Art in my life - An autobiographical sketch, Part 1

I suppose my love of art began when I was very small. My mother always had me in a class of some kind. I took ballet (legs covered with bruises, and I could never keep time), ice-skating (could only skate backwards without holding on to the edge of the rink, forget about turning, or pushing off without someone holding me), gymnastics (could never do a cartwheel, so flips were out, could never complete the number of sit-ups required for the warm-up, so they asked my mother to save her money and stop bringing me to class) and piano lessons (3 teachers and 3 years and I still wasn't able to play a simple cord). But at least I had the summer. At summer camp I would act in skits (gave me a chance to show off and be funny, dive and swim (which for me was like ballet in water) and do random crafts (potholders, painting, and of course clay sculpture). This is the only time of the year I felt successful at anything. I loved camp because I was free to be my weird quirky self and explore with art materials. Nothing was graded, or assessed too deeply. It was all just for fun! And boy, did I love it.
My attempts at making art probably began with my childhood friend who lived across the street - Paul. He was my constant companion for my earliest years, and I remember how truly creative we were. We would ride through the neighborhood on our bikes, lift up rocks to find bugs and creepy crawly things that we could examine and collect. (I truly believe it is this ability to hang with a boy and do gross boy stuff that allowed me to see Charles Darwin as more than an evolutionist, but an incredible observer and artist in his own right.) Paul and I even sat down together to create a comic. I don't remember too much about it other than one of the characters' names was Chickabonga, and looked strangely similar to the son in the comic Momma by Mel Lazarus. My ability to create something interesting paled in comparison to Paul's wildly creative imagination. Was I a Roy Lichtenstein in the making? Definitely not, but I developed a deep appreciation for the genre as an art form nonetheless. I felt inferior and experienced performance anxiety in Paul's presence, but tried to keep up with him. I always came out looking like a fool, and eventually he grew tired of my helpless girlie ways. Thank God for summer camp. That's where it all happened for me.
My love of art may well have blossomed at camp, but my conscious love of art first became evident to me when I began college. I went to a local community college right after high school. My high school friend Val picked me up everyday, and we would go to our classes, and drive home. I did not have the same classes with her, so if I was done early, I used to go up into the library stacks and find the art section. I would open those oversize books and look and read and look some more. A favorite of mine was of old botanical prints. Another was of the Baroque period. Lots of swirls and flowers and fleshy naked women and babies signifying fertility, femininity and life. I did not know what I was reading about, and nothing made sense. I just liked what I saw. I hated my classes. I learned nothing there, because my receptors were closed. The only place they opened was in the stacks, pouring through the worlds of botanica, nudes and still lifes. Seeing no point in going to class anymore, , I would get the ride from my Val every day, and go directly to the stacks, looking though art books all day long until it was time to meet her for my ride home at the end of the day. I was slightly obsessed, and absolutely kept what I did with my time a secret. Sooner than later my secret was out; I flunked out of my second semester of college, and subsequently dropped out.
I got a job working in an office through my then best friend's mother. I sat in a beige cubicle and ordered cars from Chrysler on a computer, checked the specs and passed the order onto the Factory Liaison who checked the specs by phone, and had them shipped to soldiers overseas at a discounted price. It was a good job, and I was making a decent salary, but I was going nowhere fast. What was particularly frightening was that I was getting used to "corporate" life. There was an endless drone of computer sounds and I found a myriad of excuses to leave my cubicle to wander around and talk with the ladies from various departments.
There were so many characters that entered my life during this phase, most of whom I still remember just as they were frozen in time. Mental photographs. There was Judy the head of the computer department, who had short blond hair cut in a thin bob, and wore cool silver timmed Jon Lennon style spectacles and looked like she was hand drawn by Syd Hoff himself. Edwin the first gay man i fell in love with. He was black and from Brooklyn, and I'd thought I had died and gone to heaven because meeting him was proof that I was living an interesting life. My fondest memory was the card he gave me for one of my birthdays. I think the outside had a picture of a lion with his mouth wide open, and he was saying "Happy birthday to the youngest looking person I know, and I'm not lyin'." and when you opened it, the lion was in stitches laughing and the lion says"Get it? I'm a lion, and I'm not lyin'? Oh man I kill myself" and the Lion continues on a little rant as the letters get smaller and smaller down the page. We laughed for a good 10 minutes over this card... I remember every detail of that card and what the Lion looked like, the exaggerated facial expressions and the color (red0 and font of the print. "Then there was Charlie, Edwin's partner in the mainframe room. He was married to the same beautiful lady for over 35 years, and retirement was only a few years away for him. They seemed to like me too, and I remember Charlie invited me out to his Shinnecock home for a barbeque one summer. Don't remember why, but I never made it out there. There was also Bernadette a raven-haired lady from my hometown who seemed very simple and straigtforward in her manner. She wore glasses with a granny chain, which made her look much older than she actually was. She always looked like she probably went home and had a good smoke of weed after work, like it was the only thing keeping her in her miserable life. She worked in a cubicle near mine, but I can't remember what her job was. What I do remember was her look of shocked horror when I announced I would be leaving the company to go back to school full time "I thought you would go out and get married... why on earth do you want to go to school for?" The implications, were endless. I think that comment confirmed with every fiber of my being that I had made the right decision. Good bye bagel Fridays!
