas? Lots of creative people are from there, like Janis Joplin, John Alexander, and the Winter bros. Is that where the “crossroads” is? How did they get so creative?
Log cabin photo
My new show of paintings will be at HART from May 22 to June 8. This is one of the photos that I’ve been painting from.
Beginning on Public art mural- I’m on the scaffold
Mozilla Firefox Start PagePublic art mural San Antonio TX 1991-2000
Warren
Miss Henrietta’s Heaven
Miss Henrietta’s Heaven
Susan Livengood
Looking back on it, I should have been rich and beautiful, with a handsome, kind husband. But here I was, ordinary looking, never married, and enjoying my life teaching school in Book County, North Carolina. I never went to Europe, like Pete McKinnon did, she ran away with a playboy and traveled around the world. She wound up back in Book County with nothing to show for it but a fancy pink and black dress and a really stupid hat that she insisted was from a famous haberdasher.
I grew up in Book County, high in the Great Smoky Mountains. It was the last county incorporated in North Carolina, the Scots shoving out the remnants of the Cherokee. The Great Depression was tough on my parents, but I roamed the forests of the southern Appalachian Mountains and thought life was grand. I could identify any tree, flower, or critter that I encountered on my wanderings. When money was nonexistent, public libraries still had books. I skipped almost a year of studies when I got to the Western Carolina Teachers College in 1942. Tests on botany, biology, zoology, and geology were passed and classes satisfied. I came back home to Book County and started teaching in 1945. Folks in Book County are religious, some faithful and some hysterical. I distanced myself from the hysterics, not because of my scientific knowledge, but because they made my stomach hurt from worrying. They were proved wrong about the end of the world, thank goodness, and with the end of the war, life picked up in Book County. It was good that I already had six years experience teaching before the wave of war babies hit the schools. Forty years teaching school, I know almost everyone in the county. Many are dear friends. Needless to say, I am not financially rich.
The handsome man in my past was a no account drifter, my mother said. He made me feel like the prettiest sunrise, the brightest moonlit night, the baby fawn, wobbly and full of wonder. I was sixteen, pregnant, alone, and my mother was mortified, befuddled as what to do with me. There was no such thing as an ‘unwed mother’ in her world. I stubbornly insisted that I would keep and raise the child. Maybe the screaming matches, my dad called them cat fights, made the child feel unwelcome. Before I could be sent away, I miscarried. My mother was elated. I was desolate.
Pete McKinnon and I did lots of things together. She never recovered from her lost love either. She lived in a solid Craftsman style bungalow, out past Robertsville. She and I would go horseback riding in the forest. We took a couple of trips to Las Vegas. I love number games and always won enough to pay for our trip!
Life in the mountains reflects your attitude. Plenty of folks had less than I did, and were content. Others could be sitting in the catbird seat and moan and be mean. The children in our classrooms were mirrors of their homes. I’m not a gossip and good thing, because I knew more than I wanted to about the families of Book County. There are countless stories, some turned out better than others.
People come and go but the mountains remain and erase human scars with the changing seasons. Native vegetation is denigrated as weeds, but a few years respite from bulldozers, chainsaws, lawn mowers, and weedwhackers and the mountains reclothe themselves in trees and flowers, bejeweled with butterflies and birds…
Let me know if you’d like to read the rest of the story. SL