Loose Ends, New Beginnings

From the book, I Hope You Dance, by
Mark Sanders and Tia Sillers.

It's that funny time between Christmas and the New Year. Today, against all odds in northern Ohio, the sun is brilliant in the sky; even though I slept in, it's the kind of sunshine that makes you want to jump out of bed on a winters' day and greet the world. It makes you want to dance.

I haven't put the Christmas tree ornaments away yet. In fact, I just finished clearing off the dining room table yesterday, finally removing the soiled tablecloth and taking it outside for a good shake before putting it in the laundry pile. I haven't done much in the way of "necessary" work this week: laundry, grocery shopping and the like. I'm on vacation.

Thanksgiving builds its' crescendo to Christmas Eve dinner, the big day at our house, I rise to the occasion, making plans, decorating, preparing pies and special dishes, shopping in local boutiques, trying to find just the right gift at the right price. After the family dinner on Christmas Eve, everyone opens their sleigh gift, and the night dissolves into family stories over dessert, talks, conversations in the corner, and mellow holiday punch. After that, my vacation begins.

I used the time this past week to tie up loose ends. This gets me ready for the new year. I like to start out with a clean slate, or at least a good start on one. I worked on my genealogy piles, scanning pictures and documents, following up on correspondences that have winked at me for weeks when I was too busy to form a reply. I got a good start on thank you notes, returned phone calls, organized my recipe books, returning the loose pages pulled out for the holidays. I gathered stacks of cardboard boxes for the next recycling truck, made a bag of donations, scanned my pile of new books into Goodreads to add to my "want to read" list. I even started reading one of my new books, Michelle Obama's "Becoming."

May Queen, a collage in progress by
Gayle Pritchard

There are plenty of loose ends in my studio, as well. Because my attic access is through the closet in that room, it gets piled up with Christmas boxes, wrapping paper, gift bags and the like. When I'm not working, the table gets covered with piles of collage papers I haven't put away yet, mending projects, and large pieces of artwork that have been moved to make room for a visiting guest or two. I didn't get the table cleared off completely, but I did pull out a few things to finish up.

This collage, I call it May Queen, was started back in July in a play-day with my art group. I made several pieces that day, but I really liked this one. I pulled it out this week and finished gluing the three dimensional elements in place. I plan to darken the blue botanical drawing in the bottom right corner, and maybe add a line of nice blue oil pastel, melted to a lip-sticky consistency, along the curve of the woman's back on the left. I think that will do it. The collage was created on stretched canvas, so I will either frame it with found wood pieces, or find a box or frame to pop it into.

As the new year approaches, I wish you peace and happiness. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance. I plan to. Happy New Year.

About Thankfulness

Bye, Bye Daddy: putting together the pieces of an idea

It was Black Friday, 1992, though I don't think we called the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday" back then, or, if we did, it wasn't such a crazy big deal as it is now. In any case, my family celebrated Thanksgiving day with my in-laws when they were still hosting the family feast. We had done this since we were first married. It was the one holiday in my husband's family where everyone, no matter where they were and what they were doing, made a huge effort to travel to Ohio to join the Thanksgiving day feast. Our family stories for years were measured in yearly Thanksgiving day beats.
As was also usual, I called my Dad on Friday to see how his holiday went, to touch base, to chat, to hear his voice. It was evening time, and when he picked up the phone, his voice sounded funny. We had a short and sweet conversation, and when I said goodbye, he replied with an uncharacteristic "bye, bye." I hadn't told him I loved him. By the next morning he was dead; Saturday, November 28, 1992. I am thankful we had spoken the night before.

Fast-forward twenty-six years, another Thanksgiving weekend, and here I sit, like I do every post-Thanksgiving weekend, remembering and still loving and missing my Dad. That part never goes away. I had lost my mom the year before Daddy died, in 1991. Her death was sudden, too, and shocked me to the core, because I had never experienced a loss like that before. Dad's sudden death numbed me somewhere deep inside, where a part of me would move forward permanently broken.

Part of my dad's shirt holds together the other bits
and pieces pulled together to tell the story.

Luckily for me, I am an artist. I have a place to put those feelings, to let them birth out of me into the world where I (and other viewers) can contemplate the expression. It wasn't long after Dad died that I started this piece using bits of his clothing, a photo-transfer I made of an old Army picture, rubbings made in Mexico, hand dyed fabrics, and Depression-era ration tickets for food and gas transferred onto fabric. I got to tell my story and begin to heal my soul.
I have made several artworks about my Dad over the decades since he died, each time reprocessing my thoughts and feelings onto another surface, something I can hold up and examine. I call this group of artwork  my Hero Series. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to show the pieces in numerous venues, and thankful for the chance to touch and connect with a new audience each time.
I became obsessed with genealogy research after my Dad died. On a shelf in his bedroom closet, there was a stack of photographs that I had never seen. Dad's sister Carole, the genealogist on that side of the family, had sent them. He hadn't shown them to me or my siblings. That was a the beginning of a new way to heal for me. Instead of feeling like an orphan, I could literally connect myself to a larger family.

Hero 4: Bye Bye, Daddy by Gayle Pritchard. An ancient Tibetan prayer box anchors the top,
and my story is written in on the fabric as well as hung onto embellishments that hang down
or are stitched onto the surface. Over dad's Army picture, juxtaposed in strips with the
statue of David, there is a sheer veil, my representation of death.

With a chance to do some lazy-day, Thanksgiving holiday digging around on my computer, a moment of serendipity occurred. I was adding photos and scanned documents to my Ancestry family tree, when I ran across a 1949 clipping my sister had found online during a newspaper search. It had the simple heading: Airport News.

Neil Vickery, my dad, landed at this airport.
At that time, 1949, he was a barnstormer,
doing air shows around the area. 

"Hmmm, interesting", I thought. I have vivid memories of barnstormers who flew into my small hometown. We would stand in our backyard and watch in amazement as they performed tricks in the sky. I could now put my dad's face on those brave flyers.
Then I ran across a picture of dad from 1949. It is actually a photocopy of a picture of dad, and I wish I knew who has the original. In the photograph, he is standing next to his biplane. He's wearing a flight suit and, instead of his flashy Army aviation sunglasses, he has flight goggles pushed up onto his leather flying cap.
For a moment in time, I am connected to my dad in the year 1949, eight years before I was born. Two moments in time, a newspaper clipping and a photograph taken of the young flyer, fell into my lap as a gift. Both had been sitting in my computer, but I had never put them together before. Now, a little piece of my dad had been returned to me. I am so thankful.

My dad, the flyer, the barnstormer, in a picture dated 1949.

Art in Cleveland = Article Gallery

Hope you can join us at the opening or the closing!

Once again, my art group pals and I are having an exhibition. Curator Mary Urbas and Article Gallery director Louis Ross invited us to exhibit there during Women's History Month. So exciting!

I have so enjoyed creating a great deal of new work for this show: fiber art mixed media quilts and hangings, stitched mixed media collages, and 3-D work. I'll show you more over the coming weeks. Here are a few detail glimpses:

Embellishments being added to Travel Ban.

Adding stitching, both hand and machine, to my collage, Lost Angels.

Jill Milenski, Gail Crum and I will also be giving a gallery talk at the closing in April. We hope to see you!