Creating Beauty

The one experience that has stayed with me through all my years of working with kids happened at the beginning of my teaching career, and set the tone for my work and my mission. Working with the Missoula Youth Homes, I had to find art projects we could complete in a single class, because the kids were in transition--to or from rehab, foster care, juvenile corrections. The ones I saw one week were seldom the same mix I'd see the next. One chance only to capture whatever we could of value.

My favorite art lesson was abstract painting--find a photo of something with interesting elements---lines, colors, contrast, whatever---and use a small black cardboard with a square opening to crop it so it's not recognizable. Then transfer what you see in the square opening onto a panel and paint it. Make it the same color or different ones. The funnest part was at the end, when each student would show her work, we'd critique it for aesthetics, then she'd reveal what the original image was.

Ashley (no, not her real name, of course) was with us for the first time, and had no intention of doing "that art sh*t." But when she saw we weren't going to stop urging her on, she rolled her eyes, snatched up a magazine, and went off to a corner to start her project. As we all worked, she flatly refused to let us see what she was working on. She'd hold her hand over her panel every time I came around.

Quietly she worked for two hours, forgetting to complain, and even skipping her bathroom break. At the end of two hours, we cleaned, and then the 12 kids propped their acrylic paintings against the far wall. We broke out the cookies and juice, took our seats, and began.

From the first look, Ashley's stood out. The colors---cool wet blues, grays, and whites. Rich curves and shiny textures. It was stunning. We saved hers for last. She got up, tough as nails, and started to tell us about her work. After several false starts, it became apparent that she was having some kind of emotional response, and couldn't talk. Very uncomfortable silence. The other kids busily picked their cuticles, gnawed knuckles, pulled at loose threads on their hoodies--anything to keep from watching Ashley's quiet little meltdown.

"Ash, just a sentence, OK? Can you do that?" I asked.

Deep breath, a quavery start, then Ashley blurts out, "I never made anything beautiful before." Weak little laugh. She had us. Then she holds up the original image---a full page ad for a designer toilet. She had cropped it just at the bottom curve where light reflected on the enamel and metal surface. Nice way to break the tension. The metaphor of the toilet becoming a lovely thing was not lost on any of us, least of all Ashley.

That was the only time I ever saw her. She is, God willing, somewhere safe and nurturing. Maybe she's a mom, and takes better care of her kids than her mom took of her. Maybe she has her painting hanging on a wall in a worthy frame. Maybe, just maybe, she's an artist somewhere.

I know there's a good chance Ashley is on the streets creating something less beautiful than art or healthy kids. But it stays with me, that golden day in that shabby little room, and I wonder how many kids are absolutely sure they've never created something beautiful, or don't even believe they have it in them?

Studies show that by the time they're 9 years old, most girls with unusual talents, gifts, or intellect are already desperately trying to hide their differences. Such giftedness is so often accompanied by things that look negative in a regular setting--ADD/ADHD, divergent thinking patterns, visual/spatial learning styles or processing--that most gifted girls are never even evaluated, much less identified, understood, or nurtured. They're just too "weird" for most schools, and they tend to be "spacy" or "dreamy." Many--as much as 35%--become angry, close down, and start a long unhappy school career of driving everyone around them nuts.

SO there's the long version of our new venture: we have started the Girls Residence for Arts and Creative Education (Grace House, for short). We'll be serving girls like Ashley whose intellectual or creative gifts have been largely unidentified and lost in the mix of their other characteristics and behaviors. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website: http://gracehousearts.com/

Big Eddy

Abba

The only one who loves my kids more than I do . . .

Two Years Later

My response to watching so many beautiful women struggle with breast (and other) cancers. There's hope. You are still alive. You are still beautiful.

I attended the April 11th Elton John concert in Missoula, Montana last week. It’s a tradition.

Just after I turned 13, my family moved from a small town in Montana to the wilds of a housing project in Boston. Unhinged by the loss of my friends, my culture, my outdoors, my solitude; confused to find that the rules were all different, but no one would tell me why, or what the new rules were—I was lost. My stumblings across the minefield of adolescence were disastrous. On the home front, things disintegrated as my dad swamped his fears in alcohol.

I made plans to hitch hike across the country. I would hike along barrow ditches and beg at diners. I would somehow return to the pristine solitude of Montana. More realistically, I eventually decided I would escape as soon as I was eighteen. In the meantime, I had a chance to attend the first concert of my life: Elton John, playing at Boston Garden just after my 17th birthday. My sister Cathy came along.

