Jeanne Miles: Reflections on Jeanne, Genes and Art

Sound of Children's Laughter, 1954
Gold leaf, oil on canvas
28" x 29 1/4"
http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/miles.html 

I only met Jeanne Miles (1908-1999), a painter and my grandmother's older sister, twice that I remember.

The second time was 1987 when I was in my teens. Jeanne was almost 80 by then and a bit frail, or so it seemed to me in my robust youth. She was in town to receive an Alumni Achievement Award from George Washington University.  Jeanne had been the first woman to admitted to the art school there. She spent her career as a working artist and sometimes teacher. 

I remember standing in the crowd milling around after the GWU ceremony and watching her speak with some enthusiastic young man, and the way she turned her hand to gesture, making a point. We have the same fine-boned stance, so if I had been paying attention, I might have noted the similarities in our bony wrists. But as a teenager, I doubt I was paying that much attention to genes or Jeanne. I have no memory of the rest of the day, if we spent time with her or if we were just passing members of the audience, showing our support for family. 

What I remember more vividly is meeting Aunt Jeanne the first time, when my family went to visit her at her Greenwich Village loft in NYC, when I was around nine years old.

Her apartment had deliciously high ceilings, tons of sunlight, warm wood floors, not much furniture, a galley kitchen, and a window that we all stepped through to a enter her rooftop city garden. We sat in the sun at a wooden table with a cloth over it, listening to the taxi cabs honk below us. I have the idea that there were delicate china cups, but that might be an embellishment to real memory, adding a festive tea party element.

#105, 1991
Oil, gold leave/bronze on board
40 " diameter
http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/miles.html

Her place also had an attic/loft area full of all kinds of interesting junk. I know, as I was sent up the ladder there to fish out a dehumidifier a relative was borrowing from her, and would have stayed up there in the dusty wonderland with large wooden trunks and a dressmaker mannequin much longer had I not been summoned back down.

Jeanne had all kinds of stuff, not just in the attic loft, but elsewhere, paints, paintings, tools, brushes. Her rooms were alive and focused on the process she engaged in. Her whole apartment reminded me of my father's workbench in the basement, or the corner of my mother's bedroom dedicated to her sewing, places where ideas fermented. Jeanne's apartment was no staid parlor. It was a studio -- a living-and-breathing environment.

The best part of her apartment: an easel with a half-done painting sitting front and center in the middle of her living room. Geometric with gold leaf, circles and shades of red, it added its presence to the conversation as clearly as another person.

Jeanne's NYC Bohemia sang a far and deliciously different note from my suburban upbringing where everything matched and creating was done in secret behind closed doors.

I didn't know that people could live their lives and make their livings creating things in their living rooms, not normal every-day people that I was related to. 

And by the time I was a teenager, I'd forgotten that possibility.

By then, I assumed that I would follow the life that most of my peer group would, and that would include dressing up in uncomfortable clothes to shuffle into an office and chatting by the coffeemaker about budgets.

I spent ten years in cubicles, meeting lovely and kind, and a few not-so-kind people, and being less than engaged by billing spreadsheets and mortgages. I wished that I could find the intellectual satisfaction that seemed to come so easily for coworkers, missions they could embrace, career paths and expertise growing over the years. The passion for traditional business worlds eluded me. Instead, I fled those offices for graduate school in creative writing. From there, after trying and failing again to find the perfect cubicle, I edged my way into freelance work.

A relative once described me, when I was bemoaning my tendency to balk at the mainstream, as "being just like Aunt Jeanne -- you just do whatever you want."

Poor quality photograph of one
of Jeanne's prints.
Family collection. 

While I certainly didn't feel like that was true at the time -- what I was conscious of wanting then was to fit in the mainstream, to be easily stamped acceptable without comment, and more to the point, to be happy -- I now hope that it will be increasingly true in the future.

I don't know all that much about Aunt Jeanne's life. I've read a few articles on her and gleaned info from probably faulty family gossip, but the few facts I do know intrigue me. 

In 1937 she spent a year in living in Tahiti (blue-green waters!) on an art grant. I know she lived in Paris for a time (a city I'm slightly in love with even though I've only spent a total of five days there) and that she had some trouble getting out of France because of the war. She was, by any estimation, an adventurous soul.

I know some of her art, from the pieces scattered through family homes and from what I've gleaned online. With familial pride, I'll say I think it's pretty darn cool that she exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery and has work in the permanent collection at the Guggenheim. Her work became increasingly geometric over her career and included reflections on the spiritual significance of those shapes, with an emphasis on mandalas.

From a brief marriage to another painter, she has a daughter, Joanna Miles, an Emmy-award winning actress living in Los Angeles whom I've never met in person, but sends me a Christmas card every year (no, I can't get you a meeting with a producer; don't ask).

I have dim memories of Jeanne from those two meetings, but largely, I was just tagging along after the grown-ups. I didn't know that we would turn out to have commonalities in tastes, nontraditional lives, a tendency to find painting absorbing and an affection for shiny things (metal mobiles for me; gold-leaf for Jeanne).

It may just be I'm searching hard for that connection now, to feed hope in my own artistic explorations. I've been slow in committing to an art life, lacking her nerve and crystalline talent, but still I find, I circle back. Jeanne was a bolder person, and I look to her for inspiration.

To a friend, when my art leanings became increasingly apparent, I noted "What I want is inconvenient." And in some ways, it is.

But for the people we really love and the passions that are really ours, we do the work, make the connections, travel the distances literal or psychological to get there. We give up the dinners out or a measure of social approval and slosh through awkwardness and missteps, because the trade-off is worth it.  For me, that means days spent immersed in creating images and worlds, tweaking sentences and refining ideas, studying craft and wading through frustration, solitary time and time with people who amaze and challenge me, these some of many elements that bring artists to the next new, gorgeous vista.

I want a life of paint-splattered, ink-stained exploration, not an exercise in polite endurance.

From family collection

I have a very large easel standing in the middle of my living room, inviting me to create every day.  And while the easel won't be moving with me, too long to fit in my car, the idea it represents will travel with me.

I'm listening now, Aunt Jeanne. Thanks.






