Inspiration.

I think back on the visual work that has impacted me the most.

I think I have been seriously looking at artwork, hanging on walls, in museums (or galleries) for 15 years now. However, I know I have been fascinated for so much longer... childhood field trips to the Portland Museum of Art I took very seriously; I can remember being quiet and still in the 2nd floor Impressionist rooms, while my classmates buzzed up and down the hallway of half circle windows. I too remember going to the Bowdoin Museum of Art and feeling genuine awe over a painting with waves crashing upon rocks. This was young, this was 6,7,8; so it's been a long time that artwork has affected me.

I was in Vienna, and I got a 1-2 punch at 16; it was the old Hundertwasser-Basquiat combination. First I walked into Kunst Haus Wien and entered one man's vision. UNEVEN FLOORS! BRIGHT COLORS! METALLICS! PLANTS EVERYWHERE! NUDITY! FLAGS! POSTAGE STAMPS! VIDEO! Real Life Vision, complete and full, Friedrich Hundertwasser was living his life and creating his vision, he made public housing in his odd kooky style. Too Cool. There were faces in the landscapes, there were no right angles, there were lines overlapping lines, to create depth... AND THEN! I walk up his brightly tiled staircase and there is a whole room of Jean Michel Basquiat. *blink*blink* Surprise, Awe and Wonder quickly became my best friends as I so, so, so slowly crawled my way through that gallery.

I was truly astounded, I'd never seen anything like this before, and it blew this little teenager from Maine out of the water. In hindsight, that could have been the moment that I changed; that I became destined for the rest of my life... in the middle of a trip to a city, Vienna, that I loved greater than any city, that filled my senses the way you hope to be when one travels... and then! To find an artist that I could predict nothing about, where every brushstroke and assemblage was a COMPLETE new experience, where this somewhat jaded, and arguably naive young woman loved everything she saw, and it built on itself. He was showing me something raw, internal, secret, the work was grimy and crude. There were issues of Race, of Insanity, of Class and of Sex, it was unreal and amazing and I was so ready for it to come to me, this artwork, and have it knock me off my feet. That was the first time which artwork affected me like that, and over the next ten years of travel and city living I had a lot of flings with different artist's works.

There was the time that Picasso's ghost spoke to me at MOMA.

I remember Robert Longo's charcoal drawings of Freud's office in Paris gave me a real run for my money.

I stood in the Marimekko Factory, staring up at hundreds upon hundreds of screens which they used to print every fabric they had ever made.

Seeing photographs of Louise Nevelson wearing scarves around her head and fake eyelashes on her eyes.

I sat in a dark, Rothko enshrined gallery for hours meditating on the melding of colors.

The way Egon Schiele was using his pencil line and eraser to create the female form, just the way I had just learned to do in my drawing classes (not to mention his ability to show the pose, the gesture, the grace and angles of the human body).

There was that piece at the Portland, Oregon Art Museum Biennial which had the view of a typical breakroom made of masking tape on the wall which depicted a Garfield Poster that had me laughing in the genius of it all.

Oh and the way the Push Pin Graphic expressed so simply their ideas with humor, joy and fantastic design.

There were our Wednesday Painting Nights, which challenged me to create and I watched Matthew Brennan's progress from a painter to a drawer, creating detailed, emotional machines.

There are the virtual places I see inspiration now, at Jen May & Devon Kelly-Yurdin's everyday, sometimes, they stayed committed to daily pieces, which they create surprise little diptychs together.

I've watched Lindy Weston's Etsy shop fill up and empty with her functional, fabric collages which she so effortlessly and enthusiastically puts together and then shares.

My life has been full of artistic inspiration, and I have been forever thankful for it. This last Friday evening however I was thrown. for. a. loop. Let me tell you I wasn't expecting this one at all. Typical opening at The Tides Institute & Museum here in the center of Bank Square in Eastport. Kristin had told me that she loved this woman's work. I sort of filed it all in the back of my mind, because that's where my artistic inspiration seems to reside primarily now that I am the mother of a 1 year old... far away... out of touch... in the place where I used to have concentrated hours, day after day of time to myself. That's where I'd chucked my input for artwork that floors me button. I didn't even know I was capable of being flipped upside down anymore, I think I had inadvertently decided I didn't have room for that anymore.

But that's when it comes, doesn't it? Just like true love... when you're done... you're ready to be alone for the rest of your life and you've accepted your fate... then whammo! You meet Rafi and then not too much longer you meet Cecilia and you have a garden and a house and chickens and cats and you cook dinner every night and you've decided that you can be content with your highest level of creation being meal prep and after-dinner-knitting and drawing with crayons with your daughter. That felt like an option I could accept as my life.

But then you walk into a museum and you see Janice Wright Cheney's artwork, and you make a preliminary sweep with your baby on your back and you think, well that was kind of interesting, and no I don't want to talk to anyone, I better go look at that embroidery of a parasite done with red and pink thread again, just to check out what's really happening there. Whoa, that's actually pretty interesting. Maybe I'll mosey back over to the couch, draped with a silk nightgown, covered in 40+ little knit silkworms. Huh. Around the corner, to the indigo dyed, embroidered cells in petrie dishes, under glass. These are beautiful. The display case of 3 images describing the trespasses between man and the fabric industry by using toile print and embroidery. Well I guess it's time to turn around and face the wolf taxidermy forms covered in fabric, how did she do that? Why did she put glass eyeballs on them? Why is that lace cascading out of that one's mouth? And I'm walking around trying not to be overwhelmed, and not to show my enthusiasm, because I definitely do not want to talk about these pieces right now. I'm not ready, I haven't ingested them enough. I haven't even looked at them alone yet. This room is full of people, and how am I supposed to share my awe, interest, intrigue, questions, and be so vulnerable to an entire gallery full of people? Better to sip seltzer in the corner and take Winnie for a walk outside and come back over and over again and go to the artist's talk next week.

What astounds me is how off-guard this work took me, I find it feminist and sensual, and practical and exploratory and scientific, beautiful of course, intricate, the process of creating, the time spent moving needle in and out of fabric. The conceptual sculptural aspect, and to have it here in my little town of Eastport. It just found me, grabbed me, made me stand up and take notes. Made me sit down and write a list at my desk of summer projects, made me complete 2 of them on Saturday. I have to think that this slightly jaded Mommy was ready to receive this art and was reminded of her artistic center, just as she was too tired to do anything else with herself as an artist. There is no more waiting when you're an artist, you must create when the energy is there for you, and I'm inspired!