LIVING WITH ART BLOG

The door to my office at the Gallery has glass panes. Often when looking up from my desk, I will see a nose or two pressed to a pane of glass. At that point I usually get up, walk to the door, and ask if I can be of assistance. Inevitably I get the question, “Is this room part of the Gallery?” When I reply, “it’s my office,” the response is surprise, a request for permission to enter, and comments that this is the most unusual office they have ever seen.

I readily acknowledge that my office is probably the most “eccentric” office in Oklahoma City. By that point in the conversation, my visitor(s) will spot a painting or an object that they want to ask about, such as two six foot handcrafted bird cages by Nick Irza, one in the style of a Cathedral and the other in the style of a Russian Orthodox Church, that sit on either side of my fireplace. In truth, everything in my office has a story and every piece of art, furniture, book, or paperweight has long since become a part of me. When visitors are interested, I take time to relate my history with the item and why I selected it to be in my office. 

One day last week, I received a call from an attorney asking if he could bring by a Nan Sheets painting on behalf of one of his clients. I was beyond thrilled. Nan Sheets, one my personal heroes, is Oklahoma's most well-known early Oklahoma artist, teacher, pioneer and champion for the arts.

Born in 1885 in Illinois, the youngest of five children, Nan inherited her mother’s talent for painting and her father’s free spirit. She graduated from Valparaiso University with a degree in Pharmacy. She immediately obtained work in a neighboring town, but soon moved to Salt Lake City, studying art in the mornings and working afternoons and evenings as the Head Prescription Clerk in one of Salt Lake’s largest pharmacies.

Are we not all reeling from current events? Personally, I am reeling from what I call America’s 2020 Triple Threat: the global pandemic; the resultant economic crisis; and the resurgence of violence due to systemic racial and social injustice. This Triple Threat is not going to just disappear. We will have to collectively work through it. This is a time when we all need go beyond ourselves in the search for "the better angels of our nature." As always, I find truth, understanding and hope, my better angels, in art. My goal as the owner of an art gallery has always been to make art in all its forms easily available to a growing audience. To maintain our goals in a time of turbulent change requires the resilience and creativity to make changes in how we reach our goals.

While in graduate school I took a sociology course entitled “Futurism.” I loved that course and was so inspired that I joined the World Future Society, whose members over the years have included Buckminster Fuller, Herman Kahn and Margaret Mead. The professor of my futurism course at the University of Oklahoma was Dr. John Pulliam, who also served on my doctoral committee. He insisted that we read all the provocative books of that era that dealt with the future.

While cleaning out some files last week, I came across an article I had downloaded from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website in 2017. The Met had conducted a survey in which they asked 12 Contemporary Artists "What it Takes to Make a Great Piece of Art.” I found the responses fascinating. So, I decided to conduct a survey of my own.

One summer, my late husband, John Belt, and I spent a couple of weeks in Cape Cod attending a workshop with Daniel Levinson entitled "The Seasons of a Man's Life." A psychologist and a professor, both at Harvard and Yale, Levinson had recently published his book of the same title. The workshop was accredited for attorneys through the American Bar Association and also met my continuing education requirements as a therapist. It was a wise and wonderful workshop.

While searching my home library this past week for something to read that had the perfect blend of escapism, wisdom, and emotion, I came across a book I purchased a few years ago, but had not yet read, "Leonardo's Brain" by Leonard Shlain, a famed author and surgeon. I took Leonardo downstairs, curled up in my favorite and most comfortable chair and started to read about something we are all learning, that in order to truly live and function in contemporary society we must train both our right and left brain to coexist.

About seventeen years ago, Cynthia Wolf and I conspired to start a monthly gallery walk. We planned to host the walk on the first Friday of every month. Cynthia Wolf owned the Adelante Studio at 3001A Paseo. She had lived in San Antonio and was very familiar with its River Walk. Through my travels, I knew that in major cities all over the world, groups of artists and galleries would organize at least one event a month to celebrate the arts.

Like you, these past few weeks, I have sat in countless Zoom conferences trying to make sense of all the recent challenges. We sit together apart discussing survival strategies and attempting to reinvent a relatively unknown future. Most of my Board and Committee appointments are with arts and educational institutions. Both of those sectors are extremely vulnerable to physical and economic uncertainty and change...

When Fareed Zakara, one of my favorite global thinkers, mentioned in a recent television broadcast that he was re-reading John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden, I was intrigued. When he went on to say that “East of Eden” was in his mind “The” great American novel, I grabbed a copy and started re-reading it myself. It is indeed an extraordinary and powerful novel. The multigenerational story makes it a must read for anyone interested in human behavior. Steinbeck, winner of both the Pulitzer and Nobel Award for his writing, based the plot of this book on the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Just as in “Grapes of Wrath,” the characters in “East of Eden” are fully drawn and totally unforgettable. But the quality I love in this book is a quality one also finds in Steinbeck’s other books and that is a sense of place. It is impossible to read any Steinbeck novel without breathing the air, smelling the dirt, seeing the horizon, or getting burned by the sun.