His Own Vocation: A Short Story by Phillip Hoyle

Judaculla Dream
Mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

The grandfather sits alone in his apartment, smoking a cigarette, enjoying a CD of anthems by the Baroque composer Henry Purcell. He is intrigued by the unusual qualities of the English voices: the exceptionally fast vibrato of the soprano, the overwhelming resonance of the bass baritone. He wishes he owned a stereo with larger speakers so he could hear more sonorities of the orchestra and organ. Still, he is contented, drawn into the music and the memories it evokes.

As a boy, he lived for music. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra standing before the front room mirror. He heard choirs singing in four part harmony when he closed his eyes at night. He listened over and over to his favorite recordings of Harry Belafonte, Barbara Streisand, Mahalia Jackson, and the Wings Over Jordan Choir. He learned art songs from his voice teacher plus jazz and pop standards from his father. When the school choir sang Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and Faurè’s “Requiem,” music seemed the most important thing in his world.

His dad offered him two words of vocational advice. First, “Whatever you do, be sure you really enjoy it.” Second, “Don’t be a musician.”

The grandfather realizes his dad feared the alcohol and drugs that seemed indispensable to so many performers. He wanted to save his child from temptations that might lead to a life of dissipation. Although his advice was meant to help, it missed the reality of his son’s dreams.

When the CD ends, the grandfather loads a collection of songs by Dinah Washington. Although her life spiraled out of control like the experience his father feared, she thrilled her audiences and left a tremendous legacy of recordings. The grandfather loves the sassiness and tonal accuracy of her voice. He chuckles at the words of the old blues numbers, their subtle and blatant allusions to sex.

In his childhood he enjoyed sex with boys his age. Mostly they played kickball, war, and tag. When they were older they camped, hiked, and hunted. Always they played sex games. Eventually even that changed. In junior high school, he studied art, music, and languages while his best buddies followed their interests in sports, wood shop, and girls. Oh, he liked girls, always had a girlfriend with whom he attended school functions. He followed the rules about how many dates were necessary before you hold hands, dance close, or kiss at the end of an evening. But he continued to miss having sex with guys.

When he was fifteen, his family moved to another town. A member of the church youth group, a real jock, came onto him. Their nine months of vigorously satisfying sex seemed an extension of childhood into adolescence. Their affair ended, though, when the friend moved away at the end of the school year.

That summer, his dad talked with him and his sister about another church youth who was so effeminate the dad was afraid he would be taken to be homosexual when he went to college in the fall. He went on to say, “Neither of you will have that problem.”

The grandfather recalls that at the time he had thought his father imperceptive since he had just spent the school year having sex with a guy. Now he realized that, like the vocational advice, the words may have been wisdom arising from the father’s view of what constituted a successful life, or his dad may have been expressing a deeply hidden dread about his own son cloaked in a concern for another. Whatever the truth of the interaction, the son knew he was different and realized that the difference caused his father anxiety.

Dinah Washington sings her blues in a voice that seems almost too full of joy. Her playfulness doesn’t match the grandfather’s mood. He wants a different feeling, so scanning the shelf, selects an album by Sting. He loads the CD, taps another cigarette from the pack on his lamp table, and lighting it, draws in the rich smoke. He relaxes in the chair, cushioned by the music. He likes the singer’s rough yet rich voice, the range of expression, the variety of lyrics. When Sting mentions losing his belief in the holy church, the grandfather’s thoughts again turn to the past.

The dad’s love for the church led him to hope his son would become a preacher. Responding out of a desire to please his father, the son attended a Bible College. He assumed he would become a minister but by the end of his junior year realized he didn’t want to tell other people what to think or how to live their lives. He changed his major to music. Happy to support the work of others who did enjoy preaching, he entered church work as a choir director and religious educator. Eventually the son was ordained, but he continued associate ministry, pursuing his preferred emphases in music and education.

Once the father attended a Bible study the son was leading. Afterwards, he said, “You’re a good teacher even if I agree more with your conservative students than with you.”

Over many years the son pieced together an interpretation of his father’s support. For instance, the father seemed gratified that his son had married and reared children. He was happy that he pursued his music within the church. He seemed pleased his son held responsible positions in large congregations. The son could hear his father saying these things even if without great enthusiasm and realized this pastiche would have to satisfy his need for his dad’s approval.

The grandfather wonders what the dad would have made of his son’s leaving both career and marriage. What words of advice would the father have proffered had he lived long enough to see his son living in a major city far from his family, working as a massage therapist, painting pictures, and writing about his homosexuality from a religious perspective?

