When celebrities like Angelina Joli, Joan Lunden and Hoda Kotb summon the courage to speak openly about their breast cancer, they offer an alternative to fear, hopelessness and isolation. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but for many, this awareness is year-round. My awesome artist-mother, Alice Steer Wilson, died of the disease in 2001. As a high-risk woman with high-density breast tissue (difficult daughter with complicated breasts), I've undergone MRIs, ultrasounds, genetic … [Read more...]
Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing
I am happy to participate in this writer’s round robin after being tagged by the lovely poet Lorraine Henrie Lins (thanks, Lorraine!). After I answer the questions, I’ll tag two additional wonderful writers. What is the working title of your book? The working title was The Alice Book or OK FOREVER: Alice Steer Wilson’s Cape May. However, the real title – the one that will be printed on the book’s cover very soon, is Alice Steer Wilson: Light, Particularly. Where did the … [Read more...]
the Alice book goes to press . . .
Yesterday morning I made the final correction to the document that will become a book of my mother's art life, with more than 200 images from her studio. What was the final change? The addition of the title "POEMS" on the copyright page . . . it's interesting how many iterations it takes to get things right. This is not a book of my poems, but there are three of them in it. It is not my grandmother's book, but her portraits by her daughter are included (two of them) as well as two photos of her: … [Read more...]
respect for other
Fortune from Wednesday night's Chinese dinner: "Your respect for other will be your ticket to success." The grammarian in me corrected it first to "others" but then, as I am almost ready to go to press with the book about my mother's art, I made a different single-letter edit: "Your respect for Mother will be your ticket to success." :-) Generic Cialis if you think that it simple to celebrate that to big disappointment of many people. It not the truth. As it is necessary to spend … [Read more...]
The Unblank Page
OK, it’s not going to take me forever to do this book, but it is going to take longer than planned when I last posted on this blog. My mother’s journals were not blank, unlike those left to Terry Tempest Williams by her mother. The green post-its (above) mark passages to return to, share, possibly use as a caption or quote in the book. I’ve hung the paintings on the pages, and they have begun to tell me what’s in and what’s out. When I walked Paul through the gallery that forms the first … [Read more...]
Deadline Set: To the Studio!
Today I begin finalizing the text and images for the book on my mother’s art of Cape May. It has become so much more than a ‘pretty picture book’ and yet -- it is still pretty, and full of pictures. As my friend Kathleen Volk Miller advised, it will read as an inside story, a book that could only have been written by the painter’s daughter. Somehow, I had been trying to erase myself, to keep myself out of the picture. But, that’s crazy. Even the picture above has me in it: it’s her studio, yes, … [Read more...]
Celebrating 60 with my almost-90 Dad
I’m lucky. I have a wonderful husband, a father who enjoys his life at 89 and models, daily, the stoic practical joy of putting first things first. As this blog repeats, I miss my mother and I aspire to art, a high calling, sometimes impossibly high. But in our lighter moments, Mom and I reassured each other with the charge “Aim for mediocrity!” Today, January 23, is niece Pasha Alice Wilson’s 11th birthday. Twenty years ago, I was putting the final touches on the text for publication of THE … [Read more...]
The practice of good-bye
I was chopping celery for dinner three weeks ago, when the chirpy Brit-Indian inflection of a BBC World announcer interrupted my flow: Technology Giant Apple announced the death of its cofounder Steve Jobs today. Why was Apple the subject of this sentence? As a Mac aficionado, I mourn the loss of Steve Jobs’ edgy spirit in this world, but as an Apple stockholder, I’m less concerned. “Technology Giant Apple” will survive, or not. I’m more interested in the way we speak about death, our … [Read more...]
I opened the box of sketch journals, finally
This vodka box of journals and sketch books has been sitting in the northwest corner of my studio for a long time. Although I logged them all when I inventoried my mother’s artist studio, after her death, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to examine them until recently. Before: Nice, neat studio table . . . with vodka box After: A table full of sketchbooks in chronological order . . . and a reminder from Mom to “RELAX”! Hah!Generic Cialis if … [Read more...]
Winter is a good time to be a writer
Today I spent a few hours working on a book proposal, then I was forced out to an appointment, which was blessedly short and actually not too painful. I’ve signed up for the Mac one to one tutorials, and this is the first one I’ve done since weeks before Christmas. My tutor, Craig Whitaker, was smart and not pushy --- and he is a BCCC alum, fan of my poetic mentor Chris Bursk. So . . . anyway. I need to work on a poem I wrote about the Sound. Those photographs say much more than the current … [Read more...]