More information on Jeanne Miles:

• http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/miles_text.htm
• http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/01/news/mn-5653
• http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/03/arts/jeanne-miles-90-abstract-artist-inspired-by-asian-art-and-ideas.html

Sketch Fest

My father, based on a photo circa 1975.

For my father's birthday, rather than give him one more shirt that he doesn't need or particularly want, I decided to spend a few days trying to create a portrait. 

If nothing else, it was an absorbing exercise for me. Only in retrospect did I realize that perhaps the shirt might have been more fun for Dad.  By way of metaphor, giving Dad art is about the same as giving me football tickets. 

But in any case, he knows I spent time thinking about him and his birthday -- a good long time, given all that erasing. So at least that requirement was met. 

I've been working on sketching, off and on, for the last few months, and minor progress continues. Some other attempts are below.

 

Tommy's Birthday

My brother Tommy

A friend of mine who lost his sister to cancer warned me that there were certain times of year, around her birthday and the date of her death, where he would just feel off, sunk in a glumness that he couldn't pinpoint, and then he would realize: Oh. Somewhere in his subconscious calendar, he was tracking the movement of time away from her. 

And so January creeps forward here. It's been busy with new projects and a sick cat and social outings and one thing or another, life the way it is, but today I realized: Oh. My brother Tommy's birthday is on Tuesday. That's the dark noise flittering around in the background. 

It's the third of his birthdays to pass since he died at age 45 in August 2009, and time has, as advertised, smoothed some of the sharp edges. 

The initial rawness was, in some ways, shocking in and of itself.  Because of my brother's severe autism, he lived in residential schools and group homes from when he was 7 and I was 2 years old.  I have no memory of him at home beyond vacations -- Christmas, Easter, summer break.  Sometimes, Mom and Dad would drive out to his school in Delaware, my sister and I packing the backseat full of Barbies to entertain us through the drive there and back. Susie is older and remembers him at home, but I don't. 

Tommy lived the last 24 years of his life in a small group home in Maine with some of the kindest people I've ever met working with him there. He made friends and went bowling and to baseball games, rode regularly with the therapeutic riding program he loved and kept the yard free of dandelions with a ruthless vigilance.

Tommy wasn't part of day-to-day life in my memory, so as much as I didn't expect his sudden death at only 45, I also didn't expect how much the finality of his absence would unravel me for a time.

For most of my childhood, Tommy injected a level of chaos into most family holidays. To be honest, the spitting and the bedwetting and the less-than-ideal table manners weren't all that much fun. But he was family and I felt that bond. We both took the same destructive glee in ripping into Christmas presents.  And he more glee in tidying up (I'm more of a slob; Tommy liked things in their place, although that order could remain mysterious to the rest of us).  

He didn't make much eye contact, but I do remember moments, hiding out with him, where I'd just sit next to him and talk when no one else was in the room. Mostly, he would rock back and forth and I couldn't tell if he was listening.  But every once in a while, usually when I made some crack about a relative, he'd shoot me a look as if to say, "Yeah, I know. They're all a little nuts."

This is what siblings do, exchange sidelong, knowing glances about the quirkiness of family.

We looked alike, and in some pictures, I see family expressions, the mix of Mom and Dad that came down to both of us.

And then we were not alike. I spoke; he didn't.  He hummed and rocked and flapped, the classic self-soothing mannerisms of autism.  

Autism diagnosis has exploded in the last 30 years.  But when I was a kid, half of my childhood cohort thought my brother was artistic, painting portraits in some garret.  No, I'd explain.  He was different. Really different.

When we were growing up, the now dismissed Refrigerator Mother theory put forward by Bruno Bettelheim and Leo Kanner was just falling out of fashion. They suggested that emotionally frigid mothers who turned away from their children inspired the emotional distance of autism.

Autism is now largely considered to be a genetic issue.  But in the 50s and 60s, all those mothers who had kids like Tommy were, on top of having to deal with the difficulties of having kids like Tommy, told his autism was their fault. I don't have kind feelings toward Bruno Bettelheim.

There weren't any autism walks or ribbons of awareness when Tommy and I were growing up. The resources available for him and my parents were frequently lumped together with children with related, but different issues needing different care. My parents spent innumerable hours investigating every new treatment that showed promise, from the B vitamin megadosing to hours working with Tommy on picture and word recognition. He went to day schools and, when he was older, bigger, and more energetic, to residential schools.  My parents navigated labyrinths of legal and funding options and did everything they could to make sure Tommy had every opportunity to be healthy and happy.  


I am thrilled that autistic people and their families today don't have explain nearly as much, that there are more and better options, that there are approaches that can help autistic people and their families connect more with each other. And I also wish more of those options, instead of Bruno Bettelheim, had been around for my family.   

One huge impact on my brother's life was the introduction of facilitated communication (FC).

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 1

Until that point, we were all told Tommy likely didn't understand much of what was going on around him. 

Facilitated communication is assisted letterboard typing, a treatment that grew out of work with people with cerebral palsy. It was not without controversy.  There were claims of it being a Ouija board, with the facilitator (deliberately or not) influencing the letters plucked out one by one by the client.

But then there were also autistic people that eventually no longer needed facilitators, who began to type out words on their own. No Ouija boards there. 

So in our 20s, Tommy and I finally got to have a conversation.

I believe FC worked for Tommy, that it was his voice speaking, not a facilitator's. Although he always had a facilitator with a hand on his arm back near his elbow, I think Tommy directed the chosen destination of his pointing finger on that letterboard.

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 2

What I can absolutely guarantee is that Tommy was happier when people treated him as if he could understand, when he was given choices, when he was asked questions and given opportunity to respond. 

He mellowed in his 30s and 40s (as we all do) and settled into a peaceful rural life in Maine, seeing my mother regularly after she moved nearby, seeing my father on his many trips north, participating in the therapeutic riding program in the summers, clearing those pesky dandelions out of the yard, working with the staff on treatment goals, including FC, to make his life more comfortable, and enjoying outings with his housemates. 

Tommy brought difficult issues with him; there is no way around that. 

But Tommy could also be refreshingly fun in his own particular way, in part because social conventions didn't apply for him. 