The song changes, inviting the grandfather to wonder what he may have said to his own son that hit or missed the truth of his life. The old man lifts the phone and dials as he puffs away on his cigarette. He listens to the ringing.

“Hello, Able?” he greets his son. “How are you doing? ... How’s your wife? ... Your kids? ... Your work? ...” The two men, old and young, talk candidly. Their conversation proceeds with warmth, laughter, and occasionally surprise. The grandfather asks, “And how is your artwork going?” He hears of new paintings, developing ideas, and a proposed art show. Satisfied, the grandfather hangs up. He leans back into his feelings as Sting observes, “How fragile we are.”

Denver, 2006

My Favorite Literary Character

One of my latest mixed media owing to archaic Cherokee
petroglyphs at Judaculla Rock.
Mixed media painting by
Phillip Hoyle

By the time I had read several hundred novels I was hit by how so many of the protagonists were writers. I was interested in what seemed to be a self-obsession of so many writers. It made sense to me as something I should keep track of. Back then I had no idea that I’d someday try to become one of those writers.

When I met Bud in the books of Ethan Mordden, his tales about gay Manhattan, I developed a greater appreciation for these writers about writers. I liked Mordden as a writer and Bud, his character, as both a writer and character. And now it all makes sense to me. Creative writing teachers often encourage their students to write about what they know; writers get to know writing and themselves as writers.

Looking back over my reading history I now suppose that the literary characters, some of whom I could barely stomach, helped sustain me as I hung out in my closet and prepared me for my self-revealing when I no longer could tolerate the many aspects of duplicities of either being a gay who lived straight or being an artist who didn’t paint or being a writer who didn’t write. (Long sentence. Where's my editor?)

Let me describe the character, my favorite literary character: probably I am he:

He walked through life as the lonely poet of Langston Hughes’ “Carolina Cabin” for I was lonely in that only a couple of people really knew the gay me;

He hung out his heart to discover no one was curious as did Pierrot in Hughes’ poem of the same name for I suppose I was somehow waiting for a man to love me like I wanted to be loved;

He discovered the beauty of the bear people as did the boy in Leslie Marmon Silko’s poem “Boy from Bear Country” and novel Ceremony, for like that boy although I stayed with my people I was never the same;

He loved observing the ups and downs of gay life like Bud did in Mordden’s Buddies series for I made some gay friends with whom I maintained mainly non-sexual relations; and

He finally started to write his urban life, revealing a self with its many themes deeply entrenched in gay experience, for I left my old life and embraced gay life in the city.

So, while I never considered any character to be my favorite literary character, I did somehow become that composite character always involved, always other, and somehow always joyful.

Denver, 2014

Revelation

What IS this walking figure from
Shavano Valley? Mixed media
painting by Phillip Hoyle

Some biblical and artistic revelations combined for me in a most important way, one that helped me realize the ultimate revelation of God’s love. I begin with the image of a boy drawing illustrations of the visionary creatures in the Bible. These word monsters had origins in the apocalyptic literature of the Hebrew prophets, especially Daniel and several others whose writings were deemed aprocryphal or became part of the extra-biblical collection known as the Pseudoapigrapha. Jesus as a prophet was credited with some such images related to the destruction of Jerusalem, and due to a fourth century decision, the New Testament ends with the memorable book, The Revelation to John. 

We didn’t hear much about these writings in our church until Stan Lecher preached a meeting one spring. He specialized in prophetic speculation in order to raise a crowd. The magical world of knowing the future held great appeal and Lecher knew how to use it. Although in my childhood I was too scared to be interested in monster movies, I did find these images in the Bible quite intriguing, not so much for their meanings about the future but simply for their inclusion in the sacred book. For me, the phenomenon seemed much the same as when I later discovered the Goodspeed translation of the Bible that used such clear words as ‘rape’ or the erotic images in the Song of Solomon, or the image of God’s love for Israel compared with the hopeless commitment of the prophet Hosea for his prostituting wife. I was fascinated by the unacceptable being found within the content of the holy. I still am.

So when sermons got boring I paged through the Revelation and entertained myself by drawing these wild monsters: for instance, in Revelation 12 a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and ten crowns on his heads and a tail that swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them on the earth and whom Michael and his angels fought; or in Revelation 13 a creature that looked like a leopard with feet like a bear’s and a mouth like a lion’s and with horns and ten crowns arising from the sea; or in the same chapter another beast that rose out of the earth and featured two horns like a lamb and a voice of a dragon. I knew nothing of metaphor and symbol for I was a child as literal as he could be. I didn’t know what else to do with these visions except to draw them.

