Today was just awesome. The Thursday Life Story Writing group had some wonderful stories to share. What a great group of women with amazing lives and stories to tell and all are becoming better and better writers which is so fine. Border's coffee shop can be quite noisy when the blending or grinding machines are going but we manage pretty well. We will meet 2 times in August and then it is back to Alvin Community College for Gilbert's class.
This afternoon I picked up artist and sister/friend Betty to see the exhibit at the Menil Art Museum. If you ever get to Houston, put this beautiful building on your list. We are so fortunate here to have had the Menils as Houston residents with their passion for the arts and willingness to share it in such a beautiful manner. I loved the work of Sterne and Steinberg...delightful drawings. I loved his drawings with a lyrical calligraphic touch...very humorous and fun. You might recognize his work in the New Yorker magazine. And his wife was a wonderful painter to whom I can so relate...she never gained much recognition because critics claim she never had a particular style. She tried lots of things and I suppose in the art world that doesn't create what the critics would call "a body of work". I have the same problem.
We actually went to see the Menil's NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith exhibit. Very interesting work, lots of assemblage. A large sculpture of golf bags stacked up around a tall cardboard cylinder...sounds corny but it was interesting. Most impressive to me in the show was the work of Doris Salcedo. Her piece, Atrabiliarios, commemorates those who have disappeared amid political violence in her native Columbia. Actual shoes of the victims are inserted into niches in the wall which are covered with transparent animal skin and stitched all around with black thread...seen and not seen.
Then it was on to a great salad at Pronto's on Montrose before the opening of the WIVLA show at the Museum of Printing History. I have a collaged photograph in the show titled "Unabridged". It is a nice show and there was a great turnout at the opening reception.
What a great day...it approaching midnight and I'm about to turn into a pumpkin.

Poets galore!

Poets galore!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig with enough poetic lines to fill my soul and ears to last for a while...at least a week or two. The picture above is of the Texas Poet Laureate of 2008, Larry Thomas, a charming man, great poet, who read poems about Texas...all over Texas!
I met lots of interesting people and found myself along with my girlfriend, Barbara, middle-aged among the aged. There were women there I'm sure were marching upon 90 years. Does one have to be ancient to write poetry? I don't know whether to be encouraged or discouraged...most of the group have been writing for 20 or more years and have published, published, published. Of course, some have published great poems, others have published some not-so-great but that seems to be the name of the game. Why is it that I can't seem to get excited about seeing my stuff in print?
At the late night readings I either broke new ground or will never be allowed up front again. Yeah, I've done it again. I read my poem about my crush on my Lyme Disease doc called "Breathless on the table". The last stanza says something about leaving with "a handful of prescriptions and a juicy crotch." OMG, there was a roar...evidently it bordered on new ground, the edge of passion and desire. Two guys came up afterwards saying they wished they had gone to medical school; one said he wished that there were more poetry like it and that he noted that the woman who has been know to walk out at profanity had stayed. Maybe it had been a long time since she had had a juicy crotch...who knows. A few women said they loved it. Anyway such was my debut into the Poet's Society of Texas. I think I made an entrance that wasn't planned.
Lots of really good poetry was read and what a broad spectrum of topics. Much to learn and live up to and I'm definitely challenged.
Tomorrow I'm off to the Museum of Printing History to help with registration and to take my entry. Should be fun.

Robert Genn

Robert Genn

If you are an artist and haven't checked out Robert Genn's newsletter, you have been missing out on an articulate accomplished artist's wisdom. For a long time I have felt that my art making is my spiritual work, that God steps in and guides me into other realms. Painting is like prayer work and this week Genn offers his prayer which says it all better than I can:

"The spiritual," said Thomas Carlyle, "is the parent of the practical." Many years ago I wrote myself a private prayer. I've repeated it in a couple of books and tacked it on the wall of my studio. Here, under the dripping cedar-boughs of a Queen Charlotte's forest cathedral, I find my prayer again on a folded paper down in the sticky part of a much-travelled paintbox. It contains the sort of innocent zeal found in many youthful conversions, but it's still welcome:

The world's engagement of beauty is my bible,

And Art is my religion.

I come to it as a child.

I add all the grown wisdom I can gather.

Creativity is my salvation.

My easel is the altar.

My paints are the sacraments.

My brush is my soul's movement,

and to do poorly, or not to work, is a sin.

