Anticipating the Museum of Authenticity

Minnesota Public Radio’s Writer’s Almanac reported, on 17 March 2016, that the National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C. on this date in 1941, four years after financier and collector Andrew W. Mellon formally bequeathed his entire collection, which he had accumulated for the benefit of the country, to the United States. The collection included hundreds of paintings by European artists, including Botticelli, Raphael, and Rembrandt. The Gallery is located on the National Mall, boasts a length of 780 feet, covers over 500,000 square feet, and at the time of its completion was the largest marble structure in the world.

Having read this report, I can’t resist introducing the Museum of Authenticity. It did not open on 17 March. A financier is not creating it. The collection will not include any European artists.The building will not be located on the National Mall, will not encompass half a million square feet, and will not be built from marble. 

I will be launching a website for the Museum of Authenticity in the near future. It will describe the Museum’s location, its history, its mission, its collection, and the events it will host. I look forward to inviting you in.

Getting There

As you likely know, I am renovating and adding onto a small “accessory building” on the property I purchased almost two and a half years ago in downtown Salida. The first stage of the building project felt like riding in a rattletrap around potholes on an unpaved road through hilly country in a downpour with someone else steering. I grumbled a lot.

The relationship with the contractor I had hired fizzled. The requirement to make the property ADA compliant created an unanticipated financial load. One building code requirement after another challenged my every move. And, to top it off, failed right and left hip replacement surgeries literally knocked me off my feet. During that time, I often wondered whether I had veered off course when I purchased the property.

13 August 15 wall-raising

But last week, when my framers gracefully raised a new wall for the back building, I gratefully acknowledged that the components of the project are now falling into place. For example:

Several weeks ago, I was looking for a decorative architectural element to break up the expanse of the new 17 x 24’ terrace off the back of the main building. It struck me that a cast iron tree grate set in the concrete would be stunning, so I visited the local Neenah foundry distribution lot. A tree grate in the catalog caught my eye, but at something like $800, the price was prohibitive. Fortunately, the supervisor of the lot produced an alternative—a 5’-square grate that could not be sold because the frame was missing. He had kept the grate because it was too beautiful to dispose of. But he sold it to me for $100—and then volunteered to deliver it to the building in Salida, a 280-mile, 6-hour round trip from Denver. I can’t imagine what a freight company would have charged to transfer the 400-pound load. All the supervisor asked for was the price of a tank of gas.

5-ft. 400 lb. cast iron tree grate set 22 June 15

More recently, needing a strategy for draining a  terrace off the main entry to my back building, I called a civil engineering firm in nearby Lafayette. After finding a creative way to reach someone in an office that has no receptionist, I ended up meeting with the president. After spending an hour making calculations based on the topographical survey of my plot and the elevation drawings of my building, she suggested a plan. I asked her to mail me the invoice. She declined to charge me. I thanked her with a copy of my book Dancing Girl.

Thursday before last, I visited a construction company in Salida (DSI) to find out whether they would roof the addition to the back building. I knew my timing was off; I should have arranged for the roofing weeks earlier. And the dry wall installation. And the finish carpentry.  (To my credit, I lined up a brick mason, a plumber, and an electrician in good time; I ordered doors, windows, and hardware far in advance; and I’ll probably paint the interior myself.) Who knows why the CEO of the construction company greeted me on my way in, postponed his departure for an off-site appointment, and gave me contact information for an independent roofer and a retired builder. Within 24 hours, the roofer committed to the job, and the retired builder referred me to a drywall installer and a finish carpenter, both of whom said yes. As I wrote in a thank you note to the CEO, I struck gold when my path crossed his. When I returned on another errand this past week, the project manager at DSI assured me that I'm doing fine as general contractor, and I'm saving a lot of money. To seal the deal, he invited me to contact him any time for names of reputable sub-contractors. This is DSI! This is Salida!

19 August 15 almost ready for brick veneer

So how does the building project feel now? Like cruising along a paved shotgun roadway in fair weather with the top down and the volume turned up on the CD player! I am playing Zorba the Greek, of course, and I am behind the wheel.

Remember, I’ll let you know when we "get there.”

Personal Landscape

A-1 Construction, Salida, Colorado 15 May 2015

In Salida yesterday, when I was waiting for the concrete truck to arrive for the back-bldg-addition-cellar-wall pour, I ducked into neighboring Book Haven bookstore to get out of a light rain. While scanning the titles on the shelves, I noticed Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, which I have never read, and had a look inside. When I got home last eve, I opened the Writer’s Chronicle May/Summer 2014 edition, which had just arrived in the mail, to find an article about Durrell by Linda Lappin. Had I not looked at one of his books earlier in the day, I might not have turned immediately to the cover story, “Books and Islands: On Reading Lawrence Durrell in Greece.” Because I am exploring the role that both Elika and Salida have played and will continue to play in my life, the following paragraph held particular meaning for me:

Traveling is, [Lawrence Durrell] suggests, “a science of intuitions” vital to the artist “who is always looking for nourishing soils in which to put down roots and create.” We are all looking for our “correspondences,” he states, for a personal landscape “where you suddenly feel bounding with ideas”*—a place where landscape and imagination merge to make new worlds and new stories. In his early phase of his writing career, his personal landscape of correspondences was the Greek island of Corfu. [Lappin, p. 36]

I look forward to sharing with you the stories that will emerge from the river-rock-studded substrate upon which I am building a life in Salida.

