Two weeks after artCamp’s ending, the artfully wondrous sights and sounds of artCamp are still dancing in my heart and head—a school of glistening watercolor koi swimming on sheets of paper spread out and left to dry in the sun on the patio beneath my office window; a kiln stuffed full of clay animal mugs, pinch pot musical instruments and birdhouses waiting to be fired; artCampers at lunch decorating the driveway with chalk drawings while vigorous games of kick ball and swing-the-statue happened all around them with laughter, laughter, laughter everywhere. Oh, what wondrous sights and sounds I still have to keep and savor.

For ten days “Come see! Come see!” rang out again and again from artCamp’s classrooms where artCamp’s amazing teachers taught and inspired and encouraged the hands and the minds and the spirits of seventy (yes, seventy!) artCampers—artCampers who came eager to learn and explore as they made art and friends in forty unique classes.
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For lending their highly trained and well-cultivated super powers to the making of artCamp’s magic, I send out kudos galore to instructors Alexandra Burnside, April Davis-Brunner, Cheryl Church, Teri Y. Diggs, Jane McCaulley, Anne-Marie Gailey, Tom Jones and Sarah Serio. Watching these wizards at work gives my heart cause to sing!
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I am deeply grateful for our dedicated teachers and for all nine artCamp interns, as well. They showed up day after day with energy to match their smiles as they pitched in to sustain artCamp’s creative tempo. With sincere appreciation I say “thank you!” to artCamp’s Interns: Jackie Boyer, Aurelia Burr, Maddie Capps, Betsy Flanigan, Jalayne Osborn, Mary Riley, Miki Smith, Bev Sturgis and Shannon Wedge. They tidied and set up classrooms. They greeted and registered artCampers. They companioned first time campers. They shared play time oversight. They supported the teachers and they helped me consistently, unselfishly. They were my artCamp angels and always seemed to be at my side just when I needed them most.

When I was working days and evenings, too, to stay up to speed with my director’s duties and simultaneously trying to keep up with artCamp’s photographic documentation, Aurelia Burr came to my rescue and began answering those “Come see! Come see!” calls for important photo ops. Knowing her way around a cell phone and a camera, Aurelia became our official artCamp photographer collecting and editing images and transmitting them to me for posting in our Facebook photo albums. Thanks to Aurelia we have a spectacular memory bank for sharing!

In our photo memory bank are many, many smiling images of a cadre of Interns-in-Training who cheerfully gave of their free summer days to learn the tasks and skills of Interns as they gained in-class experience. With great pleasure I think of these Interns-in-Training as artCamp’s eleven-ever-ready wonders: Sydney Campbell, Gabby Cook, Lola Chapman, Brady Cloud, Justice Cunningham, Sara Eddington, Addison Nichols, Karlie Nichols, Olivia Pierce, Abby Rogers and Anna Wheeler.

With special attention from interns Aurelia Burr, Maddie Capps and Miki Smith who put together the installation, the artCamp Exhibition overflowed with two weeks of thoughtfully displayed creations. On a warm summer evening the wrap-up Reception was a remarkable Hyde House celebration. The artCampers attending showed off their art and their classrooms to their families and their friends as everyone sampled the chocolate infused array of artCamper donated cookies, gourmet mini-cupcakes created by artCamper Arya Palmer and a special artCamp cake baked and decorated by artCamper Mia Miles.

While watching the artCampers chatting as they stayed close to the refreshment table where I served up cup after cup of lemonade, I was reminded of similar sights I saw at the art gallery receptions I once attended in New York City. The well-known secret then was that no artist need ever starve,if they were resourceful enough to move through Soho or Chelsea in progressive-dining-mode and graze through the abundance of food and beverage piled on tables at both large and modest venues alike. Even the youngest of our artCamp artists seem to share this instinct. I have good faith they will become the art-makers and shakers of the art scenes of our tomorrows.

As my husband, David, likes to say, “You don’t have to be constantly creating works of art to live an artistic lifestyle.” This is just one of the many lessons our young artCamp protégés are learning as we teach them a smattering of French-on-the-porch along with the tools and skills and curiosities they’ll need to make magic of the creative lives they’ll be living full of artfully wondrous sights and sounds to savor.

“In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the [Berkshire] school system, playing my guitar in classrooms,” he said. “I was sitting on the veranda one morning, reading a biography of Van Gogh, and suddenly I knew I had to write a song arguing that he wasn’t crazy. He had an illness and so did his brother Theo. This made [his life] different, in my mind, to the garden variety of 'crazy’—because [as was commonly thought] he was rejected by a woman. So I sat down with a print of ‘Starry Night’ and wrote out the lyrics on a paper bag.”
 
(“Vincent” was written by McLean while he was living in an apartment full of antiques in the Sedgwick House, a beautiful Federal style house in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The Sedgwick family included Edie Sedgwick, a colorful figure whom pop artist Andy Warhol had filmed at his Factory in the 1960s.)
 