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 3

An example: at a family bbq at my aunt and uncle's house in the late 70s or so, Tommy arrived back at the table from a trip to the restroom quite happily naked. He was a nudist at heart, I think, and destroyed, bit by bit, thread by thread, countless shirts over his lifetime. I have a fond memory of watching one of his shoes go by my window when we were in the car. But on this occasion at my relatives' Pennsylvania home, he'd just ditched his whole wardrobe. It was hot; he was a clothing optional kind of guy. 

My mother (not endorsing the clothing optional approach) went to find his clothes, assuming he'd left them upstairs. 

And she could find no sign of them -- not in the bathroom, not in the closets, not in any of the bedrooms, not on the stairs, not anywhere. None of us could find them anywhere. We considered and rejected the flushability of his clothes (with mild plumber alarm) but it just didn't seem possible.  His clothes had just vanished, Tommy's personal magic trick.

Transcript, FC conversation, 7/25/1996 - p. 4

His dip into nudism was foiled that day, as Mom of course had other clothes in supply, but he definitely had his moment of making an entrance and creating a mystery. 

Some days later, my aunt dropped something on the bathroom floor and when she leaned down to retrieve it, happened to see a bit of cloth hanging down behind the radiator.  And pulling on that, she then discovered, wedged with great precision, Tommy's abandoned clothes.  

Tommy, like any kid, had crafty moments, and he really, really didn't want to wear those clothes on a hot July day. Even before FC, Tommy managed to get many of his points across. 

Most of all, Tommy had some fun amid family and friends that loved him.  I will hope to remember that above all on his birthday. 

"Cinthia makes me laugh. I am laughing with you. A good thing to laugh."
          -- Tommy, during an FC conversation when I visited Maine in 1996.  

Thomas Daniel Daffron
January 17, 1964 - August 30, 2009
Photo taken mid-August 2009

Them Apples

Green Apples
acrylic on canvas
10 x 8

As part of another attempt to de-clutter my apartment, I spent yesterday sorting through stacks of art supplies. Like coming across old snapshots, paintings take me back to the time and place where I painted them.

"Green Apples," an attempt at a classic still life with somewhat atraditional color choices, was painted on the balcony of a beach house rented for the Sisters Beach Trip 3.0 the week after Hurricane Irene.  My sister was working on a painting too, hers of shells. 

At the time, I wasn't much thrilled with my effort. Now I find I like it much better, perhaps because it returns me to a warm balcony with ocean air full of familial love, acceptance, and creative exploration. 

Those are some darn good apples in that context.

Thanksgiving Gratitude List 2011

I complain. And whine. And grumble. A lot. Too often I see the glass chipped and half-empty. To counteract that tendency, last year I drew up a list of 25 things for which I'm grateful.  Cataloging the many ways in which I am rich is becoming a yearly tradition, a welcome antidote to all the fretting about silly junk. 

Here is the list for this year. I tried not to peek at last year's until I finished this year's, but the similarities are striking. I'm still incredibly lucky. 

So without further ado, and in no particular order, Thanksgiving Gratitude List 2011.

1. 

   Model horses rock!
   photo credit: Thomas A Daffron, Jr. (my grandfather)

   My sister: She's my best friend, not because she is my sister, but because she is courageous and funny, smart, kind, and honest. She puts up with my endless rambling and whining and reliably responds with wit and a healthy dose of reality. And – bonus! – she makes really yummy cookies and chocolate zucchini bread among many other tasties.
2. My parents: In very different ways, they are both remarkable people. I am clear in the love we have for each other. The older I get, the luckier I know I am.
3. My cats: As oldsters, they're largely fluffy doorstops snoring in one chair or another, and they do nothing to decrease the cricket population in my apartment. But they purr when I pick them up, come when I call them (yes, even though they're cats), and never tire of the excitement of dinnertime. In the winter particularly, they cleave to me for warmth and affection, and viceversa. They still groove on catnip and playtime and their hedonistic lifestyle of dozing in the sunshine.
4. Painting: Expert technique is still far, far out of reach. But what I do have is a corner of my living room set up for the right side of my brain to play. Five minutes or an hour of messing with color and shape calms me while letting me explore, a stellar combination.
5. Writing: Since I started keeping character sketches of friends and family as a preteen, through the many years of journals, stories, poems, novels, essays, and blog posts, writing is how I organize my thoughts, express my hopes and fears, and clarify my values. It's where I find forgiveness for myself and others, where I play, and where I mourn.
6. Running: Breathe in, breathe out. The steady beat of Vibrams Five Fingers (my running shoe of choice – ask me, and I'll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about how much I like them) on a quiet path. Running strengthens me while it relaxes me.
7. Hiking: Sweating through summer haze or sloshing through fall rain, hiking makes me look around at how gorgeous and how simple and how awe-inspiring the natural world can be -- if I just pay attention.

8. 

   Leo hard at work on a craft project

   Driving: I know, it's not environmentally conscious to go for a Sunday drive. But the joy of windows down, radio up, and singing loud is hard to beat, as is the curiosity of seeing what's just up around that corner or on the other side of the country.  
9. My Aunt Kathy: My aunt spent much of this year helping my mother during her treatment for cancer. She also dealt with my moments of panic and insanity the bubbled up through some of the tougher times. Kathy remained endlessly patient, gracious, practical, and efficient. She is one of the kindest people I know. And she likes a good bowl of popcorn and a road trip, so we have many common interests.
10. Friends Old & New: It's been a bumpy year with family stress and financial bummers, but through that, I've had a steady stream of support from people I treasure. I've spoken unspeakable things to phenomenal people who have in turn shared their struggles and successes with me. I recognize that being close with the people I am over many years of friendship, being with people that bring out my best side, is a tremendous gift. I look forward to growing even closer and supporting those friendships to the best of my ability in the coming years. 
11. My Freelance Writing/Virtual Assistant Business: My commute is about 10 feet to turn on my computer. I never set my alarm clock. I run errands in the middle of the afternoon. While it's true that my retirement is nil and health care nonexistent, I believe this business will, in time, provide me with a wee bit more financial security to go with the freedom and intellectual stimulation of doing what I want to do.

12. 

