We speak of our intentions. David rings our Tibetan singing bowl, while I whisper our appreciations and requests. Embracing, we whisper, “Bon matin. Étonne moi!” (Good morning. Astonish me!) David returns to the kitchen to prep our first meal, while I move through my yoga asanas.​

Breakfast finished in bed or on the porch, now that we’re learning to make music together, we like to rise up singing:

“Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world.”

"Morning Has Broken" is a popular and well-known hymn first published in 1931. The British children’s author Eleanor Farjeon wrote the words when asked to make a poem to fit the lovely tune of “Brunessan”, composed in the Scottish Islands.

The song appeared first in the USA in the Presbyterian Hymnbook (1955), but became well known only after Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) sang the hymn in 1971 on his triple platinum album, “Teaser and the Firecat”, with the familiar piano arrangement composed and performed by Rick Wakeman. As a result of that recording, since that time “Morning Has Broken” has been included in most hymnals.

Perhaps during artCamp I’ll sing this sweet tune with my artCampers as we gather on artCentral’s expansive porch to set our tone before every artCamp day. Taking place July 9th through 20th, each of our ten days runs from drop-off at 10:00 a.m. to pick-up at 3:00 p.m.

Every camper chooses a single class to attend throughout a day. At noon we take a break to enjoy our sack lunches and juices before spilling onto the lawns to stretch and play until 1:00 p.m., when campers go back to their classrooms to finish their projects.

As I mentioned in my last column, classes are filling up super fast! If you haven’t already registered you wanna-be artCamper be sure to do very, very soon. Registration forms are available in Carthage at artCentral, Carthage Public Library, Cherry’s, The Deli, KOKA Gallery and The Palms. In Joplin you’ll find registration forms at Spiva Center for the Arts, Cleo’s Picture Framing and Design and Crackpot Pottery and Art Studio. You can also go online and download the registration forms from artCentral’s website: http://www.artcentralcarthage.org/artcamp-2018.html.

Here are just a few of the nineteen exciting classes offered in artCamp’s second week:
​
DUCT TAPE MESSENGER BAG with SARAH SERIO: With duct tape and cardboard and your imagination, you design and construct a talk-of-the-town, awesome, durable, one-of-a-kind bag to carry anything anywhere anytime!

WHIMSICAL SELF PORTRAIT with TERI Y. DIGGS: Why are you special? What makes you stand out from the crowd? What makes you light up and smile? Create a fun, mixed-media self-portrait using a variety of techniques and materials.

“BIG” GREEN SCULPTURES with SARAH SERIO: Take the challenge! Innovatively use ordinary, everyday objects and turn them into your own one-of-a-kind, mixed media masterpiece super sculpture.

WHIMSICAL WIND CHIMES with TERI Y. DIGGS: Assemble a colorfully beautiful set of hanging chimes with beads, strings and lots of pretty objects. These are great to make and to see and to hear!

MAGICAL MAGAZINE MOSAIC with TERI Y. DIGGS: Create a colorful, fun and unique art work with rolled, up-cycled magazine pages. Go abstract or patterned. The results are awesome. You’ll want to display your creation for all to see!

CREATE A UNIQUE FRAME with APRIL DAVIS-BRUNNER: With paint and sculpting, turn an ordinary frame into a work of art embellished with sparkling stones and super cool ornamental decorations.

A GLASS TREE NAMED MAGGIE with JANE McCAULLEY: Ages 9 and up, inspired by artCentral’s very own “Maggie the Magnolia”, make your own glass magnolia tree and a glass magnolia leaf wind chime and a leaf magnet, too.

DESIGN AND PAINT artCENTRAL’S NEW MURAL WALL with SANDRA CONRAD: Take one or both sessions of this two day class. Day One: Learn mural making basics. Conceive! Design! Sketch artCentral’s newest mural for the big wall outback. Day Two: Learn mural painting basics and paint a mural to last on artCentral’s wall that’s ready and waiting for your paints and brushes.

