Man is such a busy creature.

Not that it’s always productive, or even good. We do evil things, we do good things. We try very hard to make sense of it all. But sometimes, if we walk slow enough, with an open heart and open eyes, nature reveals herself to us in ways that can teach us and guide us  and maybe make us better for having walked on the earth.

I went for a day trip with my friend Sarah to Lost Maples Park, a Texas state natural area off of F.M. 187 in Vanderpool , Texas. The maple trees were at their peak, and it rivaled anything in New England for it’s color.

We hiked, we photographed, we watched in wonder, mother nature painting on her canvas.  All we had to do was show up.

As I walked past a sycamore tree, marveling at the beautiful texture of the bark, what caught my eye was mother nature reminding me what a part of it all we really are. There was a tiny ‘bark’ figure, walking right off the tree trunk. I snapped the photo and had a good chuckle as I was remind yet again –

                                             It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see.

Rather than just one day, November 25th, I think the entire month of November should be set aside for giving thanks. After all, to my mind, there are countless things to be thankful for.

My sight, for one. Being able to see the daily wonders and changes as nature moves through her cycles is breathtaking to me. Here in the Texas hill country, the many crossings provide peeks down dozens of the  most beautiful natural passages.

I think as an artist, seeing is how I come to best understand life. And I am eternally grateful for that gift.

                             Because it’s not what you look at, it’s what you see.

So my winter migration is complete and I have settled back into my Texas home /studio.

When I’m here, I get to reconnect with printmaking, an art form near and dear to my heart. I actually started out as a printmaking major and was 2 years into the program before I started painting. I ended up with a double major, not being able to choose. I must admit, choosing a major was a real botheration to me as I wanted to keep on playing and exploring as many creative processes as I could. I loved photography and ceramics and it seemed limiting at the time to focus on just one, but that’s the way school works. So I chose painting primarily to learn about color as intimately as possible. And it helped with my printmaking, because you need to know how to mix colors and what layers of colors are going to do to understand what will happen on a print. Unlike painting, there is a great deal of thinking ahead and I liked the process and discipline of that thought process. My favorite form of printmaking is the monotype – the most painterly of printmaking types, and that makes sense for me, considering my love of painting. The spontaneity suits me, the painterly feel as well. But unlike a painting, the surprise element when you pull a print off the press ,for better or for worse, it’s never quite exactly what you thought you were going to get. And when it’s better than  what you anticipated, it’s like Christmas morning – both  a wonder and a surprise.

These are the things I most appreciate about making art and it’s a mirror of how I like to live my life. Filled with wonder and surprise. Migrating back and forth like this shakes  up my routines , forces me to be in a different mind set and environment, seeing again with fresh eyes. We need to give ourselves time and space to play and expose ourselves to a place or space where the unpredictable can happen.

” For whatever you’re doing for your creative juices, your geography has a hell of a lot to do with it. “Neil Young

Today was the annual Italian Festival in downtown Reno. There are numerous ethnic festivals throughout the year here, celebrating the Hispanic culture, the Greeks,  and more, but the Italian festival is the last big street fair event of the year before the town rolls up the streets for the long winter ahead. In my 5 years here, the event has always been lucky enough to have had a simply gorgeous Fall day, and today was no exception. Before you even park the car you can smell the garlic and food preparations and hear the music. There is of course a ‘best of ‘ cook-off for sauce, and fresh pesto is being made from one end to the other with giant vats of sauce  bubbling up and down the street,  all competing for the honors.

The smells are nothing short of heaven.

My father was a first generation Italian and the Italian side of my family was how we leaned . It was large and wonderful, teeming with Aunts and Uncles and a small army of cousins. Family mattered when I was growing up  as a child and  nearly every Sunday was spent at Gramma & Grampa’s house. I have nothing but wonderful ,  sweet memories of that part of my youth. Gramma spoke hardly a word of English, though it didn’t matter to her or us. Her goal was to make sure we were fed as often as possible before we left her house in spite of my mother’s protestations of, “Ma, they just ate! ”

There was always room for another bowl of my Gramma’s pasta.

I have only two dear Aunts left now, and all but one of my cousins. Sadly, I hardly ever see any of them, and when I do it’s to hear of yet another passing of these lovely people who made up such a big part of my young life. I’m sad to have grown so distant from my cousins and regret not being in touch as we now grow older.

They say every journey begins from home. I ventured out into the world as a young adult very confident of who I was and where and who I came from. I had a  solid home base as a launching pad in life. I had a culture and a family with a history to relate to. They gave me so much by simply  being there. I’m sorry that so many are gone and I no longer have the opportunity to thank them for that. And if they were here,  I would let them all know, that  family mattered  – very much.