Mom was interested in my drawings, at least enough to put them in her purse. I don’t know what became of those scratchings, but I do remember not knowing how to distribute horns and crowns among the various heads of the angry monsters. Such is the life of even the most literal of illustrators. Too many decisions, too much specificity, and the revelations became a problem of literality and meaning. But my memory of the experience is one of artistic decision making not unlike what I face now when I am making paintings of centuries-old visions of the Ute artists in Shavano Valley in western Colorado or of Cherokee interpretations at Judaculla Rock on the Tennessee River in western North Carolina. I was making such artistic decisions as a youngster. All those years ago I was an artist and, of course, a frustrated one just like my son Michael years later when in disgust he threw away some of this drawings because he couldn’t get them perfect. I told him then what I wish someone had told the young me, that the art arises from incorporating your mistakes, trusting that they may be as important to your work as what you deem ideal. And to imagine that I was thinking somewhat that way even as a youngster trying to fathom the images and truths of the wildest symbols in the Bible.

The art is in the process. For me, the art of living religiously grew to mean being able to incorporate the common with the holy not to accommodate the sins of my own life within a vision of the perfect God but rather because the authoritative book of my religious upbringing declares that the murdering King David was in fact a man after God’s own heart. My deeply artistic and deeply gay heart knew life must recognize the good in all, in me. What a revelation!

As I mentioned before, I still feel that way.

Denver, 2014

This assortment of figures from Judaculla Rock was both
challenging and rewarding, but someone will surely wonder
what it means. Mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

A Musician Remembered

Tim’s call for advice about speaking at a musician’s memorial service took me back a few years when I was asked to speak for a similar occasion. Thus A. Lawrence Kimbrough is in my mind today, a tiny, and when I knew him, old Black man, University Organist at Missouri’s Lincoln University, an historic school begun by an African American Division of the US Army following the Civil War. The Division organized the school as a normal college to train African American teachers in the effort to educate their newly freed population. By the time I knew Kimbrough, the University was a part of the State system and had been integrated for several decades.

I got to know Kimbrough when our church organist brought him in to substitute during her vacations. With great competence he’d play the rehearsals for the choir I directed, and on Sundays he’d sometimes thrill members of the congregation with improvisations on old gospel hymns. Following one of those services I recall a prominent member coming to the chancel to express to the organist how much he appreciated hearing a hymn he hadn’t heard since his childhood in the small-town Missouri church where he grew up. Kimbrough thanked him and explained that his grandmother had taught him the song.

Kimbrough came to our home for dinner one Sunday afternoon. A friend who had graduated from Lincoln University was also a guest. They talked about the university and other local items. At one point the far-ranging conversation turned to the mind. Kimbrough asked her what music she heard in her head. She replied, “I never hear music.” The organist was surprised, puzzled. He had never imagined a mind that wasn’t filled with music! I thought about my friend’s mind that was crammed with historic, economic and logical reference! Lawrence then related how when he was at an educational conference in Philadelphia, he sought and was granted permission to attend rehearsals of a local opera company as they prepared a harmonically lush late 19th century work. All his free moments were spent listening to the rehearsals. After quite a few hours he found a piano and played from his auditory memory all the music. His mind was full of music.

One Sunday Kimbrough began an improvisation on another old hymn his grandmother may have taught him. After the opening verse and at the beginning of the second, he began playing a chromatic scale way down in the bass. In steady eighth notes the scale crept its way upwards. I thought, “Oh my, now he’s lost.” But my musical imagination wasn’t correct. The scale ended on the key note on the final resolution of the full cadence. His mind surely was full of music and a kind of musical genius to remember. I celebrate his musicianship today as I recall of telling this story years ago at his University-wide Memorial service.

Another short musical story. I fondly remember my dad as a church musician. In the church where I grew up, the sermon moved straight into a plea for persons to make decisions to become disciples of Christ, to commit themselves to a life of following Christ, to start their lives anew with Jesus as one old song put it. The transition was covered by the quiet musical beginning of the invitation hymn which the congregation eventually sang. The minister, W. F. Lown told this story.

One Sunday after service a member who appreciated the seamless and always musical transition asked Lown how Earl, my dad, knew when to begin. He asked the minister what signal he gave the organist.