*Lawrence Durrell, “Landscape and Character,” Spirit of Place: Letters & Essays on Travel, (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 160.

To Travel Far, Travel Slowly

back building

Seventeen months ago, I signed the deed to 124 East 2^nd Street in Salida, Colorado (see 20 March 2013 post). Located in the town’s historic district, the property I purchased includes a main building dating to sometime between 1888 and 1890, and an accessory building of unknown age heretofore referred to as the back building. Suffering the effects of time and neglect, the preservation and transformation of these two buildings into enduring functional spaces promised to require considerable effort and resources. In other words, the signing on 20 March 2013 marked the first of many turning points; it marked the onset of many delays.

Initially, I focused on the main building. While I waited for my contractor to replace a long lost downspout and a leaking skylight and to jack up a sunken corner of flooring—for starters—I removed river rock and other rubble from the shallow crawl space, I cut back crumbling mortar and re-plastered the face of interior low-fired clay-brick walls, I tore off plywood jambs and casings that had been standing in for original woodwork that had been removed throughout the building, and I drew up plans for the electrical work. When the philosophy I learned from my mother—if it’s worth doing,

evidence of Thordis at work in the main building

it’s worth doing well—collided with my contractor’s “lick and stick” approach, he and I parted ways, but not before he pointed me in the direction of an architect who is well versed in codes and compliance.

Soon after connecting with my architect, I realized that it made more sense to restore and enlarge the back building before finishing the main building. Challenged by all the things that code did not permit, my architect and I worked together in fits and starts through the winter. Come late July 2014, just when we thought we were finally ready to submit our plans for the back building to the Historic Preservation Committee (HPC) for approval, we lost a week toward determining whether we would need an official assessment of an existing window, dictating whether it was replaceable or had to be restored. On 24 July we received word that the window assessment would not be required because the building itself is not a designated historic structure. And four days later, our plans were, at long last, submitted. We were then scheduled to defend our plans before the 

plans for the Simonsen Project

HPC four weeks out, but the date was ultimately postponed another week. Finally, we appeared before the Board on 28 August. Our plan was accepted with one minor contingency that we quickly addressed. And I toasted the milestone with a glass of Malbec.

Are we home free? Can we begin work yet on the back building? No, we need permits: general building, electrical, and mechanical. Once our drawings are complete, processing our applications could take as long as 4 weeks. And once the permits are issued, there will be other delays—inclement weather, builders not available, building materials out of stock, inspections postponed. In other words, the completion date for the renovation and expansion of the back building is best not to estimate. In other words still, what I learned restoring a roofless house in Greece stone by stone by hand over many years will serve me throughout the current Salida restoration project as well: Na paei makria, siga-siga; To travel far, travel slowly.

A Blithesome Step Forward*

Yielding to impulses and yearnings that always seemed inexplicable to me at the time, I photographed, I wrote, I painted, I engaged in stonework. I traveled without map or preconceived destination. Perhaps this explains why, after hearing it, I forgot about the question that “came out of the blue” upon waking on the third Saturday before New Years day, 2013: What would a satisfying third third of my life look like?

road to Salida

Rather than acknowledge the question, I got in my car on what was a soupy gray morning in Denver and headed south-west on route 285. I had brought along a friend, and we intended to circle through Manitou Springs for lunch before returning to Denver. Two hours out of town, we realized that we were too late for lunch. We decided to extend the drive down the highway we had been traveling before turning back to Manitou Springs for an early dinner.

           

The grim atmosphere of Denver had already given way to sunlit skies and clouds of mist enveloping the magnificent peaks of the Collegiate Range. Three hours down 285, we reached Salida, a town I knew slightly. We stopped with the intention only of stretching our legs. But when we approached Pinon Real Estate, housed in a brawny corner bank building in the heart of Salida’s historic district (one of Colorado’s largest), my companion asked, “Would you like to see whether they have something?” You see, this dream-keeper had remembered the decades-old fantasy I had shared with her a few days earlier—living in a space that would double as a studio/gallery. I have silently watched for such a space in a residential neighborhood in Denver for years.