By the end of each artCamp day as artCampers gather to have snacks on the porch while holding their creations and waiting for their rides, their hearts will still be singing:

This summer’s artCamp is next on our always exciting agenda. As Joni Mitchell’s so poignantly penned:
 
“And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.”
 
Yes, at artCentral we’re caught in a circle game, and a very good game, indeed, going round and round through the seasons­—moving from winter’s annual Holiday Boutique to spring’s opening “Art Speaks” exhibition presented by the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition and to summer’s Annual Membership Exhibition. Now on to artCamp!
 
Our community supporters are enthusiastically answering our requests to help us get ready to purchase supplies and offer scholarships and fund teacher stipends. Generous grants have been received from The Carthage Community Foundation, The Helen S. Boylan Foundation and S&S Computers. More contributing support is anticipated.
 
This past week I had the privilege of talking with the Rotary Club of Carthage. Speaking of our work exploring creativity with our youth, I happily received on behalf of artCentral not only the club’s generous grant for artCamp, but also a generous honorarium which will go into artCentral’s Greenwood-Mathé Fund for Art and Artists.
 
Our artCampers are our community’s future art-making artists and visionaries. I love working with them and helping them in a digital-screen-free environment where they learn and discover and make art in the company of our staff of gifted teachers and interns. Every day my heart’s aflutter as artCamp registrations steadily flow into at our old fashioned, glass-windowed, combination-opened post office box and through our new vintage brass mail slot in artCentral’s cheerful green front door and in our pretty, summer green curbside mail box on East Thirteenth Street!
 
Classes are filling up super fast, so if you haven’t already registered you wanna-be artCamper be sure to do so pronto. Registration forms are available in Carthage at artCentral, Carthage Public Library, Cherry’s, The Deli, KOKA Gallery and The Palms. In Joplin you’ll find registration forms at Spiva Center for the Arts, Cleo’s Picture Framing and Design and Crackpot Pottery and Art Studio. You can also go online and download the registration forms from artCentral’s website: http://www.artcentralcarthage.org/artcamp-2018.html.
 
Here’s a sampler of just a few of the twenty exciting classes offered in artCamp’s first week:
 
CREATE YOUR OWN ARTIST SMOCK with ALEXANDRA BURNSIDE (also offered the second week with SANDRA CONRAD): Scissor down and customize an adult-sized smock (donated by ESM Technology, LLC) with fabric paint, fabric markers, scraps of textiles and hand-stitched embroidery.
 
UPCYCLED DIORAMAS with KAHLIE JONES: artCampers use imaginations and ingenuity to think inside and outside the box! Color, glue and paint your way to making a unique 3D storytelling scene.
 
AMAZING ZEN-TANGLED LETTERING with TERI Y. DIGGS: Learn the best basics for creating zentangled artwork and turn your doodles into real art with patterns and lines you design. You can do this! The results are amazing!
 
LITTLE PEOPLE MADE WITH GLASS with JANE McCAULLEY: Ages 9 and up, make jointed glass Little People just like the legendary ones who reportedly live in residence in artCentral’s well house.
 
HIGH FLYING with SARAH SERIO: Learn the two ancient practices of relief printmaking and kite building. Print your own designs on the kite you build. Watch the class kites soar up, up, up! Then take yours home to soar some more!
 
PAINT ARTCENTRAL’S FAMOUS TREE PEOPLE with SANDRA CONRAD: Inspired by the legends and stories of artCentral’s wee visitors from downunder who supposedly travel up through a big hole beneath the white pine tree, learn drawing and painting techniques to create your own Druidic-like  character on canvas.
 
FLYING FOREST FRIENDS with APRIL DAVIS-BRUNNER: Learn to sketch your favorite butterfly or bird or squirrel. You can make them beautiful or funny and fun. Maybe make a wild woods pony with wings! Use acrylic paints to paint your wildlife masterpiece on canvas.
 
Oh, yes…
“And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.”
 
