Another RELUCTANT ARTIST post, because, well, I can!
Here's another "blob" post, as my father's second wife once called it when I tried to describe the initial "blog" I began in the early 2000s for posting photographs of my father's art. She wrinkled her nose as if something smelled bad and crinkled her baby blues at Dad for confirmation that he smelled it too. She was never our "step-mother" as she'd made abundantly clear when they married. She was sure the whole step family thing was some weird American thing that didn't even exist in Germany; though I don't imagine that was actually true). He snickered but didn't correct her.
But enough "sour grapes" because, well, who likes sour grapes? And, I know, I disappear from the "socials" for weeks at a time and now here I am to promote something. Self-serving? But it's about my dad. Does that make it better? Anyway, while I'm here, I'll try to be, you know, "social."
But enough "sour grapes" because, well, who likes sour grapes? And, I know, I disappear from the "socials" for weeks at a time and now here I am to promote something. Self-serving? But it's about my dad. Does that make it better? Anyway, while I'm here, I'll try to be, you know, "social."
First, the details:
January 13, 5:00-7:00 pm, Second Saturday Reception in the Poetry Center Gallery. 1719 25th Street,
Art Work by Joe Rice, plus mingling, drinks, snacks, books & art cards for sale (20% of proceeds to benefit the Poetry Center)
Monday, January 22, 7:30 p.m. Sacramento Poetry Center Gallery once again, art still on the walls, stuff still for sale, plus a Reading & Discussion featuring Dorothy Rice (that's me), excerpts from THE RELUCTANT ARTIST and maybe some new writing, still about art and Dad. My thinking is that the theme of the readings and discussion will be "what's the deal with all this "reluctance" around the notion of being an artist and the "unknown" aspect.
Audience participation welcome!
January 13, 5:00-7:00 pm, Second Saturday Reception in the Poetry Center Gallery. 1719 25th Street,
Art Work by Joe Rice, plus mingling, drinks, snacks, books & art cards for sale (20% of proceeds to benefit the Poetry Center)
Monday, January 22, 7:30 p.m. Sacramento Poetry Center Gallery once again, art still on the walls, stuff still for sale, plus a Reading & Discussion featuring Dorothy Rice (that's me), excerpts from THE RELUCTANT ARTIST and maybe some new writing, still about art and Dad. My thinking is that the theme of the readings and discussion will be "what's the deal with all this "reluctance" around the notion of being an artist and the "unknown" aspect.
Audience participation welcome!
Two early essays formed the guts of what became my first memoir. Both of these essays were both published in 2013. That's ten years ago for those of you still reading who also happen to be mathematically inclined. "The Paintings in the Rafters" was first published in The American River Review (thanks Michael Spurgeon, Professor of the American River Community College class overseeing the Review at the time and also Professor John Bell, who I believe told me he sometimes taught my essay in oe of creative writing classes at AR) and also Professor Lois Abraham; I wrote much of the essay in her nonfiction class at AR.
The same essay was later republished in the Winter 2013 issue of the Still Point Arts Quarterly, a beautiful fine arts journal which was one of the few journals which would publish previously published work and which I found via a search on Duotrope. That was also, I think, my first paid publication and led to my acquaintance with Christine Cote, the publisher at Shanti Arts who liked the essay and my dad's art work enough to request a book proposal about Joe Rice, a proposal that ultimately became THE RELUCTANT ARTIST: Joe Rice 1918 - 2011. I owe tremendous thanks to Ms. Cote and Shanti Arts for these opportunities.
Both The American River Review and Still Point Arts Quarterly are print journals. The text of "The Paintings in the Rafters" is part of THE RELUCTANT ARTIST and some copies of the soft cover book are still available. In addition I have been working on an ebook and hope to have that available soon at a special promotional price in time for the Poetry Center reception. Stay tuned!