(featured photo , canvas collage – WISH YOU WERE HERE , by Catherine Massaro)

I was watching my favorite channel, The Western Channel, for my back to back late afternoon fix of first Gunsmoke, then Bonanza. My favorite Gunsmoke shows are the ones with Festus Hagan, an erasible, but lovable  hillbilly.

Festus was conversing with a friend who mentioned it was her birthday and asked Festus when his birthday was. Festus said he had no idea, as his family never celebrated such events. He said this.

                               ” You were just borned…and then you just lived.” Festus Hagan

Ah, the wisdom of Festus.

I considered the simplicity of this as well as what celebrated events birthdays are in our modern lives. October is such a big birthday month for so many people I know and love. Four dear friends, my son, brother, father and niece . My son was born on my brother’s birthday – a double birthday hit. I start making sure cards and gifts are organized by the end of September to make sure it all happens on time. If you grew up in a family that celebrated your special day, as I did, it seems important to mark that person’s entry into life and make note to both them and you that you are glad they are here.

Now long distances in miles and in some cases a loved one’s passing, keep me from celebrating in person with any of these special folks.

So I send them all this modern technology birthday cake and wish them again, another trip around the sun…till next year.

And oh yes, as Festus would say… JUST LIVE!

Consider your heart a cocoon from which dreams emerge.

(detail of canvas collage, COCOON, by Catherine Massaro)

As an artist, it’s both frustrating and humbling to constantly be reminded how futile it is to try to beat nature at creating beautiful things. All efforts seem so futile when you look closely at the simplest of things … the patterns on a seashell, the colors of a bird’s feathers, the clouds overhead. I use nature as my teacher and every day is again a reminder there is simply no way to learn these wonders in such a short time. It’s like always being in kindergarten.

I remain always on my knees in appreciation of the wondrous beauty of it all.

If someone or something always gets the last word, let it be Mother Nature. What good and lovely hands to be in, from the beginning to the end.

(featured photo by Catherine Massaro)

“I’m a member of the last generation of American children whose parents, especially mothers, did not worry about us almost constantly .” 

These are words from one of my favorite column writers on parenting, John Rosemond. www.rosemond.com

How I  loved the freedom I had as a child. Especially in the summer when our only requirements were to be home at 6 o’clock sharp for dinner, know where your brother and sister are, and don’t bleed out. Cuts were fine, bruises were fine, anything that required stitches or expensive trips to a doctor were not fine. We survived summers on great big bandaids and hydrogen peroxide. That’s that great stuff that bubbles up when it hits your wound and disinfects whatever evil you fell into. We looked like wild animals by the end of summer, just in time for school to start. Then came haircuts, hard shoes, and a return to schedules and accountability. Yet checking in was still slim. Dinner at 6 sharp NEVER changed, but it was up to us to seek out mom if there was trouble, and that was to be avoided if at all possible. Mostly because she was busy working and expected us to figure it out ourselves – which we did. It made us independent  in behavior and independent thinkers as well.

My mom was there for us though, solid as a rock, both soft and prickly. My independent streak drifted well into high school where I was consistently in trouble as I tested the boundaries of just how far I could go with practicing adulthood. I had many hard landings, including one very memorable expulsion. And just when I thought I had pushed the boundaries way past tolerance for even my father, I found a greeting card on my bed, with my dad’s handwriting on it. My father rarely, if ever, got involved with discipline problems which were my mother’s realm. So it was a surprise, to say the least , that my father had commented on my expulsion.

The picture  on the card was the famous Norman Rockwell painting of the little pig tailed girl, bruised black eye, all disheveled from a schoolyard skirmish, waiting on the bench outside the principals office – she had an impish smirk on her face. The inside of the card read simply,

HANG IN THERE.

Signed…

Love, dad

I still have that card, and still value how few words it took for him to tell me that it was my battle to fight , no matter what form it took, and love would be there to back it up.

Parenting back then was both soft and prickly … just like real life.

Thanks mom & dad.

Many, many years ago, ( when I was in my early 20’s) I took a battery of psychological tests, one of which was to ascertain skills and interests.
My three highest rankings came out like this:

1. officer in the military
2. homemaker
3. artist

My lowest score was nursing.

I was initially mystified by these results. What did these three seemingly unrelated professions have in common? It was explained to me that all three of these loved organizational behaviors. In the military, following organized thinking is very important when large groups of people must follow suit to accomplish a common goal. An officer though? Well, it showed I wanted to be in charge of the goal, leading rather than following.

