I like to say that art is all about noticing things, making connections. I haunt antique malls for this purpose. It’s sort of creepy to some people, the idea of going through other people’s things. Voyeuristic I suppose, creeping around the edges of others’ lives by virtue of the things they left behind. Still, I am unapologetic about my habit, and find it an irresistable pastime.

It’s the same attraction I have to clotheslines. Clotheslines connect me to the past while grounding me to the present. When I hang clothes, sheets, towels on a clothesline, I’m my mom, my grandmother, and countless women who came before me doing this mundane chore. I’m a child again, and a grown up too. I’m a pioneer woman and a modern day version of same. I never, ever cease to enjoy the activity. I can experience how the sun connects us all, and  the basic things we all have in common, just from the simple act of hanging wet clothes on a clothesline.

And that’s not even the best part, as you all know. The best part is burying your face in that dry, sweet, sunshine infused laundry. There is an old Zen saying:  

After ecstasy, the laundry.

I think about this saying whenever I’m taking warm laundry off the line, and have to laugh to myself … because I’ve got it reversed—After the laundry comes my ecstasy.

( photo detail of LONG LIVE THE SUN, canvas collage by Catherine Massaro)

I wished for love – I have been loved.

I wished for money – it came and went.

I wished for a car – it was freedom!

I wished for long hair – then cut it all off.

I wished for a job – I got a paycheck.

I wished for a warm winter – I still do.

I wished for excitement – and found it.

I wished for a divorce – and got it.

I wished for peace of mind – daily.

I wished for wonder – and it surrounds me.

I wished for escape – and learned how to leave.

I wished for a studio – dreams come true.

I wished for New Mexico – days of heaven.

I wished for connections – where is my tribe?

I wished for friends – they give me joy.

I wished for a road trip – to never end.

I wished for my youth – and I got a grandchild.

I wished for a good nights sleep – and to die peacefully in it. 

I wished for art school – where I found myself.

I wished for a pony – but never got it.

I wished for my period – most of the time it came.

I wished for a girl – and got a boy, with no regrets.

( see ART tab for  WHAT I WISHED FOR  canvas collage)

” Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but … life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

                                                    Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A most beautiful excerpt from my favorite new book, “When Women Were Birds” by Terry Tempest Williams.

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

( canvas collage by CATHERINE MASSARO, “Bird on the Wire”)

You can change your entire outlook on life today. You can change your point of view on every move you make by considering this.

It’s not HAPPINESS you should count on in life.

It’s CHANGE.

I can count on the weather changing –  and look forward to the seasons.

I can count on getting older – as I watch my grandaughter grow and thrive.

I can count on life being a puzzling challenge – and proudly finding the pieces that create the picture of my life.

And for now…right now, I can count on the sun rising daily and setting each night. And with everything I do in between those hours I can count on change to guide me through each second, minute, and hour of  my life.

(photo by Catherine  Massaro –  sunrise over the Grand Canyon)

Usually around June, like a migrating bird, I start leaning towards Taos, New Mexico.

I must have been around 27 years old when I first learned of Taos. At the time I was hosting a weekly life drawing group out of my home/studio in Kansas City. Gosh it was a great group of women, one of which went on at great length one week about her recent trip to Taos, where she attended a week long watercolor group. My dear friend Maureen and I were mesmerized by her stories and made a vow to go that following year. Not only did we go that year, but for 15 subsequent years thereafter, we made it our annual painting trip. I recall only one year where we had a break – that was a post miserable divorce for me when I was stone cold broke, and during her husband’s kidney transplant. It was always the highlight of my year and I think hers as well. Eventually we abandoned the workshops altogether and simply went on our own.

If you have never had a great painting buddy as an artist, I can’t really explain the kinship. Nor can I relate the connection or bond you develop with a place. And that’s what it was like for  us and Taos.

So, here it is June, and here I go again. Sadly not to meet up with Maureen to paint, but happily to be with another dear friend and old neighbor, Victoria. Almost 10 years ago when I lived in Taos, Victoria lived across the road in her sweet domed house. Life on the Arroyo Hondo mesa, on the outskirts of Taos proper, was rugged and windblown but magnificently beautiful. Easily the most beautiful place I have ever lived. As always with these beautiful places I have been privileged to live in though – winter came. Cold, wind and the dreaded snow.

But New Mexico got in and stayed in my blood.

” …become intoxicated by this irresistible high-altitude landscape they now share with previous generations of settlers. As Georgia O’Keefe once wrote:”

“If you ever go to New Mexico, it will itch you for the rest of your life.” 

It’s all so temporary.

All of it.

Lest you forget…

Your body’s ambition is mulch.

(photograph by Catherine Massaro)

” Nature is PAINTING for us, day after day, pictures of infinite BEAUTY.”

John Ruskin

 

For over a decade now I’ve lived in somewhat rural places, usually with a fair amount of acreage around the property. The good and bad to living like this is nature tends to creep on you. The upside ; lots of wildlife, vistas, stars at night, well water, distance between you and any neighbors. The down side – nature creeps on you.

I spent the last week pulling up sage, lots of sage, weeds of all high desert growth, grasses, and cutting back desert hardy plants like Arctic willow and , oh yea, did I mention sage? I love and hate sage. I love the smell of it as it always reminds me of New Mexico. But it will, and can, grow fast and everywhere you don’t want it to in the high desert. I would rather spend hours beating back nature from my doorstep than an equal amount of time in a clean gym pounding down on a treadmill. The satisfaction I get from yard-scaping is immeasurable . It’s a different sort of canvas for me. Rocks and dirt, sage and gravel, pine trees and boulders.

This creep of nature is humbling. It’s a no win proposition, year after year. But I love it. I love to be reminded over and over again, that NATURE GETS THE LAST WORD.

( photo by Catherine Massaro)

There are so many good art books out there. One of my favorites is, THE VIEW from the Studio Door, by Ted Orland. It’s a book on how artists find their way in an uncertain world.

Here is an excerpt that I found particularly valuable to me.

“…When it comes to making art, our intuition is often light – years ahead of our intellect… we sense the meaning of the world unconsciously and capture that meaning through our art – and then have to wait for our intellect to understand what we already knew.”

Something I learned in my last body of work, featured in this web site (TO END IS TO BEGIN) was to go with my intuition and not second guess either my motive or the outcome of the work. I just started doing it – one after the other for over a year and a half. It was only the following year that what I had created became clear to me. They still reveal things to me everyday.

( feature photo – Studio Massaro/ NV – interior, by Catherine Massaro)