“Signal?“ Lown asked and then explained. “Well, it’s like this; when Earl gets up to play, I know it’s time to end my sermon.”

Now I wish I had told that story at Dad’s funeral.

Denver, 2014

My dad would be happy to know that music
making is still underway in the family. This
great grand kid of his is composing music
and playing a great variety of music and
musical styles as a fifth generation family
musician. There may have been more,
 many more generations
about which I know nothing.

Kalo Hoyle at the piano.
Photo by Phillip Hoyle

Meet the Artist: an artist statement by Phillip Hoyle

[I am including this statement for your information. It was written for publicity at the Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown, Colorado, a co-op gallery I have recently joined and a place where many of my petroglyph paintings are on display. I am adding to it a photo taken in Evergreen, Colorado, just a few miles away. The gallery is related to an arts organization located in Evergreen. Check out the website of CMAG where you can learn more there about the gallery and the larger organization.] 


Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver where he works as an artist and writer. His formal education emphasized music and religion, and his work has included directing choirs, stage productions and children’s arts events. He began making collages over thirty years ago. He still does collage and for several years has been working with acrylic paints on paper.

In the mid 1970s the artist studied Ute petroglyphs in the Gunnison River drainage of western Colorado. The designs in his “Ute Petroglyph Series” are from those sites. Many are reproduced the same size as the originals using acrylic washes and a resist medium. In the past ten years he has incorporated several other petroglyph traditions into his paintings.

Phillip studied painting with several artists through the Oklahoma Art Workshops, Tulsa, OK, and has shown his works in art shows in Tulsa, Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora, and now Georgetown.

[I am standing next to a very life-like sculpture in Evergreen fantasizing that I'm having tea with some Cardinal. He looks so kind! The sculpture is titled Morning Spirits. It stands in front of Java Groove and was featured in Sculpture Walk 2004. The artist works in Niagara Falls, New York.]






[Here is another piece explaining the petroglyphs in a little more detail.] 

Forty years ago I saw a group of Ute petroglyphs in western Colorado, designs carved on boulders, depicting animals, plants, and abstract designs. I was fascinated and began studying them, drawing them, and reading about petroglyphs in other places. I began doing artwork when I wanted to hang a crayon rubbing I had made of one of the designs, for without the Colorado sun overhead or a sandstone cliff background, it looked awful. So I took up collage to present that petroglyph and many more. About ten years ago I finally figured out how to paint these designs and am still doing so using acrylic washes and sometimes mixed media on watercolor paper.

Denver 2014

[For an even more complete statement, refer to my post on October 28, 2013 titled "Painting Petroglyphs."]

Gay Music: A Playlist Story

Valentine Artist Trading Cards by Phillip Hoyle

I like my music gay! For more than one reason I am planning to spend several months hearing mainly gay music. The first reason for this insistence seems most immediate: my current health crisis that demands from me a sense of upbeat expectation of a recovery from my present difficulties and from the therapies the doctors devise. So I’ll play gay music to speed along the healing process. The second reason for this gay insistence relates to having just retired from fifteen years of giving therapeutic massages, mostly to tempos largo, lento, and adagio. Back then (it’s been over a month and a half) I wanted my massages to promote relaxation and so avoided country and western songs, rap, abstract jazz, metallica, and most rock ‘n roll. I played almost no Nashville, no Broadway. Now seems the time to quicken the pace and lighten the mood. So it’s gay music for me in the coming months.

I’m a habitual shelf reader from my many years of roaming library stacks. I’m a methodical one preferring to read from left to right, following the ascending numbers of the Dewey Decimal System. So I’m going to read the shelves of my small CD collection to select my first round of music playing for the weeks to come. Luckily I no longer have a catheter in place so I can comfortably sit on the floor to view my low-down shelves.

