My father was an artist. He didn’t make a living at it. So far as I know the closest he came to trying was when he sold his jewelry on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue in the 1950’s.
“We could have used the money,” my mother said, with a grudging laugh that had stuck with her for over fifty years, “but your father was never much of a salesman.” No surprise there. I picture him sitting on the sidewalk, legs crossed at the ankle, nose in a textbook, a forelock of black hair covering his eyes while his silver and wood necklaces, pendants and earrings set out on a bed sheet, jewelry fit for a beatnik chick in a black turtleneck sweater, sold themselves or not at all. “I think he just wanted out of the house,” she added. Which seems reasonable—the last of their four children was born in 1958.
 painting of backyard playhouse, San Francisco  image of disassembled Studebaker in larger painting, 1974 |  backyard playhouse, San Francisco, 1967 Whatever it was that drove him—my father was a prolific painter, sculptor, jewelry maker, and more, into his eighties—it doesn’t appear to have been financial gain, a need for public recognition or acknowledgement of any kind. I don’t know that he even particularly cared what his family thought. He was never one to say, “Come look at this. Come see what I have made, what I have done.” We kids might watch while he worked, perhaps ask a question, point out a familiar object from our lives as it materialized in paint or clay, the sturdy playhouse he built under the big tree in the back yard of the San Francisco house or the disassembled Studebaker that was a permanent fixture in the garage. He might seem pleased that we’d noticed. He might smile. That bemused half-smile that if nothing else was not a frown. Attempting to understand or to at least corral my thoughts and emotions about my father brought me back to creative writing after many years absence, lonely years when I often felt lost without the compass, the grounding mechanism, that writing had always been for me. Among many other things, I owe him thanks for that. (excerpt from "A Singular Life", an essay by D.R. RICE, 2014) |
RSS Feed