That night: the train rocking through the smoky tunnels under Boston, the humid crowds of people swarming the doors but carefully avoiding eye contact. Heads bobbing and moving in the darkness of the arena, clouds of smoke shredding over us all and lighters flicking on. A sea of stars . . . Elton began singing “Daniel,” before we could even see him.When we did see him, from only about 45 feet away, it was classic Elton with his six-foot headdress, spangles and feathers, lights, cameras, action. Cat and I were transported. Spectacle and color, sound and fury.When Elton played “Good-bye Yellow Brick Road,” I cried unashamed and resolved once more to leave the angry city and go home to the mountains:

“When are you gonna come down? When are you going to land?

I should have stayed on the farm, I should have listened to my old man.

You know you can't hold me forever, I didn't sign up with you,

I'm not a present for your friends to open, this boy's too young to be singing the blues.

So goodbye yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl.

You can't plant me in your penthouse, I'm going back to my plough.

Back to the howling old owl in the woods, hunting the horny back toad

Oh I've finally decided my future lies beyond the yellow brick road.”

The song articulated my yearning and my determination. I cried as I listened, but a few years and many heartaches later, I made the move back west. Our goodbyes at Logan Airport were horrific, my siblings and I clutching each other, sobbing. I arrived in Great Falls, Montana with two kids, a guitar, and $35. It would be 12 years before I saw Boston again.

Later still, Cathy’s husband called to tell me that Elton John was returning to Boston, and I should come home too. He surprised her by having me arrive just in time to join Cathy at the (new) Fleet Center and listen once more to Elton John. This time, there was no headdress. Other than a subdued shimmer on the lapels of his tux, there were no spangles and no spectacle. He strode to the black piano and began playing.How much richer was his music than it had been before! The sound was unadorned and magnificent. His showmanship was intact: no opening act, no long breaks, and true dedication that brought him out for three encores.

It seemed that night that every song gave us back a piece of the past to take out, turn over, laugh and cry about. “Daniel” was the sorrow Cathy had felt watching us fly away so many years ago; “Benny and the Jets” returned us to Boston’s 70’s disco clubs where we had been brash and beautiful—even if we didn’t know it at the time; “Your Song” reassured us that even 3000 miles away, we would always be there for each other; “Philadelphia Freedom” brought back the scorching July 4th when we both met Joe, and she vowed to marry him; “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word,” helped us move on.

Later, we reminisced over tea. In our re-telling that night, the past lost some of its sting. We laughed gently at how earnestly we had tried to hold onto things that always slip away, and how in doing so, we might have missed the quiet gifts that arrived unannounced in their stead.

Over the next years, wiser, we moved on but grew closer, in spite of the miles between us. And when we heard Elton John was coming to----of all places on earth—Missoula, Montana, there was no question about what had to happen. I made the hotel reservations three weeks before the tickets went on sale. When they did, we both sat at our respective computers at either end of the country, clicking and clacking the keys until we had tickets.

In the intimate spaces of Missoula's Adams Center, we saw yet more changes in the superstar. Elton John is older. He moves with less agility. He strides rather than stomps, and did not play the piano from behind his back. Bless him, he had the grace to avoid chasing notes he knew he would never catch. Wise man! He seemed to be looking to the gifts arriving in their stead: confidence, complexity, richness of tone and tenor.

Cathy and I are older. We listened with our arms around each other. There in the standing spaces that we had to hijack in the handicapped section after the press of the crowd made me sick and the stadium steps sprained Cathy’s knee, we were sloppy and loud and silly.

In the following days, we drove all over my corner of Montana shooting photos of the ragged mountain profiles and turkeys that waddled indignantly away. Montana gave us blizzards as we fished, and sunshine as we tried to rest.

Then in yesterday’s windy early evening, Cathy cast her line into the water, huddled into her coat and grinned at me in spite of her numb hands.Once again, it was Elton John’s voice I heard in the background as we let the going things go, and rejoiced at the gifts arriving in their stead:

“Blue eyes laughing in the sun, laughing in the rainBaby's got blue eyes;

and I am home, and I am home again.”

So thanks, EJ, wherever you are. It's been a pleasure. A gift.

Bluegrass Boogie I

It's a myth, that picture of being at one with nature, in silence and solitude. Nature is never silent, and nothing in nature is alone. And we--humans, that is--fit in quite nicely, even when we aren't pretending to be silent, or trying to leave no evidence of our presence. There is a rhythm and music to nature. There is melody and cacophony; it isn't always easy to distinguish between the two. Then there's dance, going on everywhere.

I feel certain we're welcome to be a part of it--the song and dance of nature, provided we don't overstep. So these four paintings--Bluegrass Boogie I,I,III, and IV-- are expressions of the way it feels to be standing on my friend Caroline's back porch, playing bluegrass tunes and watching the herons play.

Bluegrass Boogie II