So it begins, shelf one. Mathias organ music. I’ll skip that. Oh Dupré. More organ music but too dour and over serious for this man in recovery. Skip, skip, skip, skip. Hmm. Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto? No, I have always found this particular recording just a bit too screechy. I don’t want to put myself on edge. Skip, skip, skip. “Songs of Atlantic Canada”? Surely this album is out of place among these classical works, but I recall how accessible the arrangements of regional folksongs are. Guess I’ll select this Cape Breton Chorale album and think of my Canadian friend Bill, who gave it to me and has for years been thoughtful and supportive. John Tavener’s “Ikons” presents glorious, creative music but … no, not now. Just not gay enough. “Lend Me Your Ear” by Double ‘O Six. That’s a possible listen with classically trained voices. Very choral though all soloists who do crazy things to Chattanooga Choo Choo, With a Little Help from My Friends, and other pop pieces. Here. “Pieces of Africa” by the Chronos Quartet. I might put that on right now and reread the get-well note from my African son Francis. Oh, an album of Charpentier’s Christmas music. Yes. Even though the composer accidently poisoned himself and his family by serving the wrong kind of mushrooms, his music evokes a delicate gaiety. Well, it’s French Baroque with a light touch. Hum. “Albinoni's Adagios.” More Baroque, although Italian. I really like these but heard the album way too many times over the last twelve and a half years playing it for one of my long-time clients who listened only to classical music. As I mentioned, too many adagios in my recent past. Oh Dianne Bish’s “Great European Organs.” That sounds like a gay album. I clearly recall Bish’s pant suit—all gold sparkles—from when she concertized the Cassavant at East Heights United Methodist Church, Wichita. If she’d had a candelabrum she’d have seemed a twin to Liberace. How gay that would be.

Brahms. Lovely Brahms, but his “German Requiem”? They can play that for my memorial service that I hope is a long ways off. Hovhaness’ “And God Created Great Whales.” That one always picks me up, especially when the humpback whales make their first entrance. “The Choral and Vocal Arrangements of Moses Hogan.” Some of that album is somber but I’ll surely enjoy his stunning arrangement of Elijah Rock. Yes. And here, for a change of pace, Handel’s “Chandos Anthems.” I know at least a few of the anthems that can serve me for a special meditative gay moment, especially the soprano and tenor duet In the beauty of holiness with its long descending melismas spun out and interwoven by singers and orchestra. It thrills me. Brahms again; his ‘Complete Intermezzos” played by the Russian Luba Edlina. Yes. These always lift me with their lush harmonies and inventive melodies. I’ll float along with Brahms. While at it I guess I’ll hear Bach’s “Inventions and Sinfonias” played by Glenn Gould, for me always an exquisitely gay experience.

Okay, shelf two. Pop music. Hmm. Here we go. Imogene Heap’s “Speak for Yourself” will do good things for me with her always musical and creative command of synthesizers, her invention and variety. Yes. Of course Cyndy Lauper’s “The Body Acoustic” will be on my playlist. I probably will indulge in it daily, like She Bop and Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I like so many more of these pop CDs but played most of them too many times in massage. I’ll give them and me a rest! Now this one looks good, Keith Jarrett Trio’s “Up for It.” Yes. Jazz. I’m so pleased I’m doing this. And another jazz album but this one Jacques Loussier’s “Play Bach,” his jazz trio’s renditions of JS Bach pieces, an album from 1960 that I first heard in high school. I especially am ready to hear them improvise the Gigue from Partita No. 1 in B flat major, BWV 825. I’m feeling better already. Then another kind of gay music: “Whirl” from the Fred Hersch Trio. This album will surely move to gaity, both by the music and by the knowledge that all three men are gay! Oh and the three volumes of “Verve Remixed” with their most inventive remixing of jazz standards, many from my favorite singers, with hard-hitting dance beats. Certainly I’ll spin those albums for their tremendous energy. Now this should be fun, “The Original Cast Recording of Forever Plaid,” another CD from my Canadian connection of a musical we saw together, pure nostalgic fun. Sure. And how could I not select Dinah Washington’s “Finest Hour.” Any day she is okay for me. Oh I’ll have to skip these Miles Davis pieces. Too blue for the occasion. Guess I’ll skip the whole blues section for now with probably one exception; here it is, Cyndy Lauper’s “Memphis Blues.” She thrills me with her tremendous range of feelings and styles. Jai Uttal’s “Monkey” gets in, also his “Mondo Rama” with its high school kids. I am lifted by his traditional Indian raga, jazz, and rock fusion.

I’m tired from all these decisions. So … that gives me a good playlist that ought to last for a while. I hope they’ll lift my mood, help make me clever and gay, of course. So … I’ll just skip all the R. Carlos Nakai and other Native American flute players. I heard them too many times with my client who for over ten years wanted to hear only these pieces during her massages. “No strings,” she’d say. “They make me tense up.” Besides, if I were going to play Native American pieces, I’d want war dances. That’s not very gay sounding of me although Stonewall showed that gays in pumps and frocks can go to war. I think right now I’m just angry at disease and failures in my own body. I’ll pass on the flutes and war drums.