My Columbian immigrant parents were crushed at my idiot decision. They certainly did not immigrate to the U.S. so I could be a drop out loser living in my mother's house and not getting an education. My mother made me pay for that decision - literally. I had to pay here nearly 75% of my take home pay for rent, food and miscilaneous expenses. My car insurance was my own responsibility, and gas of course. Anything I needed was my own responsibility. I remember one time I asked my mother for $5 for gas to get to work, and she declared vehemently in her thich South American accent, "NO, no, e NO, Maria!" She wanted me to suffer and boy did I... for three whole years I worked full time in that office. Until one day I realized my life would be filled with Bagel Friday mornings, and gossip in the telex room. I had to do something. I quit. It was June, just two months before my 21st birthday, and 7 months after my father passed away, and just made the best decision of my life.
Because I had made this decision, and to relieve the stupor I was in after my father died, my mother offered to take me to Europe for my 21st birthday. I did not want to go (if you know my mother you know I love her to death, but she can be hard to handle) on the trip with her, although I was very appreciative of the offer. My mother, being deeply religious her whole life, wanted to see the Passion Play in Oberamergau, Germany, and to show me something different. She said, "Maria, there are two kind of education... one in school, one in life. You need to learn the one I can show you... about meeting other people, different people, looking at art, learning history of the famous places listening to important music. You no get dis in school, Maria." So, she booked everything and off we went. 6 weeks of European bliss. If it were not for my mother I would never have had the life I have. I probably would never have written this blog either. (Oddly, as I write this entry, it is exactly 2o years since that trip!)
My parents were divorced when I was 3, but I really had no understanding of this because he was at my house every weekend for school supply shopping, and of course massive Sunday dinners which he and my mother cooked together, me watching every chop of onion and mixture being prepared. Those were great times. I always felt so close to my father, very much a "daddy's girl". When I was about 11, I remember asking my mother why my dad didn't have dinner with us every night, and my brother triumphantly blurted out "...because they're divorced you idiot!" to which I responded, stunned, "what's divorced?" And so my mother had some 'splaining to do. She said they loved each other, they were best friends, but they could not live together. She said she would tell me one day why, but she never did. The weekend visits continued, and I don't think I ever mentioned this to my father for fear of breaking his heart that I knew. I idolized him. He was a good father, and husband, despite the fact they no longer lived together, and I was an official statistic since the age of 3. It didn't matter to me, I understood. My mother was tough. I'm sure that was all it was.
When my neighbor came over one night t tell my mom and I that my brother had left about an hour ago to a funeral home in Queens, I did not digest why. He was dead, she said. My father was dead. My mother weeped and wailed and shouted, "you have no father, aiy.. Jaime is dead, my husband is dead!!!" I did what I would do only once again in my life. I went into autopilot mode.
I don't remember much about getting there, but when we arrived at the funeral home we were brought to a room where my father was laid out on a cold steel table. He was naked, covered only by a white cloth from the waist down. He looked like my daddy, but he was blue. My mother collapsed on his chest, screaming and crying, and kissing his lifeless lips and face. I stared a bit, and thought of a painting I saw. Later I would learn how significant that painting was because it was faulty, out of proportion but that image flashed in my mind: Mantegna's painting. When we left the room and walked downstairs, about thirty cousins and relatives I never met were there screaming and crying. One of my "cousins" a girl about my age screamed, "you killed him Maria Theresa, you killed him when you dropped out of school.. he was never the same again!". Not what I wanted to hear. Autopilot. We met privately with the funeral director who told us my father wanted to be cremated and his ashes buried in a church in Colombia with his mother and sister. My mother's reaction is too much to write about, being such a strongly devoted old school Catholic, but suffice it to say she was not having it. In the end, his wishes were granted. The sad thing is there was never a place to "visit" him after that, something I longed for later, but knowing its what he wanted is my only consolation.
My mother decided we should go on this trip, that it was what he would have wanted. I can honestly say that trip changed my life forever. Goddamnit, Julia my mother) was right again, as she always was, always will be. She showed me everything. At least she exposed me to everything she talked about. The genius of my mother is that she was never educated past 6th grade, but learned the art of Socratic Questioning somewhere along the way (probably to avoid admitting she did not know something). She showed me things and made me read the cards and ask questions of the tour guides. She may not have been able to explain art, architecture, or musical composition, but she definitely brought me to the sources of these things. Of course the place that stands out for me was Germany because we spent most of our time there, and Beethoven dominated. But Vienna and Salzburg, the home of Mozart... he is everywhere. I fell in love with Vienna's elegance and style. The shops, the music, the PASTRY! We saw the Magic Flute at the Vienna State Opera House, which made me appreciate the beauty of opera. I didn't get that any of this was snobby, or elitist, in fact just the opposite. My reactions to all of it were like Christmas morning every minute... I was filled with surprise and wonder, and emotion. I loved everything. The different sounds on the streets of languages, and funny sirens, to amazement at wandering aimlessly and hearing Beethoven's 9th pouring out of speakers that lined the shopping streets. The smells were different, and even the trees! After that trip all I could do was fantasize about living somewhere in Europe so I could be a part of those sights and sounds every day.
We moved on to Brussels, The Netherlands, and back down to Paris for our final stop. Paris. Ah, Paris.
More about Paris in my next blog entry....