    St. Pete Beach, FL

    Time: Time trumps money, I concluded this summer when I turned down a (relatively-speaking) lucrative, but time- and soul-sucking job. To have opportunity to choose that was liberating however much I still panic when the rent comes due and still kick myself for not being a more normal, socially acceptable person. For me though, happiness requires enough quiet daydream time (preferably with a cat purring in the window) to relax into it, and I'm thrilled that I have the luxury to choose that life and still be able to eat.
13. Letting Go: Sometimes you can care deeply for people and still find yourself arguing with venom over pointless crap, banging your head against one wall or another. There is value for everyone in letting go of anger and those connections that feed into unhealthy patterns and instead putting energy into more peaceful places of growth.      
14. Free & Cheap & Fun & Creative Stuff: Necessity is the mother of invention, and because it would be unreasonably frivolous even for me to go out and buy endless electronic gizmos I don't need, I've become better at realizing what I do need (food, shelter), what I don't (a Ferrari), and creatively re-purposing what I've got to fill the gray zones in between the extremes. I found goodies at thrift stores that speak to my sense of humor, scanned free piles for ugly mobile parts, recycled canvases to create my new (sometimes lumpy) paintings, and removed a lot of waste from my consumer diet, from deleting pricier junk food to making better use of the library.
15. Light: Given my increased focus on the visual arts, painting, photography, and crooked suncatchers, I'm more aware of the magic of light, the angles of highlight and shadow, the splintering by prisms, the benevolence bestowed by its alchemy.     
16. Family: The more I see how family can go radically wrong, collapse in anger, neglect, fury, abandonment, despair, violence, the more amazed I am by the collective kindness, intelligence, loyalty, and humor of my immediate and extended family.
17. Health: Having spent time pacing hospitals hallways this year, I hold an even higher value on the dumb luck of my own good health.
18. Kids: No, you haven't missed anything exciting -- I don't have kids. But I enjoy spending time with my friends' kids and smile when I see happy crews running amok at playgrounds or parades or wherever.  I love the creativity and chaos and unbridled fun that kids generate by keeping the world wondrously new and immediate.   
19. Radiator Heat, Indoor Plumbing, Electric Lights, Maintained Roads, Public Safety: All those bills and taxes go some place to keep a sprawling, radically complicated system chugging along. Sometimes it clunks more than purrs – vitriolic government rhetoric, the poor distribution of wealth, blackouts, shutdowns, riots, dishonesty, greed, natural and man-made disasters. But every day, most days, millions of cogs in the wheels turn smoothly without breaking the machinery, a consistency I take for granted.
20. Possibility: Emily Dickinson wrote, “I dwell in possibility,” and while she was talking more specifically about the life of a poet, for me, imagination and change provide great hope, vehicles for shifting to a new approach.
21. Memory: Some moments and some people are, for good or bad, gone forever. There is much that I would choose to forget, but much, much more that I am so glad that I can remember, re-live, and enjoy again.
22. Learning: Learning takes place in many environments, so while I have had lots of formal education (and that has given me a lot of tangible opportunities as a result), I'm mostly talking about the capacity to learn in any environment, be it an ivory tower or muddy cave.
23. Aging: Am I happy about the gray hair frizzing over my head or the wrinkles by my eyes? No, not so much. But I'm grateful for the time accrued and perspective. As my father is fond of saying, getting old beats the alternative.
24. Being Sentimental & Cheesy & Mushy: Sure, there is something just a little schmaltzy about gratitude. But I'm grateful for it nonetheless, as I bask here in my riches. So there.
25. Food! Thanksgiving turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade chocolate chip cookies, horribly bad for you French fries, popcorn, a perfectly done steak with horseradish sauce, spinach salad with walnuts and strong cheese, cheese, chocolate, did I mention cheese?, strawberry smoothies, pomegranates and, of course, ice cream. I've had lean financial moments, but I've never truly faced hunger and have enjoyed many a gourmet meal. That's not the case for millions of people around the world.  

So that's my list this year. I encourage you to make your own if you want to feel super rich.

On Thanksgiving morning, I'm running the So Others Might Eat Trot For Hunger 5K. If you feel like contributing to a good cause that serves the homeless and poor of the Washington, DC area, you may do so here:


http://support.some.org/site/TR/Events/teamraiser?px=1376226&pg=personal&fr_id=1110

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Brief Career as a Bathing Suit Model

Photo credit: my grandfather, Thomas A. Daffron, Jr.

While rustling through junk, I found some of my grandfather's photographs in the basement of my mother's house. 

While grandfather was a newspaperman in his professional life, with decades as an editor at The New York Times, he was a shutterbug in his off hours. The kitchen walls of my grandparents' home in Florida were covered with crowds of 8 x 10s of family, a public photo album.

Evolution of a Painting

For the first time in a long time, I attempted to paint people -- and it became an absorbing exercise.

Our models!

I started with a photograph (which I like to think of as models that don't move). I selected one with which I've actually always had a somewhat awkward relationship; I find something unsettling about their expressions. But that was exactly the draw in terms of painting: strong emotional content and body language.    

Edited photo

Then I edited the photography down to the composition I wanted, one highlighting their faces, and which also mirrored the scale of the canvas I would be using. I ended up moving them closer together so they fit better, hence the noticeable line at their shoulders.

Next, I printed out the photo on my black and white printer. Given that I was fairly sure I wouldn't be using the same color scheme, I was more interested in seeing the light and dark of shadows. And, well, I don't have a color printer. 

I folded that paper in quarters and drew the same guidelines on the canvas, with the hope that I wouldn't get so hopefully off that way. I used pencil -- bad idea, as I had to paint over it.  I'll use charcoal in the future, since that will smudge away when I no longer need it. I heard recently that some people now use projectors, but that seems a little bit like cheating to me.  And while I am trying to plan more, I like the unexpected that produces new directions, the discovery in the process of painting.   

The first completed draft of the painting looked like this:

First complete draft

This was after I'd redone her mouth twice and his nose once (with somewhat limited success, but hey, it's better than it was), but before I re-did both their eyes (so that, for instance, he no longer looked like he was wearing eye shadow) The first wash of the painting was a background shade, the light gold that you see coming through the window, was almost entirely swallowed by other elements, but somehow, it was nice to have that base color, rather than straight white.  And it turned out to be a happy accident - the idea of a growing, light-filled window connecting them on a symbolic level really worked for me so I eliminated the weird curtains from the photo, making the window both more central, but also its detail more diffuse.   