I’ve got plenty of music to soothe me with gaity. I’ll even listen to some of these albums with my gay partner. Suppose that will double their effect? I hope so.

Denver, 2014

If you follow this blog (I know there is at least one of you!) you may realize I didn't get this thing posted Monday. Sorry for that. But here it is even if a bit late. 

A few more Valentine ATCs by Phillip Hoyle

Don't forget Friday is Valentines Day. 

ATCs Galore

A few of my earliest ATCs

Two and a half years ago Sue, a good writer and artist friend of mine, suggested I accompany her to a Saturday morning Artist Trading Card swap meet at a local art gallery. She said, “Bring some cards to trade.”

“I have some,” I told her and wondered if I’d have time to make more, some fresh ones for my first time to trade.

She’d explained the card-trading movement had its beginning in Switzerland when an artist invited his artist friends over to a party. Each was to bring enough artist trading cards to swap one-for-one with the other guests. Apparently the party was a success since many years later people around the world are gathering to swap cards and sometimes to make them together. They’re sent in the mail, traded on line, and sometimes show up in galleries like at the Denver County Fair.

“How cool,” I thought in uncharacteristic informal expression. Artists can meet each other, enjoy the company of the sometimes like-minded, appreciate each other’s latest approaches, and go home with samples of the other’s work. They no longer have to swap paintings they’d rather sell at a gallery for full price or feel that they traded a better piece for a lesser piece. The small size of the cards prevents the big feeling of unevenness. “I get it,” as Sue would say. “Genius,” I thought and started packing my bag of cards to share.

We arrived early, before the gallery opened or others had arrived. “I want to swap with you first,” Sue said while we were still seated in the car. “I want to pick first, before the others can.” We each reached for our stashes of cards. She looked at mine, smiled and shaking her head said, “You can’t trade these,” They’re too large.”

“Oh, I thought you meant we would trade greeting cards.”

“Well you can’t take them to the trade, but I want to trade with you anyway. One on one.”

“Sure,” I said both embarrassed and thankful. Sue went on to tell me more about the cards, that they were 2 ½ by 3 ½ inches like baseball trading cards. She had assumed I’d look up ATCs (shorthand) on line and get the specs. (Oh how little she knew me!) After trading with Sue, I went inside and watched the proceedings. Sure enough people came in with boxes, bags, or folders of cards. Many of the cards were on the same theme although differently interpreted. I watched as people swapped. “I’ll trade you one.”

“Oh, I found three I like a lot. Can you trade me three?”

“I’d be delighted.”

There was no exchange of money, just cards. One card for one card. How nice, and what a good way for artists to get together, laughing, having their work admired, being delighted at what they discovered flowing from one another’s imaginations. It seemed the perfect setting and celebration of art for people who often are short on funds but long on ideas and feelings.

That was the first time. On the way back to my house Sue told me about the studio of a man I had met at the gallery. “It’s really a compound with two large studios, several galleries, and thousands of collected things arranged carefully. The whole place is actually a work of art.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but a couple of weeks later she took me to his studio compound for another kind of ATC gathering. It was “swap, make, and swap some more,” an evening lasting about four hours, beginning with a swap of cards made to a theme, then a workshop without a theme but in which participant could rifle through many of his supplies (including a huge drawer of pre-cut ATC grounds arranged by color and texture) and make, hopefully, a card to trade with each other person present. Although I was pleased to be there, I felt somewhat overwhelmed by the host’s orderly array of supplies and his extreme generosity. The place and company brought out in me an artist I barely knew! I laughed and ate and drank with other artists in this magical place making friends and art. What a life.

Since then I have attended many such gatherings and traded hundreds of cards. I now have quite a stack of loose leaf binders with plastic pages, nine pockets each, representing the work of many, many artists. When it’s too cold to go out to a museum or gallery for inspiration, I simply go to my little studio and take down the volumes of work by these people I now know. I know their styles, their approaches, and notice their changes and experiments. I have source books of actual art to inspire me in my own quest for creating beauty, expressing my feelings, practicing my techniques (in miniature), and creating a medium for trade.

Eggs was that trade's ATC theme

To read more specific information about the groups I participate in, go online to Denver Make & Trade ATCers. Check out other web sites with cards from around the world. Feast your eyes and get out the scissors and paper and glue and pens and paint and sand and whatever else you have around the house. Make and trade an ATC.

Some cacti ATCs I made

Denver, February 2014