My friend whose name I've changed to protect her innocence--Typ--and headed out to an estate sale in Memphis. I was excited, hoping to get some of the art and art supplies of the person who'd left them behind, maybe by choice or maybe by her family members' choice, as she went either to stay with them or to a nursing home. There was in fact plenty such items left in her home, mostly watercolors--at near-gallery prices. One part of me thought--it is only right. She created these of her soul, talent, and hands. Another part of me selfishly and practically thought--Get real! This is a tag sale!!! Always in such situations I am reminded that the things we treasure when alive and well can quickly lose value on the auction block.
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| 1994 Datebook belonging to artist. My open journal sits beneath it. |
I did not buy one of her paintings, but I did buy for $2 a datebook from 1994, which she had used to organize herself. In May, her first entry was for a senior aerobics class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Over the next two months, she made note of birthdays, her perm appointment, and a "Celebrate Art" event scheduled for June 10 at 3:00 in the afternoon. She played bridge, attended many art shows and luncheons. She was obviously an important part of the art community. She loved gardening too. Perhaps she thought of it as art; she made mention of her tomatoes, reminded herself in August to "fertilize rhododendrons." There are no notes after August. Perhaps, after the initial motivation for buying the datebook had passed, she grew tired, as artists often do, of being hyper-organized, which is to say organized at all. But at the back of the datebook, she did write down several birthdays from January through March and her and her husband's wedding anniversary--July 18. They made sixty-two years in 2004!
Pat asked the organizer of the sale if the artist was deceased and was told no, but her husband. I didn't go through many of his things. For about twenty minutes I did carry around an unworn Michigan t-shirt, which a lady saw me with and pointed out a cotton golf cap that also sported the school's name. He obviously was a Michigan grad as am I--a connection, then, to both him and, as a fellow artist, to his wife. In June, she wrote, "Art Show Luncheon--Cranbrook Rd, Birmingham." How familiar the street name and city rang. Home for me, or close enough. I wondered then what brought them to an upscale subdivision in Germantown, Tennessee on the outskirts of Memphis.
Looking at her life nudged me to examine my own; we share a path though she is old enough to be my grandmother. I am inspired that she both still lives and that, in the Germantown house, she kept an art studio, on the second floor, and continued it would appear to paint into old age. Some of her watercolor paper had yellowed, some was fresh. I purchased nearly half her brushes, quality. When I got home, I wiped them down with alcohol. I feel her enough I thought. She was an established artist. As I paint, some part of her may live here too.
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