The painting as it stands now looks like this:

As it stands right now

I wouldn't say it's done, but it's resting for the moment, until I can come to it with fresh eyes.  Relative to the original photo, umm, ok, not exactly an amazing copy, no.  But I am pleased that they do a) look recognizable as people and b) have emotional exchange. 

I was reading more of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain last night as part of my project to be a little less inept in the drawing department. I have not yet comfortably gotten to the point where everything is just shapes with no symbolic value.  But I am starting to get a glimmerings of how that works, of being able to make that transition to a different kind of thinking when I'm working on art.  Progress, however, slow, is satisfying. One thing that amused me is that one of the items that often harder for beginners to draw (or paint, in this case) because of the high symbolic value is a shirt collar.  We think we know what it looks like, so we don't actually see it as it is. I definitely had that with her turtleneck, which, I am aware, looks more like a priest collar.

I also completely eliminated the hood of her coat, which instead turned into a background image, that of a couch under the window (which may not be clear to anyone but me, but that's what it is). 

Yes, a long way to go.  But progress. 

Afterall, let's consider many years ago, when during a very brief spate of painting, I tried to paint a face, and it ended up looking like this:

Eek!

Scary. 

And with no recognizable personality.

You can sort of see why I gave up on people for a while, given the inauspicious beginning.

But I'm going to keep going with the people this time. One recommedation I can make to new painters: if you have opportunity to use BIG canvases, go for it. My new painting is enormous -- 4 foot by 5 foot or so (part of the stash of old canvases with which I was gifted when I was living in in the artist's studio).  While it's a little daunting having larger than life people looking down on you, it's also much easier to put in details, as on that scale, even the details are broad strokes. 

Happy painting!

What I Learned in May

The omentum is an apron-shaped layer of fat lying over the belly. Tumors from ovarian cancer sometimes spread to the omentum. As an outdated evolutionary safety feature from pre-surgery days, the omentum sometimes curled around an unhappy appendix, controlling the spread of poison if it burst, allowing for survival.

Portland Head Light

An extra hour driving through Pennsylvania beats New Jersey Turnpike tolls and traffic.

When I'm nervous, I repeat myself, restating information gleaned from other people to verify it.

Lawyers sometimes hug clients.

On some superstitious level, I think my mother having an admission nurse named Grace who just came back from doing mission work means we have a good word in with God. The Grace of God.

Fresh asparagus tastes better.

Of the many smells permanently fixed in my brain, one of them is that of my brother's spit, which still clings to his toys stored in the basement of my mother's house.

Maine drivers are polite, but gratingly slow. Lights are badly timed in Portland.

Sitting by Back Cove

A dog that is sitting has a much harder time barking.

Low tide in a small cove looks like the plug has been pulled on a dirty sink; rather than the swaying grasses and blue water of high tide, all that's left is ring of muddy pebbles and gray, murky water.

Hospital beds have amazing hydraulics that lift them in all manner of ways, safety rails to keep patients in, and emergency CPR releases to flatten the bed down if needed.

Swelling after surgery is common. Combining swelling with the mellow tones of morphine makes for different facial expressions.

Dilaudid, a relative of morphine, can be administered via IV or in pill form.

Staples from abdominal surgery are informally referred to as a zipper. They come out two weeks after surgery.

Crescent Beach in fog

Two weeks of gray weather is a recipe for depression. The whole city slows down in drowned dismay.

Gardening is just not my thing. I like flowers, but I'm not inclined to put them in any order and I'm not crazy about dirt under my fingernails.

Postoperative ileus is common after abdominal surgery. The intestines, angry at having been moved around during surgery, are slow to wake up their nerves and do their usual work of coordinated contraction. To a point, the solution is to withhold food, hurry up and wait, hoping the nausea and vomiting settle.

Tommy's Tree
 Limerick, Maine

The memorial tree planted at the school where my brother spent over twenty years of his life still looks a little new and spindly.

In some ways, I am more grown-up and capable than I thought. In other ways, I am much, much less than I thought.

Dreams about coffins and rats nipping at your legs are not a sign of optimal mental health.

Fake trees decorating the produce department of the grocery store feel wrong.

An NG (nasogastric) tube can be inserted up the nose and down the throat into the stomach in order vacuum out food thereby ending nausea from ileus or bowel obstruction. While inserting the tube the patient is instructed to drink water through a straw as the swallowing motion moves the tube down the throat. Airplane glue is used to provide extra security when taping the tube on the nose.

Seagull, Eastern Prom

Seagulls seem bigger up north. Maybe they are bigger.

I am spacier than I realized on visual details. I did not notice that my mother's kitchen was gray until she told me. In my head, it was white.

The irony of getting a cold from a germ picked up at the hospital, and therefore not being able to go back to the hospital until I recover from said germ, does not make my fever drop any faster.

"Optimal debulking" is good news.

Petco makes a canine supplement to discourage dogs from eating their own excrement. This is good and bad if said dog is a sneaky pooper that likes to leave deposits on the dining room rug.

Maine Medical nurses are almost universally nice. Some are chattier than others.

For six months or so at Maine Med, medication charting is now handled with a hand-held device that scans the patient ID and then the medication, charting the time.

I have in me the makings of a compulsive hand washer. But not a gourmet cook or neat-nick.

Ruins of Goddard Mansion
Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Changing roles does not change history.

Squirrels really like tulip bulbs. But they leave the flowers for bouquets that liven up a hospital room.

It is impossible for me to look at tulips in a hospital room and not think about the Sylvia Plath poem “Tulips,” which begins with “The tulips are too excitable” and ends with the line “from a country as far away as health.” It is possible for me to not mention that at the hospital though.

Psychological discomfort also manifests as physical discomfort. One solution is substituting in a different discomfort – run faster, walk further, get tired.

If you cry while running in the rain, no one pays you much heed. Who really looks happy running anyway?

Conversely, physical pain inspires psychological discomfort. How do I fix this? What is wrong? Am I all alone here?

Spaghetti squash spaghetti tastes like pasta spaghetti.

Physical contact is comforting. Hold hands. Hug.

Lobster trap washed ashore
Crescent Beach

A parking ticket because you got lost walking for an hour because you forgot to note where you parked your car somehow seems unfair.