Give your artCampers the special opportunities of artCamp’s classes and offer them the joys of anticipating more creative experiences to come. Though your campers will grow up and won’t be able to return to this unique summer, at artCamp 2018 they’ll make art and memories they’ll look behind on again and again, as the painted ponies of their many seasons go round and round on their carousels of time.
 
 

David’s a generous partner in so many respects, especially with our tune-making. Though he’s been playing guitar and singing in myriad settings practically all his life, he consistently ups my confidence by encouraging me as though I’m already a pop star.

Until now, I’ve always been really intimidated by his musical gifts! Even when we’d try to sing along to familiar tunes on the radio, my voice would go all shaky and way, way off key!

In contrast, David’s just naturally at ease with music. Little by little following his example, I’m learning our song-making can be easy and fun, too. I don’t have to be nervous or afraid. Just have fun! After all, we’re doing what all creative artists do, we’re trying something new!

Our dueting came about quite by accident when not too long ago, I woke up with an old folk tune plucking at my heart strings. You know the one…“Hush Little Baby”, a traditional lullaby, probably written in the southern United States. The supposed origins suit me just fine, since my ancestral roots run deep in rich riverbeds and on the stony mountaintops of the Arkansas Ozarks.

I must have been singing quietly to myself that morning, when David joined in with his rich baritone. We’d hardly finished the last verse, and he’s excitedly declaring, “We have to sing this together! At artCentral’s picnic! Okay? And we can learn some other tunes, too!”

We do learn others. We borrow a microphone from our Joplin musician friend, Ed Minton. We plug the mic (mike) into David’s ancient, battered mini amp. For two weeks we practice and record on David’s ipad. By the evening of the picnic I know most of the words and hit a lot of the notes for our four selections: “Hush Little Baby”, Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game”, “You’ve Got a Friend” by Carole King and, for our encore, the aria composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera, “Porgy and Bess”—“Summertime”.

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy” at artCentral, because everyone pitches in to make the magic. McCune-Brooks Healthcare Foundation provided generous underwriting for this exhibition on view through July 29, 2018. Jurors Beth Simmons and Andy Thomas arrived early to do their tough work of choosing the recipients of awards from the stunning collection composed by thirty-six contributing artists; Judy Goff put final touches to her barbeque entrées and beans and her signature homemade strawberry shortcake; and in spite of temps in the 90’s hardy souls showed up in the midday sun to prep for the evening’s outdoor celebration.

Board members Jane Ballard (and husband Bobby), Jackie Boyer, Pat Goff and Lonnie Heckmaster set up and dressed tables, wiped down chairs, hooked up rotating fans and smudge-checked gallery woodwork, walls and doors. (The same crew did the breakdown at the picnic’s close with the additional help of artCentral member Casey Antle, prepitor David Greenwood-Mathé, board member Doug Osborne, friend Jeanine Poe and gallery docent Emily Rose.)

With welcome and abundant shade making a timely appearance and a lush breeze blowing over Hyde House hill, artist members, families, friends and guests arrived with luscious salads and desserts to share. On behalf of artCentral, Jackie and Alex Boyer accepted their five dollar dinner donations.

Oh, what a feast was had! After guests toured the house and the exhibit, David and I sang our songs. At last the time everyone was waiting for arrived—the announcement of the 2018 Annual Membership Exhibition awards!

GOLD went to Jim Bray for his masterfully made collage/watercolor, “Joplin Depot”.

Linda Teeter received SILVER for her atmospheric archival digital print, “Violin on San Luis” (New Orleans).

Both the BRONZE and UNDERWRITER awards went to Dustin Miller for his colorfully graphic, imaginative acrylic, “King of the Beasts.”

When asked to share their artistic reflections, with a humble voice Jim Bray extended his thanks and appreciation to the jurors for making their challenging choices from among so many outstanding works; Linda Teeter expressed her sincere appreciation to be exhibiting in the company of artCentral’s exceptionally talented community of artists; and offering encouragement to all artist members, Dustin Miller said, “Just keep making your art. I’ve submitted many entries to artCentral exhibits over many years, and this is my first time to receive an award!”

