Collaborating brings me pleasing delights again and again with my fiancé, soon-to-be-husband, David Matthews, in our unfolding relationship and shared life as artists and at artCentral. Every day with unrestrained rapport we creatively inspire, support and encourage each other. Over and over again we say to each other, “Lucky us. We are blessed.” We are!

Making our new reality together, we’re expanding our satisfying, collaborative working relationship. When David suggests I might offer a correction with regard to my two most recent columns because he believes my readership thinks he wrote the text for “The Stone” and “Under the Rafters,” at first I respond to his suggestion, “No matter. I write for joy, not for credit.” True, and yet taking credit for words written from my heart seems right. So, “yes”, I wrote “The Stone” and “Under the Rafters”, and David illustrated both pieces with complementary panache.

Ours is a lovely yin and yang collaboration—I write and David illustrates. A few of you have suggested we collaborate on a book about our love story and how artCentral has brought us together in Carthage. This book is on our “to do” list along with “move to our new home in Carthage, get settled, hang our art, plan our intimate “destination” wedding and our big you-are-all-invited-celebration at artCentral with no wedding presents please, though we’ll be delighted to receive your gifts to artCentral to help us support the work we love for art and artists.

Collaborating for the love of art and artists is the theme that harmoniously binds artCentral’s Board of Directors in our work throughout each year. Pleasure is abundantly mine working with Jackie Boyer, president; Brenda Sageng, vice-president; Betsy Flanigan, secretary; Pat Goff, treasurer; and board members Lonnie Heckmaster, Helen Kunze, Lee Pound, Jane Van Den Berg and Gail White.

​Recently gathered for our annual luncheon around our festive holiday table in the chandeliered gallery at historic Hyde House, members of the board and our guests Sandy Higgins and Sally Armstrong, former directors, and advisor Jerry Ellis, each in turn mentioned a favorite gift artCentral gives as our community’s beautiful non-profit arts organization including the painting of the Great Wall, artCamp and the variety of exhibitions we host throughout each year. Certainly knowing and celebrating our annual parade of art and artists makes the yin and yang of collaborating a joy for us each and all.

from her treasure trove, if the artist visits Avila and makes his choices.
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By GPS we find our way on a cloudy day past property lines defined by elegant upright lace woven by naked trees and regal hawks stationed on fencepost stanchions. Beside the road, just beyond our last turn, on a bit of a rise between aged cedars, sits the modest white, two-storied, front-porched farmhouse Jan calls home. She’s the sixth generation to operate her family’s farm. Established in 1839, hers is the oldest farm registered in Jasper County.

Back-dropped by her cattle herd, Jan greets us freckled and smiling in sturdy boots and quilted jacket, designer eyeglasses and a fleece-lined cap with flaps. A very black and pregnant bovine, Precious, gives us her best soft-eyed look hoping to receive a hand-held biscuit treat.
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“Watch your step,” Jan says as we navigate our way around paddies and through her elaborate iron fence maze that leads to her majestic barn.

The barn’s grand interior feels like a very primitive Downtown Abbey with a main hall and all sorts of passages and anterooms scattered on either side. “Watch your step,” Jan says as she directs us hand over hand and wrung above wrung straight up a sturdy ladder through a hole in the floor of the enormous loft above.

Standing up we marvel at the floor-to-ceiling ancient hay Jan’s working to remove. We’re enchanted by the stained-glass lighting created by colorful feedsacks temporarily covering the high up windows and meant to discourage entrance by the resident owl whose droppings are making a mess all over.

With awe we admire the vaulted rafters towering above us, while the artist recounts the discovery of a barn in Great Britain which uses the skeleton of the Mayflower turned upside down, erected and roofed to be a magnificent working barn much like Jan’s where today we find treasures of weathered barn wood that are perfect for the artist’s Christmas gift for his sister.

There’s a story of a boy child born in a barn in this blessed season. My mother, too, was born in December in a barn beneath vaulted rafters. Lovely stories, both. Perhaps treasures for telling another time.