If your mother has cancer, you may be able break the rules of a Boys Only Weekend and spend some time drinking with festive, fraternal men who will buy you a mustard colored t-shirt that says “Get Lucky at Ri-Ra!”

Heparin, used to prevent clots, is injected in the upper thigh. Shots sometimes burn.

I will watch five hours of detective shows given access to cable tv and a desire for escape. I should never have cable TV on a permanent basis.

Fog rolling in scares me on some unspoken, primal level, the cold approach of oblivion, even while I consciously marvel at the beauty and power of nature.

Toes at Fort Williams

Anger unexpressed curls the body into odd shapes, closes in on itself, shoulders covering necks, arms across chest, muscles tensed.

Potassium levels must be in the normal range before being released from the hospital. Potassium administered via IV can burn. Liquid medication tastes foul. Pills are large. 

Throughout many years, my cats have seen me through a myriad of events across the country and still come over and purr next to me. And yak up hairballs under the bed at 4am.

To discourage clots in the leg after surgery, patients are encouraged to sit up and stand the same day as surgery. The more movement, the better after surgery, as it inspires the body to wake up and get busy healing. Medical personnel tend to leave out details on just how painful this will be. 

Also to discourage clots, patients often have motorized compression pumps velcroed around their legs, expanding and deflating in rhythmic rounds. Some nurses call them Electric Socks.

Dock, Eastern Promenade,
Portland, Maine

Anger, fear, sadness and love mix up, move around, run away, hit you in the face when you're not looking.

Being the youngest person in the room by ten or twenty years still makes you the baby even if you're 42. This is good and bad.

Taxol is a favored chemical for ovarian cancer chemotherapy.

You can know people all your life and still not really know them.

Susie Daffron, Sister Art

Susan Daffron

Susan Daffron, aside from being the President of Logical Expressions; author of twelve books and more than 1200 articles on topics ranging from self-publishing, pet care, and vegan cooking; and founder of the National Association of Pet Rescue Professionals, is also my sister --which is why I get to call her Susie.

This interview is a hybrid, the intersection of our personal and professional worlds. Many elements surprised me, which goes to show, even with more than 40 years of inside information, directly asking someone provides more detail than what comes up during (in our case, daily) email conversation. 

Me, Susie and the Banyan tree

I can't resist a brief trumpeting of, well, just how great my sister is. Sure, she mercilessly wrestled me to the ground during some high energy tickle fights when were kids, but she also inspired me to learn to pinch with my toes (an effective measure for keeping anyone off your side of the couch) and, more importantly, taught me how to be a good friend. Throughout my life, she has listened to me go on (and on and on) as I hash over my latest dilemmas and schemes, serving as a voice of reason that offers support and cheerleading and, when needed, a protective dose of reality. She sets an example of kind intelligence, honesty, humor, talent, hard work, courage and compassion that I am impressed by, and grateful for, every day -- even when she's on my side of the couch.

So now, Susan Daffron (aka my sister Susie) chatting about her many arts.   

Funds to the Rescue
cover design by Susan
Daffron (including
photo shoot with
Cami the dog)

Cynthia: I warned you that this would be by first question: why don't you describe yourself as an artist despite the fact that professionally, you've written twelve books (including layout and design) and crazy numbers of articles, created graphics for logos, web pages, and provided gorgeous photos in many cases (particularly of where you live, in Sandpoint, ID) and, on a personal level, have experimented with cartooning (the Barbie stories!), drawing, print-making, pottery, stained glass, enameling, sculpture (e.g., the bronze cat), furniture refinishing, earring design, stuffed animal creation, candle-making, costume, clothing and curtain making, extensive quilting, playing the flute and the piano, vegan cooking, canning and jam-making, gardening, and making at least one mobile?  That all sounds pretty arty to me.

Susie: I haven't ever described myself as an artist because I've never really thought of myself as an artist. Particularly when I was younger, I thought that artists were people who were gifted and talented. I saw paintings by our [great] Aunt Jeanne [Jeanne Miles] and they seemed so far beyond the realm of anything I could do; it seemed she was impossibly brilliant.

Logo designed by Susan Daffron
(based on her dogs)

It doesn't mean I wasn't interested in art. As you note, I did a lot of drawing particularly when I was younger and have taken a ton of art classes over the years. I never thought my work measured up, so I figured I couldn't really call myself an "artist."

Part of it was being uncomfortable with the word itself. I thought you had to reach a certain level of technical expertise to call yourself an artist. Only after I was an adult did I realize that pretty much if you call yourself an artist, you are an artist. Art can take many forms and there is no true objective measure of talent. I loathe many forms of art and artworks by a lot of different artists. But it's just my opinion, not fact.

Even if you can't draw a straight line, if you're being creative in almost any way, you are an artist [a point we here at Artful Mistakes revel in]. 

Selkirk Mountains, Sandpoint, Idaho
Photo credit: Susan Daffron

C: Writing is obviously your main creative outlet. I know that recently you've been focusing more on your habits when writing. Can you speak more on how your writing and writing process are evolving?

S: I'm trying to write more regularly. I went through could probably be termed burnout on writing. Having written newsletters for years and done endless freelance writing, I was just mentally tired. For about 6 months, I wrote almost nothing.

Unfortunately, I discovered that the less I write, the less I want to write. I got over myself and tried writing every day for a while, which helped get me back into the writing groove again.

During my write-every-day period, I discovered that coming up with writing topic ideas at a different time than I did the actual writing helped me write more. The night before, I'd come up with an idea, then in the morning, I'd just write it.

I think having that space in between idea-generation time and writing time actually helps me write more quickly, since I've probably been thinking about the topic in the background somewhere. The brain works in mysterious ways.

C: You're a thorough and enthusiastic researcher. What's your approach? And, how can I gain your ability to focus?

S: I'm thorough, but I also can get completely out of hand. Being a reader, I'm easily distracted by things I find interesting. (Oh lookie, a shiny object!) The Web is a researcher's dream come true, but it also can turn into a nightmare, since it's easy to spend so much time researching that you never write anything.

If I have any key to doing research, it's knowing when to stop.