Yes! To all aspiring artists, keep making your art in summertime and in every season. “One of these days you’re gonna rise up singin’, spread your wings and take to the sky!”

Won’t you join us this coming Friday evening, 6:00-8:00 p.m., June 1, 2018, for the Opening Reception and announcement of awards on artCentral’s beautiful lawn? Everyone is welcome! For a gourmet picnic dinner your donation of five dollars will be appreciated. If I can keep my courage up and my voice steady, my artist husband David and I, accompanied by his guitar, will have a couple or three celebratory tunes to share with you.

All the artworks in this exhibition are heartfelt expressions created by artCentral member artists—artists who are practicing and mastering the art of loving, living and leaving.

Artists love. They make art for love—their love of art and their love of creating.

Artists live. They live to find and claim and cherish the precious moments and hours and days they need to listen to their souls and allow inspiration to flow in and inform their art-making.

Artists leave. While they’re here and after they pass over, with each of their creations artists leave our world better, more truthful and more beautiful for all of us.

Karen Brust, artCentral member artist and recipient of the 2016 Membership Exhibition Underwriter Award, left our company to pass over in early May. She was an exceptional artist in her loving and her living and her leave-taking. The beauty and inspiration of her colorful paintings linger still on our walls and in our hearts.

Soon after Karen’s departure, my younger brother and only sibling, Dr. David Stanford Baker, II, passed from us on the 14th of May in Charlotte, North Carolina. David, too, was an artist—a sculptor who chose to spend his professional life as a micro-surgeon working to rebuild hands with the skills of a dedicated, compassionate and well-trained artist.

Like many an artist, David early realized his life’s calling. As one childhood friend posted on facebook: “Even at Jefferson Elementary [Little Rock, Arkansas] he set the example for how we ought to behave. Once a boy seriously lacerated his head on a swing set during recess. David immediately took off his shirt and wrapped our playmate’s head to stop the bleeding, while the rest of us did nothing useful or ran for the teachers.” My little brother, while still that very small boy, stood before our church congregation and declared his intention to be a medical missionary.

Hearing the news of David’s death, one of his lifelong friends wrote to me, "I will never in my lifetime know a finer boy or man than your sweet brother always was—he was simply the best of the best." As the minister declared at David’s celebration of life, he’s “actually been living life eternal for quite a long time.”

David devoted himself to family and community life. He was at his best as a loving husband and father. He led scout trips and family adventures to share his love of nature and the renewal that comes with time outside. He helped with homework and art projects and read bedtime stories, enthusiastic and ready to model the discipline needed to achieve excellence. He trained his golden retrievers with a gentle hand and was rewarded with their faithful companionship. At Myers Park United Methodist in Charlotte, his church home for forty years, David found comfort and insight and the opportunity to serve in myriad ways including on medical missions to third world countries.

After retiring in 2014, David pursued his lifelong commitment to social justice, practicing his Eagle Scout's habit of looking for how he could leave a place better than he found it. He participated in Dismantling Racism seminars and volunteered to benefit children as a Guardian ad Litem and reading buddy. He carried his well-organized tool kit to build homes, communities and hope with Habitat for Humanity.

My brother David showed up for family and friends with strong arms and perpetual optimism. His support for the people he loved never wavered. He was exceedingly happy for my husband David’s and my finding each other in love and art and our celebrating our first anniversary of wedded bliss. He was proud of my work as Executive Director-Curator of artCentral, and yet he brashly chided me to make more time for the creation of my own art.

In the last months of his life, David and I wrote emails back and forth under the subject line: ART MENDS. He asked for prints of my art he found particularly inspiring. I sent them. To know my art surrounded him with his last breaths is a blessing.
​
In his too brief lifetime among us, my brother David set the curve for every artist who aspires to leave a creative life well-lived. Dr. David Stanford Baker II mastered the art of loving, living and leaving. Àshe!

