“Personality is the glitter that sends our little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.” – Mae West
Reclaiming Art on Loan
Bibba Bear, the survivor.
One of the things I told myself when I got rid of all my furnishings was that when I got off the road and grew roots again was that I would be able to decorate from scratch.
What fun that would be, I thought.
While I’ve been pleased with the few pieces of furniture I bought in January, including a bright red couch that I thought fit my sassy old broad personality, I started thinking everything looked pretty sterile. And that’s not me. While I tend to stay on the sparse side in furniture, my walls were always a mass of eclectic color.
I got just a little bit of this back this past week when two of my favorite art pieces, which I had loaned instead of giving away, came back to me.
The first is a huge photograph of a bear that I bought in Park City to celebrate my being promoted to city editor at the Standard-Examiner newspaper in Ogden, Utah. I call him Bubba Bear. He’s a grizzled old thing with scars that tell me he’s a survivor.
Self Portrait
Since managing a flock of reporters is somewhat akin to herding cats, I looked at him as a role model. I hung him in a prominent position in my Utah home and looked at him every morning for inspiration to get through whatever the day threw at me.
There was no way I could give him up, so I made it perfectly clear that he was just on loan when I put him in my youngest daughter’s care.
The second piece of art was stored at my son’s house in Texas. It’s my own work, a large pencil drawing I did for a college art class. The assignment was self-portrait, and I put all the things that I felt were me into it: My desk , my favorite books, my favorite bird, my favorite movie, Angel’s Landing that I climbed every year on my birthday, the newspaper representing my journalism career, a picture in the paper of me and my former canine companion, Peaches, who preceded both Maggie and Pepper, a Snake River Guide, with a kayak Christmas ornament atop it, and light streaming in from my window. I must have light in my homes.
The two pieces of art now hanging on my walls don’t really enhance my living room from a decorating point of view, but they’re part of me. And looking at both of them makes me feel really good.
Bean’s Pat: A Dangerous Road http://tinyurl.com/pdx3djn It reminds me of a few roads I’ve traveled, but perhaps just a little bit less scary. This is the kind of armchair travel adventure I love.
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