Coming Home

   I sat there today.  I sat right there.  Right in the middle of me.  There around me was my artwork.  I began to look at the nine pieces hanging up at Cafe Luna for the month of November.  I spoke with a young lady who I once taught at Longmont High School.  She is nearly 25, now, and getting married.  She spoke to me about how she had not created art since high schoool.  My two time Advanced Placement Studio Art scholar had not worked for six years.  She said she was ready and wanted to take up her tools to create.

   So, I took her down my path.  I told her about my first piece I created out of the classroom, on my own, for myself, out of my own head.  I was 25 and living on my own right here in my first apartment duplex in Longmont, Colorado.  I was getting married the next year.  This piece, titled Luna Nina, is now retired in bubble wrap under my son's bed.  Interestingly, the cloud formation in Luna Nina shows a striking semblance to the one in Mt. Meeker and Long's Peak from Airport Road, the one with the echanecia  In fact, I began to look around and there they all were.

   One shared the color pallet of the next one which shared the bits of map with the next one.  And, that one shared the horizon line with the one next to it.  There is a story with each.  I talked with my student about how each time I had something happen to me, a graduation, a miscarriage, a birth, a cancer diagnoses, I had to claw my way back to my home.  I pulled out a bright white, new canvas and begun.  I stumbled.  I hated what I made.  I doubt myself.  I hated myself.  I doubted that I was ever what one would title an artist.  Yet, I painted over that ugly mess, turned on my music and stopped thinking.  I made art.  I doodled.  I flowed.  No, those first pieces aren't my favorites.  These pieces are about coming home.  And, once there, wow! 

  

   Come home

   my lovely. 

   Turn off your
   head.
   Let loose
   of binding
   strings.
   Be free
   in the dance.
   Come home.
   Welcome.

   Home.