Registration forms are available in Carthage at artCentral, Carthage Public Library, Cherry’s, The Deli, KOKA Gallery and The Palms. In Joplin you’ll find registration forms at Spiva Center for the Arts, Cleo’s Picture Framing and Design and Crackpot Pottery and Art Studio. You can also go online and download the registration forms available on artCentral’s website: http://www.artcentralcarthage.org/artcamp-2018.html.
​
Our community’s support is awesome for artCentral’s eighteenth summer artCamp! At a recent awards ceremony, Jackie Boyer, president of artCentral’s Board of Directors, and I were honored to receive a grant of $2,500.00 given for artCamp by the Carthage Community Foundation from the Marsh Family Foundation Fund. artCentral’s Board of Directors is deeply appreciative to the Carthage Community Foundation for this generous support which will be used toward scholarships for tuition for children needing financial assistance; camp preparations and operations; classroom equipment: class materials and supplies; refreshments; daily overseeing and support by artCamp staff; and stipends for teachers.

​Teachers selected as artCamp instructors are either recognized working artists, experts in their media, or public and private school teachers having professional credentials. Many times they are both. The well-balanced artCamp curriculum is selected from unique class proposals submitted by the individual staff teachers. I’m delighted to introduce you to artCentral’s amazing staff of 2018 artCamp teachers!

ALEXANDRA BURNSIDE – Alexandra grew up in El Paso, Texas. She loves her musical husband, cats and playing with clay! She teaches elementary art at Fairview Elementary and loves making art with kids and watching their creative minds at work. For Alexandra, drawing and doodling are fun and relaxing.

APRIL DAVIS-BRUNNER – Well known in and around Carthage as an accomplished painter and experienced teacher in oil and acrylic, April exhibits and teaches frequently throughout southwest Missouri. She is one of the seven artists contributing to the mural on artCentral’s Great Wall.

SANDRA CONRAD – Sandra achieved a Bachelor of Fine Arts on a full merit scholarship at Missouri Southern State University. Her paintings were featured in “Winged Women”, a solo artCentral exhibition. She’s a past president of Joplin Regional Artists Coalition and a member of artCentral. She lives with her family in Neosho.

TERI Y. DIGGS – Teri holds a BS in Graphic Design. Her original design was the official art for our 2017 Maple Leaf Festival. Teri works as a Mark Twain Elementary School tutor and teaches art classes and parties for kids and adults in her home studio. She lives in Carthage with her husband, Craig, and their son, Jasper.

CHRIS GREGORY – Chris, owner of Heartland Horseshoeing School in Lamar, Missouri, is a world-respected, in-demand farrier, “the one every horseman wishes he could get”. Chris holds several academic degrees and travels the globe teaching the art of hoof-care. Thousands of practitioners and educators use his textbook.

​KAHLIE JONES – Kahlie attends Missouri Southern State University and enjoys crafting and making art in her free time. She was first an artCamper then an artCamp aide at artCentral. This will be Kahlie’s fourth year as an artCamp instructor. She loves giving artCampers the tools and the techniques to create.

TOM JONES – Tom is an accomplished and prolific artist in many media and holds both Bachelor and Masters degrees in Art Education. He’s won several state and national awards for his cartoons and has instructed at many artCamps. Tom is well known for his watercolors of snowmen among Carthage landmarks.

JANE McCAULLEY – Jane taught elementary art for thirty-five years in Indiana before moving with her husband to Missouri nine years ago. She holds Bachelor and Masters degrees from Ball State University. Currently she teaches classes in glass art at Spiva, in her home studio and at artCentral.

SARAH SERIO – A native of Neosho, Sarah is a professional artist/printmaker and returning artCamp teacher who enjoys teaching kids to be creative thinkers. Sarah’s prints are shown regionally and exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. She is president of the Neosho Arts Council Board of Directors.