McLean explained the inspiration for his lyrics, “Looking at the picture, I realized that the essence of the artist’s life is his art. And so, I let the painting write the song for me. Van Gogh painted “Starry Night” during one of the most difficult periods of his life, while he was locked up in an asylum at Saint-Rémy. He had to paint the scene from memory, not outdoors as he preferred.
 
Journalist Brown observes that “with [a] bittersweet palette of major and minor chords, McLean’s soothing melody is one of high emotion recollected in tranquility. The lyrical list of colours—the ‘swirling clouds in violet haze’, the eyes of ‘China blue’ and the ‘snowy linen land’—evoke a mental slide show of the artist’s work.”
 
Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) by Don McLean, 1971
 
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land.
 
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now.
 
Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.
 
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now….
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There are many versions of “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)” performed by various musicians. I still like Don McLean’s rendering the best, though there’s a very popular one performed by Josh Groban. If you haven’t heard “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)” recently or ever, take time to listen now.
 
Go to utube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk. Queue up your iPhone or ipad. Find a quiet place to sit and be comfortable. Clear your mind and listen with your heart and know this great painter as never before.
 
Having taken in these lyrics again and again, they have become and will forever remain a go-to happy place within me. I hear the lyrics and I see Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” in my mind’s eye and then images of his other paintings begin to flow before me. Always I am captivated by “Café Terrace at Night”, the first painting in which Van Gogh used a background filled with stars in an evening sky—the painting made in Arles, France, in 1888, the year before Van Gogh was committed to the Saint-Rémy asylum and the year before our old house was built here in our small town of Carthage.
 
Today when at night I look up at the star-spangled summertime canopy over our small town, I am blissfully aware that the canopy above us is the same backdrop as the one we see in the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night Skies.
 
I am grateful for the heavenly beauty that blessed and inspired this greater painter and blesses us still.   

When the puppies finished their last romp in the puppy yard, we sat in our small town on our evening stoop wrapped in summer’s warm embrace.  The chickens had been secured in their coop. Our Aussie had been spritzed with Island Sunset (our favorite new puppy scent) and groomed—ear ruffs combed to keep the mats away, pantaloons brushed to stay soft and fluffy. Our Wheaten Terrier/Poodle, Chiquita, had gone upstairs to be “mise en place” on David’s side of the bed. Lasyrenn sat on the top step between my husband and me. We were all content and quiet, peaceful and enchanted as we watched our dusk-time entertainers softly scattered, silently, randomly lighting up our clover-crusted lawn.
 
They reminded me of those New York City evenings when mesmerized I stood on the Manhattan bluffs above the Hudson River entranced by a similar show. Those nights there seemed to be thousands of tiny fairies illuminating the black backdrop of the New Jersey Palisades from tree line above to water’s edge below. Where did they come from? Why were they putting on such an extravaganza?
 
Fireflies. Lightning bugs. Summertime insect fairies. We love them. As children my little brother David and I ran barefoot over the Bermuda and Saint Augustine sod to catch them in our hands and put them in glass Mason jars. We punched holes in the jar lids to give them air. We placed a wet paper towel on the bottom topped with a few blades of grass for a temporary habitat. We set the jars on our bedside tables and fell asleep watching our guests taking turns going on and off, on and off like the rhythm of a lullaby. Next morning with Mother’s reminding, we took our visitors back outside, opened the lids and lay our jars sideways on the ground. By lunchtime our wee fairies had all disappeared.
 
Fireflies. Who are they? Our fireflies are not flies at all. The Lampyridae family of insects is in the beetle order Coleoptera with over 2,000 described species. Their name is from the Greek “lampein” which means “to shine”. Commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs, they are soft-bodied beetles known for using twilight bioluminescence to attract mates for loving or prey for dinner.
 
Did you know firefly light can be yellow, green or orange? With regard to energy expended to make their flashes, fireflies are efficiency superstars using oxygen to mix with luciferin that generates light with very little heat.
 
Serving as courting overtures in the insect world, firefly flashes can be as romantic as a dozen roses given by a lover to woo the affection of another. Male fireflies typically fly through the air in search of a female by emitting a species-specific flashing pattern of one to nine flashes. The females resting on the ground wait until they see a truly impressive light display. They indicate their interest with a single flash in a species-specific manner, timed to echo the males’ flashing. Then, well, you know the story. In nature’s perfect timing a batch of new fireflies will be birthed into our world.
 
Regrettably, humans are contributing to the demise of our firefly populations. If you don’t see as many this summer as you have in the past, consider that light pollution, development of appropriated firefly habitats and agricultural harvesting are decreasing their homes and numbers. Fireflies do not relocate when their homes are overtaken. Sadly, these magical insects of summer just disappear. Where can we find inspiration and answers to show us how we can keep our romantic fireflies happy at home and lighting up night skies in our small town and everywhere?
 
So often as artists seeking inspiration David and I simply look up to lift our spirits and to invite intuitive insight and answers. On many a summer’s night we are awed by the hosts of stars and planets shining as though to ignite sparks of ideas within us as they echo the firefly light show twinkling before us.
 