124 E 2nd Street

“Ok,” I responded mildly, still not remembering the question about my “third act” put to me only a few hours earlier. A curly headed realtor with a New Zealand accent disappeared into the gaping bank vault and returned with a single flier: a 1050-square-foot single storey commercially zoned brick building dating to 1900. After discussing the property, we left Pinon Realty and returned to Denver via Manitou Springs, but not before driving by 124 East 2^nd Street. I was smitten at first glance.

In retrospect, I understand that when I returned to Denver from Greece in October and wrote the blog post “For the Love of It,” I was beginning to acknowledge that my life in Elika will draw to a close before I “stop reaching.” And I have observed of late that I don’t much like the mood I slip into when out and about in Denver. After 40 years, the city has outgrown me—the traffic, the noise and air pollution, the intensity, the loss of beauty. So, influenced as much by the “push” of these two factors as the “pull” exerted by a jewel of a property in a gem of a town in Colorado’s “Banana Belt,” I have heeded Kenneth Grahame’s advice. “Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new!” *

Today, twelve weeks after the fateful question arose—on the first day of spring 2013—I have been handed a key, and I have opened the door facing me.

Of course, I had to purchase property insurance along with the property. Not surprisingly, agents at all three of the offices I approached asked me the same question: How will you use the building? “How should I know?” I wanted to protest. “I’ll know when I get there,” I hedged. I have already acknowledged an array of possibilities beyond residence: an exhibit space for art and artifacts, a storefront for the sale of my books and visual art, a studio, an event space, a center for creativity workshops including Astra Writing in Salida. I am frightened by this unexpected turn in the road. At the same time, to borrow again from Kenneth Grahame, “...to-day the unseen [is] everything, the unknown the only real fact of life.” **

Renovations will require several months; I expect to take occupancy in early fall. Watch for notices on my website and facebook pages, and please come visit.

* The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 9: Wayfarers All, p 134.

** p 125.

For the Love of It

wall before chink/pointing

To reach the front door of my house in Elika, I must pass through a narrow opening between the upper corner of the building and the end of a stone wall I raised to demarcate what has come to feel like a scared precinct on a hill. Late one afternoon some two years ago now, I had pruned the wild olive tree that grows just above the dwelling. As night fell, I gathered armloads of cut branches, rounded the corner, and moved through that passage intent only upon tossing the branches downhill and calling it a day. But as I stepped through the opening, I heard a menacing hiss that stopped me in my tracks. A second hiss confirmed my worst fears—a snake alerting me to its presence. The sound came from the face of the house not an arm’s length away. But in the dim light of dusk, I was not sure I would be able to pinpoint its source and do the deed that would prevent the viper from delivering the bite—then or in the future—that I understood would be venomous. Nevertheless, I dropped the branches and ran for my broomstick, the only defense I had on hand.

I had been visited by a hissing snake on two occasions in the past, so I knew it would be long and coiled up, head raised cobra-like. Evoking the skill of Artemis, I took aim at a small ledge in the wall where I thought I could make out the shadow of the threat. I summoned my courage. I delivered a fatal blow.

I was lucky—this snake was removed. But the niche–an invitation to future dangers—remained. I vowed then and there to chink and point that area of my wall at first opportunity.

That opportunity presented itself recently. I arrived in Elika two weeks ago, settled in, and set to work. My goal was to repair about one and a half square meters of wall that had been damaged by years of seasonal downpours. The first day at work, I dug out loose chink stones and dry mud, hosed down the area, and then collected and placed new chink stones to fill holes. The next six days, I mixed batches of mortar from sand, cement, a lime source called asvesti, tint, and water. Working six to eight hours a day, I filled even the tiniest spaces in the surface of the wall with mortar while setting the new chink stones.

for the love of it

The effort of digging out the hard mud mortar. The effort of finding enough stones the right size and shape to fit gaps in the wall. The effort of mixing the dry ingredients into a thick consistent paste. The discomfort of laboring under a scorching late summer sun during the long hours required to complete a job that cannot be hurried. Why did I bother? Was the possibility of another hissing serpent reason enough?

Not really. I chink and point for the pleasure of practicing techniques I have mastered over time; to experience the communion and quietude of what has become for me a Zen meditation; to breathe life into something by restoring it to its original beauty, here creating a tapestry of dancing stones; to honor a forgotten race of builders and their forgotten way of life, as well as the dying man who, by selling me the house, entrusted its care to me.

I don’t recommend this work to others. And although I finished chinking and pointing the interior walls of the house years ago, before the roof went on, I now know that I will never complete the restoration of the exterior walls myself. I purchased the house when I turned 40. I now approach 70. I am no longer willing or able to expose myself to the treachery of balancing for hours high on a ladder with stones and mortar and tools in hand in order to complete the work. But I also know that, as long as I am able, I will not stop engaging and reaching—for the love of it.