ALICE LYNN GREENWOOD-MATHÉ – I’m the artCamp Director, an artist and Executive Director-Curator of artCentral. I LOVE artCentral and artCamp! With my artist husband, David, I like to travel, garden and share a big, old house filled with our art and furry and feathered companions. I’m teaching French to our puppies. artCamp is coming! I’m super excited!

My friend and a member of artCentral’s Board of Directors, Gail White, has a painting of a white lily blossom. She sent me a text with the image just the other day. Her message read, “I purchased this treasure, painted by Karen Brust, at last year’s Annual Membership Exhibition!”
 
I remember the day Karen Brust brought her “Healing in Bloom” white lily to Hyde House. She was jubilant to be delivering a new work from her easel.

Her artist statement sounds like a resurrection declaration. “Recovering from surgery, I looked forward to sitting at my easel to paint and find solace from my struggles. I expected to pick up where I left off with my brushes and pigments, filling one canvas and another, creating masterpieces I’d been envisioning. My upper and lower body, as well as my limited stamina, presented different agendas. This painting is the result of many short painting sessions needed to regain control of my brushes combined with my desire to win the battle. Painting this Lily was good for the heart and confidence of this artist.”
 
The morning of Karen’s “Healing in Bloom” delivery, as we’d so often done before, we paused in our fast forward day and took time to enjoy one of our artist-to-artist chats. Karen wanted to tell me about her “next-up” painting waiting to be started.
 
Artists, like Karen, make excellent friends! We are kindred-spirits. Our conversations flow easily. We can talk about our art-driven passions anytime and anywhere, every chance we get. I knew for sure Karen was this kind of artist friend for me the first time we stood dripping wet in the Y locker room after our swims—talking about art and art and more art and then on to families and grandchildren and how we’re doing our best to take care of our bodies.
 
My artist friend, Karen Sue Brust (Collins), 68, of Carthage, Missouri, passed away on Sunday, May 6, 2018. Her family and friends surrounded and comforted her during her brief hospital stay. As throughout their marriage, her husband of twenty years, Terry Brust, stood by her and supported her with great love and commitment.
 
The surprise and shock of losing Karen so unexpectedly, has left many of us disbelieving that we won’t see her pretty face again where we saw her last. When I go to the pool today, I’ll instinctively look for Karen and our next talk. I’ll find her place empty. Only time can soften the ache of her absence. She leaves a space no one else can fill. Her family’s beautiful tribute says this all so well:
 
Karen was a highly talented, creative and beautiful artist in every sense of the word and in all aspects of her life—wife, mother, grandmother, friend, daughter, aunt, sister, businesswoman, seamstress, financial planner and painter. She brought an indescribable kindness and magic to everything she touched and created. This is especially true for the joy, fun and creativity she brought into the lives of her seven grandchildren whom she loved with all of her being.
 
Karen was born on August 14, 1949, in Joplin, Missouri. She graduated from Carthage High School in 1967. Her daughter, Kelly Hunter, was born in 1968. Karen married Terry Brust on November 28, 1997. They were blessed with a large and loving blended family.
 
Karen believed that with dedication, sacrifice and hard work we can all achieve our dreams, even when they seem impossibly out of reach. She had a diverse and successful business and philanthropic career. Her businesswoman/artist friend, Linda Teeter, remembers, “I knew Karen when we were two women out to break the glass ceiling in two-piece business suits and clicking high heels. Karen always acted like a lady. But don't think she couldn't hold her own. Karen was a New York Life agent. We were among the first women with agencies.”
 
Karen was a member of the National Association of Female Executives; the National Association of Life Underwriters; and the Million Dollar Roundtable. She was longtime member of Soroptimist International and a supporter of Camp Soroptimist.
 
