Cups of Coffee

March 28, 2010: Cups of Coffee   My mother's busy days were measured by cups of coffee. I learned at a young age not to be too chatty with her until she had finished her first china cup of hot "Taster's Choice", lightened with a teaspoon of "Coffeemate" and one tiny white "Saccharine" tablet. Several more cups throughout the day gave her a chance to relax while she scanned the morning paper, read the afternoon mail, and watched the Late Night News on TV.   After Sunday dinners, she and her sisters would congregate with their cups and saucers around the table, looking at ads from the paper. "Anybody want more?" Aunt Doris would ask, coffeepot in hand. "Sure!" Aunt Lu would say, sliding her cup and saucer closer. "You, Margie?" My mother would shrug and "Oh, I guess so." As they sipped coffee together, huddled around the table, I would hear "Here's a letter from our sister Jeannie"... "Edward's" has sheets on sale this week"..." and "Can't wait to get a perm this Thursday"...   One morning when I was about sixteen, my mother sat sipping her first cup of coffee as usual.  Before I could think of what I was saying, I blurted out, "That really smells good to me!" Even though she was only a few sips through her first cup, she looked up at me, and smiled congenially. "Would you like to try a cup?" "Why yes, I think I will," I replied.   She poured steaming water into a china cup, and I nervously stirred the ingredients together and took my first sip. It was delicious! We celebrated my rite of passage into the sisterhood of coffee sippers with a lunch (and of course, a cup of coffee) at Edward's Cherry Valley Room in Downtown Syracuse.   We shared many sips of coffee together in the years ahead. And today, I'm drinking several cups of coffee in memory of you, Mom, on what would have been your 94th birthday.

Undercover Art

March 8, 2010: Undercover Art In my conversations with other artists, we all lament the difficulty of knowing when a work is done. It's hard not to add just one more definitive stroke, or make that one tree a tad lighter. This week I've been working on an acrylic painting that I began last fall, and just hadn't resolved. As you can see in "Summer Breezes", it began as a cool, rather stark rendering of a solitary house against the sky. I had fun being loose with the strokes, and experimenting with some different colors, but the feedback from my circle of critics was not enthusiastic, so...  I went undercover. Going undercover means searching for new direction on a previous work, much like snow melting (as it finally is here in Ohio this week!) to reveal crocus buds in the frozen earth. It was a complex journey to the "final" image of "Spring Welcome", acrylic on canvas. At one point, three tall pine trees loomed on the left side! But for now, I'm sounding the buzzer. It's done! And it speaks of spring's arrival just down that path.