Robert Genn

July 4th and a poem

Happy 4th

This ATC is called peace and as we celebrate the 4th I feel so blessed to enjoy the freedom that we have in this country. Alarmed as I may get over the war and the transgressions that this administration seems to gallantly tred over our constitution I am grateful that as a woman I can vote, practice the faith of my choice and have the right to make choices over my body, at least at this point.
On another note, I have learned I have won a prize for one of my poems in a small local competition. Does that make me a prize-winning poet? Wheeeee! I may have posted this before but here is the last revision that won:

Deductible not Met
All I wanted was a postcard, not a drama.
I’m in it now, reluctant player
waiting for my turn to pay.
“$362.43”, speaks the pharmacist from behind the counter.
Tremors run through the tiny wrinkled body standing right in front of me
as she struggles with her wallet in a worn and ancient bag.
“Before, I paid only $20.”
“Deductible not met” replies a firm authority.
“That can’t be true,” she says,
“Give me back my paper. I’ll take it some place else.”
“Sorry, can’t do that,” he says,
“It’s in our system now, can’t be removed.”
Filled with empathy and anger,
I want to jump up on the counter,
scream and holler, call it wrong, wrong, wrong,
then pay her crazy bill.
But I don’t.
“I don’t have that much money, I need the medicine today,” she says.
Just give me back my prescription. “
He shakes a no, looks beyond her shrinking form.
“Next, please.”
Her hand falls limply to her side; she turns and walks away.
.
“Don’t make a scene, don’t interfere,
not much time to stay, really not my business,” I tell myself.
“Hell’s bells,” says the other voice,
“Someone needs to speak, to stand against injustice.”
My tourist self takes over, wrapped in a cloak of guilt,
walks toward my family waiting in the car
but I never, ever forget this old woman.

Yesterday we went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to see the DeVinci exhibit. Wow!
What a genius this man was! He actually had the orginal idea of so many machines like the airplane, the car, an army tank. So amazing. I was familiar with his paintings of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper but all the machinery was awesome. The museum showed models of his many works including the wings with attached harness, his attempt at flying. Incredible. I came away wondering if there surely isn't an equal genius here today on our planet somewhere that has some solutions to the mess we are in now with the energy crisis, global warming, war, overpopulation, poverty. If you are out there somewhere, dear genius, please speak up. We need you NOW!

Starbuck poetry

The girl in the “fuck me” shoes

All heads turned including mine
as she walked up to the counter,
the girl in the “fuck me” shoes,
You know, the high heel see-through plastic ones
brightly painted toes spreading at the end.
That’s what caught my eye
but others probably went to the bleached blonde hair
framing dramatic make-up and bright red lips.
Perhaps the tight black skirt with its hem
midway up a tan and shapely thigh
caught their eye.
Under the halter top with a pristine white collar.
lay a gold and shiny buckle
trapped in cleavage of bursting boobs.
Heads turned, yes, indeed, as she picked up her coffee
headed for her Hummer parked just outside.
leaving us all to wonder
“What might her day job be?”

@Kay Cox

The other quilt in the TAACL show. This is of my husband who has been involved in the space program for over 45 years. I started to name it "Space cadet" but decided he might not accept that label so this will have to do.

A week to remember

Dear Mama,
If you were alive today, you would be amazed and I'm not sure how you would react. Down deep I think you would be elated as I think had you lived this long you would have grown to be more tolerant and accepting. I would like to think so as I know you stood along with Dad for honesty and integrity. But I do remember when I was 19 years old, I wanted to join the protests against segregation over on the Drag by the University. You told me that if I did, I needn't bother to come home again. And so I didn't. To this day I don't think it was so much that you were opposed to blacks attending college as much as it was something that "nice ladies" shouldn't do. I think you was terrified that a picture of me carrying a sign would show up in the paper. "Ladies would never attract that sort of notoriety." The only picture appropriate would have been an engagement picture or a wedding picture and you made sure that happened.

This week a black American, Barack Obama, became the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. And this was in a close race with a woman, Hillary Clinton....haven't we come a long way on both fronts. I am thrilled that this wonderful compassionate Harvard educated young man of mixed race is going to lead this country that was founded by immigrants and diversity. And to think that a woman came so close. Today as she conceded to Obama and ended her campaign she gave the best speech she had ever given in the last 18 months. If only she had addressed women in this way, who knows how it would have turned out.

All this in my life time, just such a short time it seems since blacks came to the front of the bus and joined classes at UT. All this since 1974 when paying cash for some property in my name, the male realtor insisted on my husband's cosigning. Fortunately my activist nature was never squelched...you and Dad taught me about justice and rights and I am grateful for that.
So Mama, who knows...maybe you reincarnated as Hillary or Dad, maybe you coached Obama from above...but however these two were manifested, I am grateful and am sure that you remained staunch Democrats. Maybe we will take back the state of Texas this year. A year of change and possibilities. We've come a long way, babe.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Well, we are back after an exhausting few days in D.C. The conference went well in spite of some major clitches with the set-up. After days of little but acronymish (space cadets speak in acronyms that I have decided is a new language--acronymish) I escaped the Hilton to wander a bit. This was what moved me to write a poem about my journey.

