Showing posts with label black background. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black background. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Wildflowers in My Hair

1967. Babysitting. Canoe Brook Parkway, Summit, NJ.

What I don't remember:
• who the family was,
• who the kids were,
• how I knew them, or
• how I landed the babysitting job.


What I do remember:
• modern architecture and furnishings,
• 50¢ per hour,
• a stereo turntable, and
• Judy Collins's Wildflowers record album.

---

Six or seven weeks ago, I sat in the Cabot Theater in Beverly, MA, as part of a full-to-capacity audience whose average age was roughly 67 and who may or may not have worn flowers in their hair and smoked a little weed during the "Summer of Love" in '67—all of us gathered fifty years down the road from the Summer of Love on a cold almost-winter night while Judy Collins offered up a transcendent concert that transported us with her timeless voice right back to our youth.

There is a whole lotta magic in this world.

---

I dipped into a different then and now today. Picked up another one of the free canvases I acquired over the summer and started noodling with it.

Back in the then of last summer the canvas looked like this:

free canvas #3, as picked up from a neighbor's collection of pass-alongs

Now, I've performed just the littlest bit of black magic (ha ha!) by covering the whole surface with black interior semi-gloss enamel latex house paint and letting myself indulge in free play with various paints, brushes, texture sheets, crayons, and mark-making tools—roughing up this canvas for who knows what next.

Amusingly, the black background, with these colors on it, evokes strong sensory memories of the fabric of a sassy swishy dress I wore in 1967!

free canvas #3
18x24"
work in progress