Of course my husband David and I will be present—he as artCentral’s prepitor (art handler) who with me creates the magic of each exhibition installation—me as artCentral’s hostess-director-curator. We make a good team aligned in the service of art—the art of others and our own art, also. As members of JRAC David and I both have works in this exhibition currently on artCentral’s gallery walls.

Being out on the town and celebrating art, we’ll count this HEART & SOUL evening as our customary “Friday date night”. We both cherish our date nights as those special occasions when we take a break from day jobs and chores and puppy training to spend time sharing hours together in satisfying pleasure. An evening celebrating art among art lovers and creators, like a “dinner and a movie night” certainly fills this niche, especially when we add our own twist.

Recently, late on a wintry Friday afternoon, David called from his work place and asked, “What do you want to do tonight?” When I pitched “dinner and a movie”, he was all in. We looked online but could not find a nearby theater showing a movie that tweaked our interests. Next best choice: “dinner and a movie” at home…in bed. No need to bundle up and go out into the night to travel on slick roads while the temps were falling below freezing. Instead, while I carried my laptop to our bedroom, set up a “free” movie to stream and turned on our faux wood stove, David popped popcorn to bring upstairs on a big tray filled with peanut butter, apples, chocolate and bubbly cucumber water.

Our movie choice was excellent—a perfectly cast, exquisitely poignant 2006 sleeper neither of us had seen before. Weeks later we’re still talking about “Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School”, which the online notes describe as “a heartfelt, nostalgic and gently humorous story about a chance encounter in which one man’s dreams become another man’s destiny”.

Our staying in date night was so, so happily satisfying! Our going out to artCentral and the HEART & SOUL opening will be just as pleasing. We think our peer artists of the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition are awesome and the stories they tell in their creations are as moving and meaningful as the story told in “Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School”.

2020 is JRAC’s tenth anniversary! Besides the work of the JRAC artists we’ve come to know and love, we will have art by a few fresh new faces in JRAC’s membership. They are excited to be exhibiting with us for the very first time at artCentral.

The Joplin Regional Artists Coalition is a not-for-profit group founded in 2010. JRAC’s mission is to promote, strengthen and advocate for the visual arts and artists, art enthusiasts and patrons of the visual arts and to network visual artists to more effectively engage in cultural, economic and educational artistic activity within the Joplin region. Many Carthage artists are active members of JRAC.
​
Come see what all the talented JRAC artists have created with HEART & SOUL for our pleasure! Come and be pleased! Come find your favorites. Choose one or more for your own HEART & SOUL collection.

In making the presentation, William Sutter, the 2016 Artist of the Year, stepped to the microphone and declared: "An artist is one who perceives something that is often overlooked or is taken for granted. I offer thanks to the sixteen fireplug artists for joining together to give to the Maple Leaf Parade attendees a new perception of the overlooked fire hydrants of Carthage.

While these artists painted, I was personally drawn aside to stop and thank them for kneeling down, sweating and getting dirty in the extreme heat. As I was expressing my appreciation I gained a deeper understanding of the meaning of being an artist. The bottom line is that any great creative action in life requires much from the one who is seeking to carry out a heart’s desire.

So, to you 'Super-Sixteen' self-giving artists we say, 'Thank You' for revealing how to express care and love for the ordinary. Your unselfish actions clearly show us that everything in life has value. This certainly is true in Carthage, Missouri. We salute you!"

Last year the “Super Sixteen” named local legend and Red Oak II creator Lowell Davis as the 2018 Artist of Year. Our artCentral member Andy Thomas spoke with deep gratitude for Lowell’s guidance and inspiration that have led Andy to achieve international fame. In honoring Lowell, Andy presented him with an original sculpturally enhanced oil painting celebrating Lowell’s life and influence.

For this year’s Awards Banquet Lowell asked me to pass the Artist of the Year torch on his behalf to the recipient of his choice. This year’s honoree, like Lowell, lives beyond the Carthage city limits. Like Lowell’s, his artistic career has taken off after plowing his talent and creativity into more mainstream endeavors. Following his service in World War II, before returning home to make art and live his dream, Lowell spent fourteen years as art director of a large advertising agency in Dallas.

While always carrying the desire to be a real, practicing artist, our new award recipient used his college drafting degree to work as a designer and writer in the manufacturing industry before opening his small town pizzeria where he made his first paintings as murals on his restaurant’s walls.

Anticipating the perfect moment to spring the surprise and tell this year’s artist recipient of the honor being given to him, I reached out to the honoree and arranged a time for a visit to his gallery-studio. David Greenwood-Mathé, artCentral’s prepitor, joined me on this purposeful excursion.

