I met Sally
forty years ago when I was twenty and she was the one in her sixties. I was a
waitress at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant on Iowa City’s east side. Sally was a
regular patron in the late evenings. She was small, thin, and wore a blue
bandana around her short, white hair.
She was an
artist, and she was full of joy.
She was studying
art at the University of Iowa – an MFA candidate, I suppose, because she had a
studio on campus and she invited me to visit it. I faintly recall her religious
paintings – abstract renditions of Catholic saints.
I thought the
paintings were too dark and I didn’t really care about the subject matter. But
her joy as an artist – that is what impressed me.
I did not dare
change my major to art because my Midwestern upbringing pointed the way to a
more “practical” degree. What I did do, after I visited Sally’s studio and got
to know her more at the restaurant, was promise myself that when I was in my
sixties, I too would become an artist.
The years sped
by. I married, had two sons, returned to graduate school for a degree in
English, taught writing and literature at a community college, and eventually became
a freelance writer and editor. I also continue to teach part-time at a
university.
Now I’m in my
sixties, and now it is time to become an artist. Rather than pursue an MFA like
Sally, I am choosing to pursue my learning curve via online classes, face-to-face
workshops, and plenty of practice.
I made this
accompanying drawing last year and I think it captures Sally’s exuberance for
art. Unless she’s now over hundred, she’s probably gone by now…but her joy is
still alive in me as I embrace my learning curve in art.
I dedicate this
blog to Sally, the woman who planted the idea in me, decades ago, that becoming
an artist could be such a source of inspiration and joy.
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