Memorial Day in McGregor Park, D.C.

A soft breeze cools the cement beneath my feet
as geometric shadows of nearby buildings
grow long across worn patches of green grass.
Making their way slowly, one by one they come.
With walkers, wheel chairs, crutches they come,
come to find that certain bench,
come to stake a claim on dream time.
Black plastic bags lay near torn and ragged soles
holding what’s left of a life of hard times and bitter memories.
What will the darkness bring?
Nightmares of “Nam”?
Dreams of beds and showers?
Will they sleep tonight as sirens wail down K Street?
Ducks and pigeons scurry with flapping wings
circling round the woman all in green.
Midst the clamor, a hand turned rusty brown
reaches into a bag and throws the fowl some crumbs.
She who has so little sharing what she can.
Oblivious, suited figures scurry through the park toward appointments
while engaged in conversations wrapped around their ears.
I’m an intruder in a strange land.
Do I bring anything to the table?
Can I hear their pain?
I take a seat on a fading sun-lit bench
feeling overwhelmed that here
on Memorial Day near the Wall of honor
gather the forgotten ones
lost in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”.
How did it come to this?
A dark figure stooping under his mighty load
is ranting, raving at sights unseen
as he stumbles from bench to bench.
He looks at me and I become afraid.
He shouts a greeting and I nod.
Fearful and ashamed
I walk away toward my cozy place of respite
knowing that my meal tonight will fill my belly
but will it feed my soul?

Oh my! Get this!

Oh my! Get this!

Only in Texas! This was parked in front of a convenience store on Hwy. 6. Just step right up and buy a divorce along with your lottery ticket I guess. Somehow it grabbed my quirky sense of humor and I had to stop.
We're off to D.C. early Monday so no blogging for a few days. Hope to get some great photos and sketches in wandering around the Mall. Can't wait to get to the National Gallery....wheee...and then the Corcoran and the Hirshhorn. And maybe my asthma will clear up.

There is redemption! Blessed be! And homage to Our Lady of Perfection! And never mind, Mother Superior! Look at me! My poem "Monster Monday" has been accepted for publication in an anthology somewhere in Massachusetts. Holy moly...I'm a poet and didn't know it.

There have been additions to my spiritual life of some saintly women who appear at random without invitation. Meet Our Lady of Perfection who pulls up a chair along side mine whenever I sit down to write or paint. She draws her Pearls of Wisdom Rosary from her long, white skirt and reminds me that she has not seen me recently in the Chapel of Knowledge. “How can you possibly imagine that you have anything to say when you have been so negligent? Who do you think you are? And why would you even want to try to put anything down on paper…no one is interested in what you have to say. Why bother?” I try to argue with her that surely my many years on the planet have granted me some rights and perhaps some wisdom but she just looks at me disdainfully and shakes her head. Our Lady goes on to reprimand me for spending too many hours sitting and sipping at the Self-Indulgence Café on Easy Street. I’d like to choke her with her stupid Pearls.
Mother Superior, in charge of the Chapel of Perfection, nearly always joins Our Lady wearing a starched apron, her white gloved hands clutching a copy of Better Homes and Gardens or worse yet, Martha Stewart Living. Mother Superior smiles sweetly saying: “I am delighted that you are writing, dear. You have always been so bright and have had a way with words. Don’t mind me….I’m just here to remind you that your sheets haven’t been changed in two weeks, the mold is a pinky inch thick in your shower, you are out of milk, there are finger prints all over the back door and isn’t this the second time you have served tacos this week? I am just so proud of you just working so hard but I do wish you would take better care of yourself. Your nails are a sight and what are you doing about your weight? Your paintings are interesting but perhaps, dear, they might be more appealing if you, well, you know, put something more defined and cheerful in them like flowers. Petunias are lovely, daisies are always refreshing and I am just sure there is a market for Texas bluebonnets. And those crazy aprons? Now who do you imagine is going to wear one of those much less understand your very strange sense of humor?”

Jeez, MS, go away. I gotta do what I gotta do. I can't stand bluebonnet paintings and these funky aprons are just too much fun to make.

What's the big deal?

What's the big deal?

Today I just had to go to Starbuck's to do research on just what it is that our devoted Far Right countrymen are so upset about. Well, there she is the Starbuck buck-naked mermaid right there on my cup. Obviously taken from an ancient woodcut from some Celtic culture and I can't see what all the whoop la is about. Golly gee whiz...now how many mermaids have you seen wearing a blouse, coat or even a wet T-shirt? Good for you but I haven't seen any. A mermaid is a mermaid is a mermaid. Those antiquainted hill billy Bible toting righteous folk really need to get a life! Come on! We have 70,000 + dead in Mynmar and thousands in China, poverty throughout the planet, polar bears becoming extinct, a stupid war in Iraq and these folks are raising hell about the boobs on a Starbuck's cup? Give me a break!