Mixing a bit of pleasure with our purpose we loaded our Aussie for our wee road trip, and off we went on a wintry afternoon allowing time for a late lunch at one of our favorite courting destinations northeast of Carthage. The truck stop up-do we found was delightful, especially the addition of a vintage knockoff of a waitress statuette. I was delighted photographing the town’s charming, petite water tower set among grain elevators not too many blocks from the artist’s studio on the town’s only commercial street across from his former pizzeria (now closed).
​
Though the artist’s front gallery was unheated and rather chill on this overcast day, when given the news of his selection, the sparkle in the eyes and the blush on the cheeks of this newest Artist of the Year created a warmth that enfolded us all. The naming of this Artist of the Year will be forthcoming soon!
________
The art of the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition will fill the galleries of Hyde House, upstairs and down, in February and March. The Opening Reception for HEART & SOUL is Friday, February 7, 2020, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The public is invited. Admission is free. For more information call (417) 358-4404 or visit www.artcentralcarthage.org online.
________

​Though all through every year I move with great energy and devoted engagement from one event and one exhibition to the next, at these two times I really step up the pace, put the pedal-to-the-metal and go fast forward. When each big push is over I’m out of breath: my inner reserves and resources are depleted: I need a break. Work-Pause-Rest-Reset I go until my soul catches up with me.

I first understood this rhythm best when I was living in New York City. I was preparing to go on a solo hosteling adventure through Australia. In a dream I had seen silhouetted wild Brumby ponies of the Snowy Mountain highlands. They were running along the edge of the globe back-dropped by a gleaming full moon.

Determined to see the Brumbies running free on their native soil, I renewed my passport and got my visa and I read. I read up on Australia and the brumbies and hosteling. I especially loved Bruce Chatwin’s “The Songlines”—his 1987 book combining fiction and non-fiction, in which he tells of his trip to Australia for the express purpose of researching Aboriginal song and its connections to nomadic travel.

I drew up my itinerary and flew into Sydney and went into the mountains. Though I never found the Brumbies, I had adventures aplenty.

I fell in love with Australia and the ever friendly, helpful Australians. I drove as Aussies drive. I climbed Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s highest peak. I feasted on scones and tea in the parks. I visited the Sydney Opera House. I sought out art in the museums of Canberra and Melbourne.

I saw the Little Penguins of Phillip Island on parade. Returning ashore after a full day of fishing at sea, they magically arrived at sunset and waddled across the beach to their sand dune burrows. No Brumbies. Just fairy penguins. I smiled. I felt happy. I came home to Manhattan.

So much newness, so much discovery, so much to process and take in. I had to lie down. I felt I had followed the songlines and like the Aborigines of whom Bruce Chatwin writes, I had to wait for my soul to catch up with me. I did. Work-Pause-Rest-Reset, and I was ready to paint what I’d seen and experienced—my downunder discoveries.

Again I’ve been waiting for my soul to catch up with me. Now I’m ready to paint a commission that first came to me some three or maybe four years ago. My patron has been ever so patient. Just when I was first ready to begin, my life led me to the entry of an exciting, new, fast-forward adventure.

While I kept on at artCentral I fell in love, got married, moved house three times, bought a home with my husband, added laying hens and gathered an Australian puppy into our blended family. Along the way I managed to make some art for exhibition (even took on and completed some not too-daunting commissions), but mostly, while starting up an entirely new life, in regard to painting, I had to practice Work-Pause-Rest-Reset. Finally my soul has caught up with me sufficiently to begin “La Pietà”.

My “La Pietà”, added to my “Madonna and Child”, the commission I painted for Father Steve Wilson not too long after I moved to Carthage, will belong in the small collection hanging at Grace Episcopal Church.

What a privilege to reflect upon and reference “La Pietà” (The Pity) painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1876 following soon after the death, in 1875, of his eldest son, Georges, who was only sixteen years old. This one will take all I have to give, for my emotions run deep as a mother with a beloved adult son. My husband says I can do this. I will. My soul has caught up with me. I am ready.
________
The art of the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition will fill the galleries of Hyde House, upstairs and down, in February and March. The Opening Reception for HEART & SOUL is Friday, February 7, 2020, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The public is invited. Admission is free. For more information call (417) 358-4404 or visit www.artcentralcarthage.org online.