The second 2013 essay is "A Painting a Week" written during the one nonfiction class (with the amazing Emily Rapp Black) I took during my MFA program at UC Riverside Palm Desert where I earned an MFA in Fiction studying with the Tod Goldberg. Emily encouraged me to send it to The Rumpus, where (at the time) Gina Frangello, who was the nonfiction editor at the time, accepted it for publication. To say I was thrilled is an understatement. Many, many thanks owed to both of these talented women and to Tod.
All to say, THE GREEN MAN lives on. Who knows, the strange and strangely long, murder mystery/hippie soap opera/art forgery escapade I wrote during graduate school may yet find its way out of the closet ...
The same essay was later republished in the Winter 2013 issue of the Still Point Arts Quarterly, a beautiful fine arts journal which was one of the few journals which would publish previously published work and which I found via a search on Duotrope. That was also, I think, my first paid publication and led to my acquaintance with Christine Cote, the publisher at Shanti Arts who liked the essay and my dad's art work enough to request a book proposal about Joe Rice, a proposal that ultimately became THE RELUCTANT ARTIST: Joe Rice 1918 - 2011. I owe tremendous thanks to Ms. Cote and Shanti Arts for these opportunities.
Both The American River Review and Still Point Arts Quarterly are print journals. The text of "The Paintings in the Rafters" is part of THE RELUCTANT ARTIST and some copies of the soft cover book are still available. In addition I have been working on an ebook and hope to have that available soon at a special promotional price in time for the Poetry Center reception. Stay tuned!
The second 2013 essay is "A Painting a Week" written during the one nonfiction class (with the amazing Emily Rapp Black) I took during my MFA program at UC Riverside Palm Desert where I earned an MFA in Fiction studying with the Tod Goldberg. Emily encouraged me to send it to The Rumpus, where (at the time) Gina Frangello, who was the nonfiction editor at the time, accepted it for publication. To say I was thrilled is an understatement. Many, many thanks owed to both of these talented women and to Tod.
All to say, THE GREEN MAN lives on. Who knows, the strange and strangely long, murder mystery/hippie soap opera/art forgery escapade I wrote during graduate school may yet find its way out of the closet ...
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A Painting a Week, The Rumpus
July 21, 2013
by Dorothy Rice
Some fathers play golf in their spare time, others fish or tinker with cars. My father painted. And made things with clay, fanciful frogs, dragons, impossible pachyderms. He wasn’t a big talker; Mom used to say that art was how he escaped having to.
A year before he died, June 2010, we sat at his kitchen table in the Sonoma house. A row of pills waited on the slick oilskin tablecloth beside his plate. Things I’d grown up with, like the ornate wood door from a monastery mother had made into a coffee table, clashed with his second, much younger wife’s leather sofa and electric piano.
His favorite painting, a young woman on a green chair, hung behind him. Others covered the walls all around us. Precise geometric ones from his hard-edge days back in the sixties. Elusive surrealistic montages from the seventies that Mom said revealed his animosity towards women. Landscapes and portraits from later still. Each painting a piece of an intractable jigsaw puzzle.
Find the full essay on the Rumpus website here
July 21, 2013
by Dorothy Rice
Some fathers play golf in their spare time, others fish or tinker with cars. My father painted. And made things with clay, fanciful frogs, dragons, impossible pachyderms. He wasn’t a big talker; Mom used to say that art was how he escaped having to.
A year before he died, June 2010, we sat at his kitchen table in the Sonoma house. A row of pills waited on the slick oilskin tablecloth beside his plate. Things I’d grown up with, like the ornate wood door from a monastery mother had made into a coffee table, clashed with his second, much younger wife’s leather sofa and electric piano.
His favorite painting, a young woman on a green chair, hung behind him. Others covered the walls all around us. Precise geometric ones from his hard-edge days back in the sixties. Elusive surrealistic montages from the seventies that Mom said revealed his animosity towards women. Landscapes and portraits from later still. Each painting a piece of an intractable jigsaw puzzle.
Find the full essay on the Rumpus website here
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