After years of service to others, Karen achieved her ultimate dream of being a painter—creating and sharing her vision and working with other artists at the Koka Gallery, artCentral Carthage, Spiva Center for the Arts, the Carthage Art Walk and other artistic venues. In 2015, Karen received the McCune-Brooks Healthcare Foundation Underwriter Award at the artCentral Annual Membership Exhibition.
 
Like her ethereal white lily, Karen’s beautiful spirit lives on at artCentral and in her art and the hearts of so, so many. I am thankful for the enlightened joys she gave to my life. My pretty, talented artist friend, Karen, is remembered with great love and admiration. 
​
    

I tidy the kitchen, give Lasyrenn her training walk and run her a few times through her agility course—over and under bamboo hurdles and down the hay bale and barrel tunnels—then take my place at my studio computer and look at my to-do list.

Write Art Notes, text Bev to check facts. Finish graphics for Membership Exhibition postcards and posters, purchase stamps for invitation mailing. Update mailing labels, ask Lora Waring to generate a new set. Swim laps. Play date for Lasyrenn (with her sister, Roxi). Prep for gallery hours. Set up for Josie Mai’s collage workshop.

“Laundry Can Wait!” is my mantra as I work from one task to the next until time to hug David when he comes home.

Home. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the arts of home and hearth and how we’re celebrating them this year at artCentral. Josie Mai’s spring EAT ART exhibition, currently at Hyde House, is all about the pleasures of cooking. This autumn’s THE ART OF QUILTING showcases the art of stitching. (Visit www.artcentralcarthage.org/the-art-of-quilting.html to submit an entry.)

Josie makes food-centric art because she loves food. What inspires quilters to do what they do hour after hour—thread to needle and needle to fabric again and again? I ask quilters Jinny Hopp and Ruth Potter to share their quilting stories.

Jinny: “Quilters stitch quilts for the sheer joy of combining color and shapes in a unique creation, to communicate emotion and to honor loved ones. Though they seldom call themselves artists, quilters are artists—fiber artists.

My maternal grandmother and my mother were quilters. They both had a very fine, even stitch to embellish their quilts. They both taught me the sewing skills needed for quilt making. My mother passed on to me several bins of quilt fabric when she quit quilting.

I don't often hand quilt, but I do a lot of designing and machine sewing of quilts. Last year, using Mom's fabric, I made twenty quilts for cancer patients in memory of my sister who died from pancreatic cancer. Vicki Elliff takes quilts to the KU Medical center every Christmas in memory of her son who died from cancer. We share love with people in the hospital cancer unit through the quilts we create. Quilts are about love.”

Ruth: “Both of my Grandmothers quilted. My Mother never did. I was fifty before I started going to Quilt Guild Meetings just to hear the speakers. One day the speaker, Margaret Miller, said, “With my technique seams don't have to meet.” Her book describes her approach as “strips that sizzle”. I thought, “I can do this!”

I signed up for Margaret’s next day class. I don't know how many quilts I made using that technique. Everyone got one for Christmas for several years. Then I discovered attic window quilts showing scenes outside. Oh my! Everyone got quilts again. We were living in Washington State at that time, and each April we'd come back to Carthage to celebrate my mother's birthday and Mother's Day. On our way we'd attend the International Quilt Show in Paducah, Kentucky. I got to thinking about my bucket list and mused, if I could only make a quilt that would be accepted, I would be thrilled. After a few years I made and submitted a quilt. My quilt was accepted.

By then we'd moved to Texas. I wondered if my quilt might be accepted in the International Quilt Show in Houston. I sent in my entry. My quilt was accepted! Well, now the bug had bitten me, and I've been accepted in many shows, even Nancy Zieman's PBS show in Madison, Wisconsin.

The quilt I am showing at Art Central was thirty years in the making. I worked on it for seven years until my hands gave out. A Mennonite lady finished my thirty-year quilt. It's my last hand-quilted quilt. I've loved my hobby.”

David and I have loved this full and happy day in Paradise. The puppy is safely tucked away in her kennel. Chiquita, her companion, sleeps beside our bed. Ding’s curled up on top. We’ll snuggle now beneath our paw-printed spread and a couple of family heirloom quilts. The laundry is still waiting!