Frequently our awe for the beauty and the grandness of our natural world turns our thoughts to our awe for the great art we both love—art like Vincent Van Gogh’s exquisite “Starry Night” that we viewed at the Museum of Modern Art on our recent trip to New York City.
 
Made in June of 1889, by this post-impressionist Dutch painter this famous oil on canvas describes the view from the east-facing window of Van Gogh’s asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Just before sunrise the firmaments radiantly shine over far pastures and the ideal, church steepled village added by the artist. Did Van Gogh see fireflies dancing on the asylum’s lawn the summer nights before and after he painted this sunrise?
 
In this sweet summer of 2019, in our small town beneath our own firefly-sprinkled starry nights may we each find all the inspirations and answers we seek. May they twinkle in our hearts and in our minds like magical lightning bugs happily dancing over all our twilight lawns and across all our evening pastures for ever and ever. Amen.

​Do you remember how our cool, wet spring went on and on so sweetly in our small town? Now suddenly summer is insistently moving in hot and steamy! Yes, Missouri is definitely heating up!
 
To beat the Saturday heat we knew was coming with the rising sun, my husband David and I started out early to give our Aussie her training walk around Central Park. This takes a while with lots of repetition practiced at every street crossing as we focus on teaching her in French while she walks “au pied”, at heel, and learns her directions at every intersection looking “à droite”, to the right, “à gauche”, to the left and “allez-allez!” for go ahead.
 
Getting half way around the park this morning, we veered off course and passed the Library gardens and the Police Station to check the artCentral box at the Post Office. Continuing on we made the corner onto the historic Carthage square. After buying tomatoes and beets from Tammy Wilson at the Farmers Market, we lingered at the windows of the Big Dog Boutique before stopping for cappuccinos and pastries at Mother Road Coffee where we sat out front with our puppy.
 
As often happens at MRC, we met and had a delightful conversation with out-of-town visitors. This couple from north of Kansas City was passing through Carthage on a weekend getaway loop. They had found very affordable airbnb lodging at the Crossroads Loft, an 1880's executive loft that has been completely renovated.
 
We told our new acquaintances of some of the nearby great art in our small town like Judith Fowler’s pop-up exhibition on the other side of the Courthouse and the stunning interior of Lillian James, the upscale salon and spa conceived by owner Becky Andrews with artful multi-media assemblages by our late and famous artist Larry Glaze. We encouraged them to seek out Koral Martin’s colorful nature photography in her KOKA Art Gallery on down Main Street just past The Palms Massage and Day Spa, the Maple Leaf Music Company and Spellbound Boutique. We urged them to visit Cherry’s Art Emporium to see the works of local artist heroes including Lowell Davis, Jerry Ellis, Andy Thomas and Bob Tommey and the plethora of other highly accomplished Carthage and regional artists. Of course we shared our enthusiasm for artCentral’s summer happenings—artCamp and our Annual Membership Exhibition. By the time our new friends departed they were sold on Carthage as a haven filled with art and artists.
 
Our extended morning outing thoroughly enjoyed with Lasyrenn, we practiced street corner training all the way back home, where with David’s much needed assistance I finished prepping an artCentral mailing just in time to make the last Saturday afternoon mail pickup. Then off we went to meet up with our friends Kerry and Bev for a much anticipated afternoon art party—Art by the Spring at historic Cox Spring hosted by artist April Davis-Brunner in the amazing, art-filled home she’s created with her husband, Larry, nestled in their serenely forested acreage.
 
Leaving our car beneath shade trees in the Parking Pasture, we passed between two stone stanchions adorned with a plaque reading “Cox Spring, Established 1842” and topped with two silhouetted black buzzards. Created by April’s dad Lowell Davis assisted by Jason Vickers, these watchful greeters cut from metal, perched on large wooden limbs before a metal disc of a golden full moon.
 
Cox Spring was settled by John Cox, the founder of Joplin. His name is inscribed on a limestone ledge above the spring which was a regular stop to provide water to both passengers and animals on the Butterfield Stagecoach Lines in the late 1800’s. The ruts from the stagecoach trail are still visible in the yard west of the spring which is said to have been used during the Civil War for encampments and as a water source. In the early 1900’s the spring was a popular place for church picnics and family gatherings.
 
We imagined we could almost catch snippets of laughter from past good times echoing off the bluff and bubbling down the meandering waterway. Hearing the sweet real time notes of stringed instruments and singing voices, we were delighted with the offerings of guest musicians including Taylor Jones, Alex Williams and Jeremiah Jones positioned knee deep among lavender blooming hostas. While beautiful notes wafted about us, we wandered through the art-filled tents set beside the brook where white ducks waddled on the colorfully flowered banks and fishes lazily swam just beneath the clear surface. Sampling the abundance of palate-pleasing beans and cornbread and fragrant muffins and brownies, we toured the main house and April’s Art House where she makes her art and teaches lessons. Her artistic creations were everywhere, available for pleasurable looking and for purchase, too.
 
What a splendidly artful, steamy summer Saturday from beginning to ending with our driving the winding backroads carrying us home to Carthage and our old house filled top to bottom and inside and out with art that moves our hearts in every season in our small town.