Art cars

Yesterday was the annual Art Car Parade in downtown Houston...an event like no other...the biggest art car parade in the world with over 280 cars. I try to never miss it! And the cars just get better and better. We loaded up the family and a wagon full of chairs, sunscreen and cooler and friend, Patti, and off we went. Drove right into the parking garage across the street from Sam Houston Park (free parking) and strolled over to a shady spot across from the judges' stand. Let the fun begin! And fun it was! Over 280 cars and they get better and bigger every year. Amazing work with all kinds of themes.

The picture above right is the Grand Prize Winner and is called Our Lady of Transportation. Amazing work by a local artist using car parts. The grandkids loved it and we all had a great time and made plans to go back next year and the next and the next.
The top picture is of local quilter Kim Ritter's car covered with quilting notions of all kinds.

Dear Eckhart Tolle

Dear Eckhart Tolle

Dear Eckhart Tolle,
I'm having an Ego moment or more like an hour, hopefully not a day. You see, I've been spring cleaning...amazing but true. I went through my clothes and pulled out many garments that I no longer wear, either because my body doesn't fit in them anymore or I'm tired of them or I don't go anywhere that warrants panty hose, etc. I took 3 bags to Goodwill and a car load to the church for their garage sale and gave 4 pieces to a friend who was delighted. I saved out 4 of the very best, most awesome, most adored, in the very best of shape to take to the consignment shop. One of them is the pictured dress I once wore at my son's wedding and considered it my very best dress up garment should there ever be another dress event in my life. Well, after 12 years there hasn't been...definitely a commentary of my lack of social importance...so it, too, joined the consignment store group.
Well, after touring the local consignment stores, I can tell you it ain't good news. Life is sad when no consignment store will take your very best..."out of date" I'm told. When did I lost touch? I was once a fashion diva. One shirt and pants I just bought last year and the Mother of the Groom dress (known as MOG) was only worn once. I was told "they are wearing much simpler now". Looks pretty simple to me. Maybe that was just their kind way of saying "We hate it". I love this dress and I look smashing in it! So what the hey...I'll just put it on and stroll through Wal-Mart. Now where are those matching shoes! Maybe I'll get a corsage to go with it for Mother's Day to wear to IHOP for our Mother's Day brunch. Or should I save for another 20 years to be buried in or is that another EGO moment? Please, Eckhart, tell me, tell me.
Sincerely, Kay Cox

Printing lino cuts

I've been playing with linoleum cuts again. There is something about the simple shapes that appeals to me along with the black and white. I'm debating on whether to try going back in with water color on the one on the left. It is of a blossom on a pink magnolia tree. These are handprinted using a spoon for a baren and water-based ink.

Holiday greetings

Happy Holidays, everyone. This is one of my Holiday Cards that I collaged. It is Dec. 28 and friends know by now that they can expect my card to show up sometime before Easter. That's why I call them Holiday cards ...any day can be a holiday, right? They are fun to do and take forever so I hope my friends think the delay is worth it.
I collect old photos and this came from my collection...haven't a clue as to who it is but he/she looks sweet enough to be an angel.

A rose is a rose #2

This is my second drawing of the rose using latex house paint and a little acrylic paint. I was really unhappy with it initially and began to add more and more layers and eventually using a rubber stamp with house paint to add some texture and additional interest. It is done on 22" x 30" watercolor paper.

I love working with the house paint and have found that brands other than Benjamin Moore work very well. B Moore paints have raised their prices to be very, very expensive compared to other paints. I was lucky to find at my local hardware store some little sample bottles. I have no idea what they were for originally and I had the feeling the store's staff thought it a little weird that I was going to paint pictures with it. I recommend giving it a try with some left-over paint.

A rose is a rose is a rose

Well, I'm going to feel really stupid if this blog shows up twice. I posted but then it didn't show up so I will try again. My painting was created in a workshop taught by Doug Walton, a wonderful teacher. It was done on wet 140# watercolor paper with latex house paint, yeah, really! HOUSE PAINT! and it was done with my fingers, yep, I said FINGERS! It was so much fun and I love the really soft edges that happened.

We worked a lot on composition on index paper before transferring to w/c paper and it paid off. We had critique twice a day during the 3 days and it was so helpful. I loved working this way and will definitely do some more of this. Now to start gathering the paint....he had 80 colors for us to choose from....only takes a little bit. The latex seems to offer an wonderful glow that doesn't seem to happen with watercolors.

Working again in water color and trying some blue underpainting. We have had a model for a session which was great. This was fun to do. I may go back over it with burnt sienna to see what may happen to the lights.