​​

 Straightening up our own kitchen after our weekend morning coffee, David calls to me up the back stairs, “We don’t want to do this!” “Oh, yes! We do!” I call back down. “I’ve never known you to be a wimp!” Silence. Long pause.
 
David calls back up, “I guess we’re going. Where’s Chiquita’s poncho?” I call back down, “In Ding’s cat food cabinet. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

​Twenty minutes later with puppies, treats, toys and tethers gathered, vibing on pumped up resolve and determined to not miss our weekly walk-about-outing, we shut the door behind us. Stepping out into April’s shivering twenty-nine degrees of an unpredicted blowing spring snow, we find the patio, gardens and Lasyrenn’s agility course are serenely blanketed in white.
 
We’ve made plans with our friends Kerry and Bev to meet up for a pancake breakfast at our much loved Hwy 59 Café in Diamond, Missouri, and we’ve decided not to disappoint them or us or the puppies. Loading into Van (Gogh) we go south.
 
Our meet up is predictably happy and fun. Bev and Kerry catch us up on their recent projects. She’s helped successfully launch the Master Gardeners’ 2018 seed library. He’s been out with the Missouri Stream Team testing water quality in Center Creek. We agree we want to paddle our kayaks there together. Since they’re enthusiastic artCentral members, we give them all our arty news. Over extra cups of coffee, we sing them a wee duet from those we’re working up for our Annual Membership exhibition and picnic.
 
Parting with hugs and handshakes, Kerry and Bev head home as David and I carry on to George Washington Carver National Monument. On our walk this morning we see new wild flowers emerging in spite of the chill. David regrets not bringing his sketchbook. The weather’s become totally inconsequential.
 
I grew up with a weather maxim handed down by my Arkansas hillbilly ancestors: “If you don’t like the weather, wait a day or two. Change is sure to come.” Seems quick change is the theme of Missouri weather, too, especially in this fickle spring. One day the hastas are emerging and unfurling while guys walk into the Post Office in flip-flops and shorts. The next we’re dealing with the prospect of another freeze that has us frantically covering up all our tender plants we want to save.
 
Perhaps, now we’ve reached a week when spring’s ready to hold steady and the only dramatic change we’re facing is swapping the contents of our closets from our winter to our summer wardrobes. Today I’m wondering what’s weather-appropriate to wear for my lunch time meeting with my book club. Will the temps be up or down? Shall I dress in layers? Throw on a coat?
 
My wardrobe concerns are truly petty compared to those faced by the characters dealing with deprivation and harsh weather in “Enemy Women” by Paulette Jiles, the book I’m preparing to review for my book club discussion in May.  Knowing I was looking for a provocative read, David pitched the possibility of this historical novel set in southeastern Missouri during the Civil War. Since he loves to read as much as I do and our literary tastes, like our artistic tastes, are complimentary, I followed his advice. I’m glad.
 
Only a third of the way through “Enemy Women”, already I’ve decided this is a book to be added to our artCentral library in the section dedicated to local and Missouri writers. Author Paulette Jiles knows well where we live. She was born in the heart of the Ozarks in Salem, Missouri, population 4,950 in 2010, the county seat of Dent County in the midst of the Mark Twain National Forest. Raised in small towns in both south and central Missouri, she graduated from the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
 
In “Enemy Women” the author introduces a quilt motif that’s capturing my attention, for these days quilts are frequently on my mind: in the colorful paper scraps used by Josie Mai as she pieces together her hand-rubbed collages, in the family heirlooms David and I use to wrap and transport art from venue to venue and in the call for entries going out for THE ART OF QUILTING, the juried exhibition to be shown at artCentral this coming October and November.
 
Unmistakably spring’s snow, seeds, streams and collages are steadily carrying and flowing us forward toward the exquisite quilts of artCentral’s autumn.