What a morning! While picking up my friend Lee for our weekly artist date, my car died at his home. I called my frantically busy husband for help, called the car dealership, called my car insurance company for tow service (only to find out we don't have it anymore) and a tow company. It was crazy time. In the middle of it, my daughter wanted to go to a gathering at a boy’s house, with no adults around. I had put off breakfast and was having a low-sugar meltdown in the midst of this. Lee sat quietly and watched as I juggled phone calls, arguments, schedules and rides.
Two hours later, the car started again, the tow was cancelled, a service call was scheduled, my daughter was off to her party, and all was well again.
Lee lives alone in a cave-like room filled with his art. He has mental illness and is “in the system”, a labyrinth-like maze of social services, rules and reimbursements. He devotes most of his time to producing art, wild and crazy assemblages that cover his walls. He lives and breathes his art, often working through the night as the spirit moves him. He has no car and money is tight, yet he often gives away his art. He is totally responsible only for himself. His life sometimes seems the exact opposite of mine.
As we catch our breath back in my studio, with hot coffee and toast in front of us, I say to him, “See how crazy this all got! Is it a relief to you, that you don’t have to deal with all this 'stuff'?”
“No!” exclaimed Lee, “I love it! I wish I had that in my life.”
We talked more about juggling life and art, love and strife, schedules and artistic freedom. I sometimes wonder if he finds me a dilettante, a “happy housewife” comfortable in my cluttered studio and beads and baubles strewn around on tabletops. “No!” he said again. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me!”
Why on earth would he think that??
Because, he explained, his art is dark and unhappy. His assemblages have become wild and raw, “like a bar room brawl!” But he isn’t like that, he say. As he always explains, he has mental illness, but that doesn’t mean he is stupid/angry/incompetent or dark. He is happy and exuberant about life, and he wants his art to reflect that.
When he came to my open studio last fall, he says my art and my passion for it set him on fire. He felt a sea change coming on.
He went home and turned his room into a cave. He made “cave art” for the next few months, and drew a portrait of me set in a cave. I look fierce, wise, and beautiful—I love it! I am astounded that this is how he sees me.
But now he is ready to move his art to another place, something simpler yet powerful. He found a marvelous vintage book on folk toys, and we looked through it together. Simple, fierce toys, full of life and love. This is his next phase, he announced. This is where he wants his art to go.
And he feels I’ve helped him get there, with my warmth, my honesty, and my passion for my work. And because my life is NORMAL. He craves normalcy right now. Schedules. People to love in his life who are demanding and messy and noisy and full of life.
What a gift this man is to me right now! He has given me permission to have a normal life and still make art. And apparently, I have given him permission to make art and strive to have a normal life.