The homemaker, having been raised in the bra burning era stunned me as well. But here it was again – organizing a well run home, replete with children, is highly organizational. Martha Stewart created an empire on this very premise. ( I love you Martha)

Now to the artist. Artists are lumped into the crazy bin of those living on the edge of madness and poverty. To the uninitiated in the arts, nothing could be further from the truth. The process of printmaking for instance, requires tremendous organizational thought both in the mind as well as the act of printing. Artists are forever trying to figure out the organizational principals of creating ideas that begin in the mind, but end up as a sculpture, a painting, a song.

So back to the happy homemaker. I have always enjoyed my living spaces. Apartment or house, boat or campsite, it was an organizational challenge to both decorate and create a refuge. It should be a happy place, and indeed, anywhere I could set up a ‘home’ environment was a happy place to me. I like to think all my mother’s efforts to teach my sister and I the skills of homemaking contributed greatly in my appreciation of this realm. But as it turns out, it was never the ‘home’ that made me happy, it was the exercise of organizing the space. And as it turns out, organizing space , color, shapes on a canvas was not any different for me than organizing furniture, plants, or rugs in a room. Organizing things settles my mind and helps me make sense of things. So while a home can make you happy, it’s sole purpose should not be ‘happiness’. What does that mean then if we become suddenly ‘unhappy’? Is our house to blame? We cannot perfect our lives by perfecting our homes.
And just as there is organization in nature, we should strive to find that lovely balance of organization within our home to sooth the mind and create that happy place to buffet us from the noisy, complicated world we have created outside our doors.

(featured photograph by Catherine Massaro)

So, this is a rather long story if you care to indulge yourself in epic failures I’ve had, that somehow changed my life for the better.

I landed a job once at a time when I needed it most, though my entire life as I knew it was going to hell. A place I had always dreamt about working, New York City.

The job started out in Long Island, Central Islip for those of you who know that part of the world, but since the showroom was in Manhattan, I was able to convince my boss that I could get more done working out of the city rather than the manufacturing plant in Islip. I was thus spared the daily ride in to Penn Station on the Long Island Railroad, plus the indignity of living in Central Islip.

The job was more money than I had ever made, but my expenses were as well. I was paying a lawyer for a divorce, my shrink for my sanity, my son was in a private school in Connecticut and I was slowly going bankrupt from it all. So I needed that job just to hang on to my crumbling life. As circumstances would have it, my boss was a complete shit head of the most manipulative, evil, diabolical kind. A truly dangerous fellow who liked trapping his employees into personal loans for cars, and their children’s college debt, vacation home mortgages and the like and then holding their feet to the fire knowing they could not quit on him. He would then proceed to humiliate and verbally abuse them publicly in the workplace, knowing they were trapped. I had a fellow working with me, dear Julian, who warned me from the start to never, ever, take a thing from him and I heeded his warning. Came a day, when the entire sales and creative team was at the big conference table to review sales from market week, and the shit started hitting the fan – big time. Mr. Evil started at one end of the table ( I was at the very end) and one poor schmuck at a time, he berated their work and them personally till I was almost white faced watching their humiliation. He was however, making his way quickly towards me, and I realized my father would be turning in his grave knowing I was working for such a despicable man. I had had enough of being manipulated in my marriage, saw the ugly connection of putting up with crap and the long term harm it had done me, and suddenly my therapy kicked in and I knew I had to make a call. I slowly put all my files into my briefcase, stood up calmly and faced him down at the opposite end of the big oval conference table and said exactly that –

“If my father knew I was working for such a horrible person he would turn in his grave. I quit.”

As I marched out of the room, watching the looks of horror on my fellow coworker’s faces, he screamed at me, “You will never work here again!”

No problem, I was gone. It was time to go. And I felt like a bird let out of a cage as I marched down 5th Avenue free from tyranny – until I got to Washington Square, when it dawned on me that I was now living in one of the most expensive cities in the world… without a job.

Well, long story short, things got bad and things got worse. Within 2 months I crashed and burned both physically and emotionally and landed back in Buffalo, filing for bankruptcy, living with my mother, completely incoherent and on lots of Prozac. That’s how things can go when you make grown up decisions. I just knew no amount of money was going to be worth that paycheck, no matter how much I was loving being in New York City, and I surely was loving it.

But the most wonderful thing happened … I started to get better fairly quickly after I let go of the nightmare that had become my life. I crept slowly and painfully back into the working world, one sweet little low paying job after another, eventually without pharmaceuticals, and a newfound strength and freedom. Where I landed about 5 years later is sort of a fairy tale ending, but it just goes to show … you should know when it’s time to go!

(featured image – oil on canvas, THE ESCAPE ARTIST, by Catherine Massaro)