In the stocks at Williamsburg, VA.  Note my fashionable
plaid pants and Susie's Morris the Cat t-shirt.

C: When you were a kid, I know (since I was there) you were a fabulous storyteller, creating great symbolic representations of essentially political issues. If you're wondering what the heck I mean, here's an example: Instead of having perfect princesses waiting for ideal Prince Charmings, the single mothers in our respective Barbie families (Barbara White for you, Frances Green for me) were considered shallow in their fruitless pursuit of the prince at balls. How do your personal convictions continue to influence your art?

S: Because of various odd aspects of our childhood, I think both of us ended up using stories to help us work out some things that weren't going terribly well in our own lives. The freedom of being able to ride away on your horse was rather appealing, for example. Plus, having lots of adventures like parachuting out a window was a lot more interesting than the stupidity of elementary school.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, I think many people work through personal issues through art. One thing that's interesting for me is to read back over articles I wrote years ago. I remember what was behind a lot of things I was saying in my writing, whether it was an argument, something I read, or an experience I had.

C: In college and beyond, you've taken a variety of art classes.  Best and/or worst experiences, or other thoughts year later?

Black-Eyed Susans by Susan Daffron
Pen & ink & watercolor, a product
of the Art in the Garden class.

S: I've taken three great classes and countless truly crappy ones. The best classes were Mr. Motovitch in high school, a sculpture class with Mr. DeLonga in college, and an "Art in the Garden" class here in Sandpoint a few years ago with a watercolor artist named Marilyn McIntyre.

The great classes were great because the instructor focused on the joy of creativity for creativity's sake. Being given the freedom to just let go and not worry about whether what you create is "good" on any objective level is liberating. And fun.

The bad classes were just the opposite. I took a painting class at the local community college here that was so awful I actually complained and asked for a refund. The instructor wanted us to create a painting that looked exactly like hers. She criticized everyone and sucked the joy out of the art process entirely. I threw the painting I did in the garage and may have eventually driven over it. (I'm not entirely sure where it ended up actually.)

The snob factor you often encounter among artists is another creativity killer. I think of this pretentiousness as the "black beret" syndrome. Again it revolves around some flawed idea that to be an "artist" you have to meet some arbitrary standard.

The Black Beret Brigade nominate themselves to be arbiters of that mythical standard, and are supremely unpleasant to be around. If you take enough art classes, it's only a matter of time before you meet members of the Black Beret Brigade. I recommend you give your creativity a break and avoid them.

Susie's garden, from whence many
tasty vegan dishes are created

C: Food! Culinary arts! How did you get into cooking, and how do you enjoy and experiment with cooking and recipe creation now?

S: I like food and started cooking when I was about 12 or 14. I started out with things like cookies and cakes, since I really like chocolate. ("If mom won't make chocolate cake, then I'll figure it out for myself!") In the process of making cakes I started reading cookbooks and later for a while, I cooked one day/week for the family.

At one point, I lived with a bunch of roommates. They were so critical I never told any of them I could cook. So when I met my husband, he thought I didn't know how. He's a great cook, and over time, I 'fessed up that I wasn't quite as incompetent in the kitchen as he initially thought. Over the years, we have shared cooking duties. We each cook three days/week and switch off Wednesdays.

When we became vegan in 1994, cooking became more important. (Back then packaged vegan food didn't really exist.) So we figured out lots of recipes of our own and eventually wrote a cookbook called Vegan Success.

C: Over the years, you've done a lot of teaching, coaching and consulting.  How has that changed your outlook on creating, and writing specifically?

S: I've learned that the creative process is different for everyone. Also things I take for granted are difficult for some people.

For example, I seem to have a natural ability to create outlines and visualize the structure of a book more easily than some people. Organizing material for a book is something a lot of people really struggle with, but for me it's kind of like a puzzle where I put the pieces in their proper places.

C: Do you have a favorite moment with a client or student, a success story that made all the aggravation of less ideal interactions worth it?

S: Becoming a book publishing consultant has been really satisfying because some of my clients have gone on to do amazing things with their books. One client wrote a health-related book, which led to TV appearances, speaking engagements, and now she's opening her own medical clinic.

Another client just got a great write up in a national women's magazine because of her book. And a client recently told me that my help and publishing inspiration "gave her back her life" after a lot of serious personal setbacks.

In another case, a client was at the point that she couldn't pay her bills. I made some suggestions about how she could reorient her business to focus on a different market and now she has more work than she can handle.

Anyway, when you get feedback like that, it's all worth it ;-)

Baby quilt made by Susan Daffron

C: What was your first sewing project that you remember attempting/completing?  And favorites over the years? I can tell you that I still have Max the blue dog, a stuffed animal you made me one Christmas when I was a teenager. 

S: When I was about 10 or 11, my friend Andrea and I decided to figure out how to use the old Singer lurking in the basement. (For those who are curious, I now know it's a 1957 Singer 99K, which is a 3/4 size sewing machine.) Anyway, at that point, my mom hadn't used it in years, so Andrea and I started playing with it and trying to figure out how to sew.

Andrea and I spent a lot of time in the basement making stuffed animals. I found some old fabric and the first thing we made was lions made out of orange corduroy. (We both still have them, although hers looks better than mine; at some point, some dog chewed most of the head off my lion.) We made up patterns based on other stuffed animals we had.

Although they were sort of deformed, we had fun and the lion project led to other stuffed animals, including a turtle and an alligator. Later on, we started buying patterns and made dresses. We had endless problems with the tension on the sewing machine and spent a lot of time ripping thread. Years later, mom pointed out we had been threading the machine wrong. (Yes, that would have been good information to have had earlier.)

When I first went to Arizona after college, I packed one suitcase. After I decided to stay and move there permanently, Dad found someone to drive my car across the country with a bunch of my stuff in the back. One of the things I got was the Singer, so I still have it. In Arizona, I had it cleaned and the tension fixed. The repair guy offered me $200 for it, which I found amusing. (No, I didn't sell it.)

Since then, I've used it to make all the curtains in our house, a bunch of quilts, clothes, and various other things. Over time the case completely fell apart. So a few years ago, I found an old sewing table at Goodwill for $20 and refinished it. James [Susie's husband of 19 years] made a new top for the table that would fit the somewhat unusual shape of a 3/4-size machine. It's sitting in the living room.