As her children grow, from time to time the young widow reaches into her cedar chest and lifts out the sparkling stone nestled in a crystal ring box like a glistening moon against a velvet sky of deepest lapis lazuli. Quietly she gathers her small ones around her. Extending the magical box into the circle of their hushed silence, she gently opens the lid and delights at the waves of murmuring awe as the kitchen light makes the stone a pool of sparkling wonder.

This sparkling treasure is left to the artist’s eldest daughter who keeps the stone in her mother’s cedar chest to be remembered when family legends and lore are shared at holiday gatherings. While the two sisters marry and make families, for years and years the artist’s son, grown to be a painter, comes to the family festivities without a wife or offspring. This year is to be different. For the boy who never knew his father has found a woman to love, to honor, to marry and bring to his family gatherings.

Thrice he’s asked his love to marry him. Thrice she’s responded, “Oh, I want to. Please ask me again.” Surely four times will be enough when with his asking he offers up a suitable token.

The artist man visits his eldest sister. He asks if he might have the sparkling stone to place in the wedding band he’ll design for his bride. The elder sister says, “Yes! I will give you the stone as a wedding gift.”

The man asks his beloved to come to his sister’s house. She does. He shows her the box. She raises the lid. There, like a glistening moon, the stone sparkles before her tear-filled eyes. She’s heard the story and understands the meaning—the great meaning of this treasure held in her quivering hands.

The man and woman dine at a fine restaurant. He orders champagne and places on the candlelit table the stone in the open box. Leaving his seat, he kneels beside his beloved. For a fourth time, he asks, “Will you marry me and be my wife forever?” Smiling, smiling, she says “Yes! Oh, yes!”
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As the stone sparkles beside them, they kiss for all to see.


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The best kind of magic happened last weekend at artCentral’s Holiday Boutique under the leadership of artCentral board secretary and Holiday Boutique committee chairwoman, Betsy Flanigan. Decorations installers artCentral board president Jackie Boyer and board member Jane Van Den Berg, not only turned Hyde House into a twinkling wonderland, they also set out treats of wassail, wine, sweets and savories, greeted guests, worked the checkout desk and crunched numbers late into the night.

​As always, artCentral’s Prepitor, David Matthews, was at his best picking up any slack—doing carry-ins and outs, prepping walls, hanging art, as well as washing up and keeping me fed. David along with Lonnie Heckmaster, Guy Myers and artist Dustin Miller toted, set up, broke down and stored the big display tables.

Special appreciation goes out to donors and volunteers giving their best to make this Holiday Boutique a great success: the artists who shared their creations for shopping; supporters Hometown Bank, Schreiber Foods, Inc. and the Carthage Chamber of Commerce; Judith Goff and Wendy Verbeek, who nurtured our signature scarlet amaryllis; Miriam Putnam who created festive tags; the Waggoner banner-installation-team, Blaine and Corinne (Corinne also conjured cheese and gift bags plus made yummy peppermint jumble); and Boutique staffers Alex Boyer, Maddie Capps, Helen Kunze, Jane and Dan McCaulley, Jim and Sharon Patton, board member Lee Pound, Allan Van Den Berg and Gail White.

For artCentral’s continuing work on behalf of art and artists this year’s 4x4 Silent Auction raised significant funds by featuring forty exquisite canvases created and donated by many of artCentral’s best artists including Jane Ballard, Jed Bennett, Linda Brown, Karen Brust, Paul Cameron, Cheryl Church, Larry Clingman, April Davis, Teri Y. Diggs, Liz Foster, Alice Lynn Greenwood, Brenda Hayes, Diane Heisner, Sarah Huntley, Janice Kinman, Melody Knowles, Josie Mai, David Matthews, Jane McCaulley, Dan McWilliams, Dustin Miller, Margie Moss, Debbie Reed, Brenda Sageng, Sarah Serio, Jack Sours, Joan Stattel, Kristine and Michael Steddum, Amanda Stone, Linda Teeter, Andy Thomas, Hailey Tubbs, Maribeth Ward, Lora Waring, Libby Wilson and Natalie Wiseman.
 
Thank you one and all for making magic of your best!