In Carthage neighborhoods and around the county, most all the colorfully twinkling holiday decorations have been taken down and packed away for the year. Though the days are waking sooner to lengthen longer, they are often sweetly subdued and sometimes rather gray.
​
Our heartland world seems to be resting in the still of winter. In pastures outside of town large rolls of uncollected hay bales look like monoliths forgotten and left behind by time. Farmland fields lie serenely fallow. Ploughed under, they passively wait to be sown again in spring.

Earlier that day, moving through our pre-work morning rituals, over coffee we spoke of Nature’s signs and totems, especially those for which David feels an affinity—the owl and the crow—both being symbols for instinctual wisdom. After the hawks’ attention-getting visitation we questioned their possible meaning.

We learned that in Native American culture hawks are revered as protectors. They symbolize power, courage and strength. They represent the ability to use intuition and higher vision in order to complete tasks or make important decisions. Understood as messengers of the spirit world, seeing hawks means the universe wants you to learn powerful lessons or expand your knowledge and wisdom.

Come spring I will remember this awareness each time I see our pair-bond visitors in their home Park territory as they nest and brood in the high branches of a big old tree beside the Park’s sidewalk. I’ll appreciate them more than ever as they give flying lessons to new offspring winging from limb to far limb and swooping low over Lasyrenn and me as we amble along.

For now, in the still of winter, I will call upon Crow and Owl and Hawk to give me guidance as I move into “La Pietà”, my current painting commission; as I make 2020 plans with artCentral’s Board of Directors; and as together we make preparations for 2020’s first gallery exhibition HEART & SOUL.

​The art of the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition will fill the galleries of Hyde House, upstairs and down, in February and March. The Opening Reception for HEART & SOUL is Friday, February 7, 2020, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The public is invited. Admission is free. For more information call (417) 358-4404 or visit www.artcentralcarthage.org online.

The exhibit, beautifully themed HEART & SOUL for February, the month of love, will showcase a collection created by members of the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition (JRAC). I will be honored to share my painting, “In Love We Disappear”, among the mixed media works of such gifted artists.
The exhibition theme of HEART & SOUL has been an inspiration to me. The lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s “Boogie Street” have served as inspiration, as well:
​
“So come, my friends, be not afraid. We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made; in love we disappear.”
I’ve pondered what heart and soul and love are for me. They all for me are Lasyrenn (“La-si-ren”), my siren. In Haiti she is the patron spirit of artists and musicians.
Many of you already know my husband David and I are training Lasyrenn, our Australian Shepherd, to be a therapy dog who will give emotional support. Eager to learn and acquire new skills, at two years old she is showing great promise and terrific progress.
Lasyrenn captured my heart and touched my soul the first moment I gathered her in my arms. She was lightly dappled with colors of amber and chestnut, as though softly stroked with a brush. Among her rowdy litter of nine blissfully tumbling and frolicking in a muddy enclosure, she was the only one sitting demurely apart, watching her sisters and brothers.
The still, pristine serenity of this tiny fluff ball of fur seemed to call out to me, “Take me home before I become all mud-covered, too.” I did. Picked her up. Took her home and fell deeply, deeply in love with my wee studio companion who’s growing up to be smart and sensitive, eager to learn, feisty and energetic, too.
Truly beautiful to behold, Lasyrenn is my favorite photographic subject. At last I have chosen an image from among so very many. This one especially honors her quiet, soft beauty. She’s resting in David’s reading chair waiting for him to come home at the end of the day. Light from a large salon window is falling softly across her back, highlighting one side of her face and the tufting above her ears. She is still and serene in her waiting as she looks directly at me.
First I make a sketch from Lasyrenn’s photograph. Then I explode the drawing to fill the 11”x13” picture plane of an acid-free, gesso-prepped museum board. I spread out the tubes of acrylic pigments I’ve chosen for my minimalist, muted palette of dusty hues. I lay down Lasyrenn’s contours with lightly painted lines of raw umber.
I begin to add pigment. First I paint her eyes, for they are the windows to her soul. They show her true feelings and reveal her emotions. As soon as I’ve painted her eyes, all else follows and flows gracefully, easily. I am pleased. I have practiced my art of seeing. I have found love and inspiration, truth and beauty.
Will you come see and celebrate my love and Lasyrenn, with me? Come enjoy your own art of seeing love and inspiration, truth and beauty in all the wonderful JRAC art that will fill the galleries of Hyde House, upstairs and down, in February and March. The Opening Reception for HEART & SOUL is Friday, February 7, 2019, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The public is invited. Admission is free. For more information call (417) 358-4404 or visit www.artcentralcarthage.org online.