More recently, I bought a 1925 Singer Model 66 treadle machine, which also lives in the living room. As it turns out, the attachments from the treadle also work on the 1957 Singer. And oddly enough, the treadle still had its user manual, so now I know what all those bizarre pieces of metal actually are supposed to do.

At this point, I have been using the treadle machine for quilting and most of my other sewing. I need to buy a new pressure foot for the 1957 Singer because the ancient one is getting disturbingly hot. There's obviously something wrong there and I'd rather not have the thing catch on fire.

The gun cabinet now
repurposed into a
more literary use

C: What's the story with the gun cabinet bookshelf?

S: The bookshelf started life as a gun cabinet that I bought at Goodwill for $48. I always wanted a barrister bookshelf, but they cost a fortune. The glass was good in the gun cabinet and it was actually wood, so even though it was hideous, I realized I could refinish it. James made shelves for it and we bought new hardware.

The refinishing process was painful and it took endless amounts of stripper to remove the multiple layers of horrible black paint and get down to the wood. The process was also interrupted by a burst pipe and subsequent flood in the paint room. (Thank goodness we have a shop vac!)


C: When you and James relocated to Sandpoint, you caught the early wave of workers who realized their work could be independent of their location.  How has the online revolution made your life possible?  And, on the other hand, what are your complaints?

S: We started our business with the express intention of moving away from the Big City. That dream was the catalyst that made our business happen. It's also what motivates us to keep going.

The unemployment rate when we moved here was in the double digits and now is once again, so we can't count on the local economy to support us. Plus, it's well documented that I am wildly unsuited to cubicle life.

Thanks to the Internet, we've been able to live here since 1996 and have morphed our business to offer different products and services as times and our interests changed. Now we're into book publishing, which is yet another type of business that can be operated from a remote location.

Moving to the middle of nowhere is what we wanted and we don't want to leave. In fact, every time I go anywhere else, I realize how much I love the peace and quiet of our little corner of forest. But it snows a lot and we have the Pacific Northwest influence, so winters are gray. Eventually, we'd like to spend the winter somewhere else. Shoveling snow when I'm 65 or 70 doesn't sound like fun.



Susie, her husband James, and Leto

C: Tools, equipment: is there anything as a writer or artist that you came across that made everything suddenly much, much easier?

S: Well at the risk of sounding self-serving, our IdeaWeaver software helped me finish my books. The advantage of having a husband who is a programmer is that if you start talking about software solutions at lunch, sometimes you end up with software in the long run.

It was the classic case of designing on a napkin. We were at a restaurant talking about writing with a friend and James drew the IdeaWeaver user interface on a napkin.

As for tools like hardware, I am unreasonably attached to clicky keyboards. I have an IBM Model M keyboard that makes me happy. The tactile feedback from old-style keyboards is much easier on my hands and is probably one reason I don't have carpal tunnel after using computers heavily for a whole lot of years.


C: What is the biggest creative obstacle that you've leaped over?  And the one that keeps coming back to bite at you? 

S: I think self-confidence is something any artist struggles with and I'm no exception. In my case, I know I'm my own worst critic. There are times when I feel really good about what I'm doing and others, well, not so much.

My ever-shifting attitudes are definitely a work in progress.

C: Do you have any crazy rituals for your creative pursuits?  For instance, I tend to listen to really bad pop music when I paint, but I mostly write in silence. 

S: It's not very crazy, but I have to have quiet when I write. It's a good thing I live in the middle of a forest. And that my husband is NOT in the same office. That man is the loudest typist ever.

(Separate offices = key to a good marriage.)

With our mother and childhood dogs

C: What's on your bedside reading table right now?

S: A kind of sappy romance by Debbie Macomber called Mrs. Miracle. (One of the zillions of novels Mom sent me.)

[Our mother, an unabashed book hound and absurdly fast reader, periodically sends each of us some of her spoils.]

C: What new project are you most excited about? Which of your previous creations do you have a soft spot for, even if it may be a little, metaphorically, lumpy or bumpy (i.e., what's your version of an ugly mobile)?

S: I'm excited about my new book which is about how humane groups can get more publicity. I have gotten 18 case studies from groups doing a lot of extremely cool things to help animals and it's inspiring.

The book should be released this summer.

I have a soft spot for my book Happy Hound. Realistically, it hasn't sold very well, but in addition to the pet care information it also includes many stories about my own dogs, some of whom aren't with me anymore. It's a slice of my pet-owning life, captured in book form.

[Susie is also the founder the National Association of Pet Rescue Professionals, a membership association made up of people who work for animal shelters, humane societies or rescue groups]

With our father

C:. What the best bit of writing advice anyone has ever given you? 

S: The best writing advice I ever got was from Dad. He said, "writers write." His point was that sometimes you have to write when you don't feel like it or when you don't want to. (He had been a newspaper journalist, so he definitely knew about deadlines.)

He gave me the advice one late night when I was trying to finish a paper that was due the next day. I was crying about how I'd "never" finish it. He pointed out that I could, if I'd just suck it up and write something.

Turns out, he was right.

C:. Revision: love it? Hate it? Do you have a process that you follow, or do you just tweak it until it feels right? 

S: Actually, I don't revise as much as I probably should.

When it comes to articles, I tend to write quickly, set it aside, then go back over it later. I fix whatever mortifying mistakes I've made and pass it on to James for review. (He reads almost everything I write.) Then I incorporate his changes, read it again, and send it out into the world.

Most of my books include at least some of my past articles, so they've already gone through the article-editing process. But then I hire a professional editor to edit the manuscript before it's published.

C: Is there something new you've been itching to try?

S: I want to write fiction at some point. You and I have talked about writing something together eventually and I still want to do that. [One piece has a working title of Chez Stinky.]

Right now James is getting into writing fiction and I'm itching to join him, but I have at least three non-fiction books to finish first. There's only so much writing I can do and still operate my business. Oh and have a life too.

C: What other creative things are you doing now?

S: James and I have been doing the exercises in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. We listen to classical music, draw, and zone out (aka get into "R-mode" for those who have read the book). It's extremely relaxing and different from a lot of the more analytical work we do in our business.

Susie, her dog Fiona, and many books!