Sitting on Top of the World—
Dances in Two Worlds Wins Colorado Book Award 

Indepencence Pass

“So I was sittin on top of the world just laughing with my feet hangin down....” This line from my first book, You May Plow Here: The Narrative of Sara Brooks (Norton, 1986), began cycling through my mind when I drove over Independence Pass on my way home from Aspen to Denver two days ago. The line appears in the story “Laziness’ll Kill You.” One time, Sara and her two cousins got into a dispute about something while they were working in a field on the 53-acre farm her father owned in Alabama. Although she was the troublemaker that day, when her father walked up, he “give the others a good whippin, an that excluded me. So I was sittin on top of the world just laughing with my feet hangin down and knowing I was in the wrong.” This is one of my favorite lines from You May Plow Here—no wonder it came to mind as I crossed the Continental Divide at 12,096 feet.

Aspen, Colorado, 22 June 2012

Sara Brooks’ delight sprang from innocent and harmless childhood mischief. My delight springs from knowing that my book, Dances in Two Worlds: A Writer-Artist’s Backstory (Fundamental Note, 2011), has just won the 21st annual Colorado Book Award 2012 in creative nonfiction. The Colorado Book Award is given by the Colorado Humanities Center for the Book, state affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. I celebrated the award at a reception at the Aspen Institute Friday afternoon and over wine and dinner at a sidewalk café with three new friends that evening.

I take pride in the award and what it represents: a lifetime of acknowledging my fears, listening to my intuition, and hard work. None of my three books would have been possible, however, had it not been for the family, friends, and teachers upon whose shoulders I have stood. Not the least among them was Sara Brooks herself. By telling me her stories and entrusting the editing to me, Sara Brooks awakened the storyteller in me. Ultimately, she gave me Dances in Two Worlds, and she gave Dances in Two Worlds to you. The book is available at http://astragreece.com/publications.html

Oh! My Sweet Greece

Elafonisi Island off the coast from Niela's village

I am back at home in Denver after two weeks in Greece. I am listening to a CD I purchased on my way out of Athens: Oh! My Sweet Air by Stamatis Spanoudakis. I listened to a cassette recording of these synthesized liturgical instrumental songs every night as I fell to sleep during the two years I lived in Greece from 1982-84. Even though I had not heard this music since my switch to CDs years ago, I recognized the first note when I heard it play at the music store. Oh! My Sweet Air will ease the transition between the two starkly different worlds I inhabit—from the sound of tolling bells and water lapping on a pebble beach to leaf blowers and lawn mowers; from the sight of dark-leafed orange trees dotted with bright rounds of fruit and hillsides bursting with yellow-blooming broom to shouting billboards and dull asphalt; from the lively fragrance of jasmine and wild thyme to exhaust fumes deadening the air; from the measured pace of a seaside walk to a frenzy on the streets.

I traveled to a Greece that has suffered much this past year, a Greece that will suffer even greater assaults before this economic/political storm passes. An occasional scar from the rioting that occurred in Athens when reforms were instituted this past spring can still be seen if one scrutinizes the facades of buildings around Syntagma Square. Numerous storefront vacancies were harder to miss. And the incomparable Benaki Museum is now closed on Mondays as well as Tuesdays.


The tide is far from turning, and yet there are signs of tenacity everywhere: a new vegetarian/vegan café and a kicky new coffee shop around the corner from my Hotel Adonis in Athens, and a new antique shop on the pedestrian mall; upgrades in all the small hotels I stayed in; new small wineries winning gold and silver medallions at international competitions for their velvety smooth wines with complex flavors and long finishes. And a people known and honored since the time of Homer for their warmth and hospitality do not even now lay their burdens on their guests. On the contrary, I and other travelers in Greece were struck by the heightened warm greetings, generosity, and good wishes. And more importantly, I heard repeated assertions from the Greeks themselves that they have survived worse things—that their spirit will never die.

talented and spunky chef Eleni at Avra Hotel, Kiparissi, Lakonia

In spite of all Greece's challenges, local food continues to be fresh and flavorful, the wines are now better than ever, the landscapes and seascapes triumph, the history of course only deepens, and the people teach resilience and hospitality by example. In other words, just as every note of Oh! My Sweet Air is as evocative as it was the first time I heard the album decades ago, the Greece I have just left is fundamentally the Greece I have known since my first trip there 38 years ago—and I love it still.

I simply wanted you to know. And, on behalf of my friends in Greece, I invite you to spread the word.

Resilience. Tenacity. Grace.

Balboa Park, San Diego, February 2012

Possibility

In 1984 when I was 40, I purchased a house in a village in Greece. It was a roofless dwelling used only to stable sheep. I did not ask myself whether I could restore the house; I simply knew I wanted to and would. Repairing the walls stone by stone with my own hands, I plumbed the depths of my ingenuity, I met the limits of my physical strength and endurance, I confronted my loneliness, I paid tribute to my father who brought out the builder in me, and I avoided my mother’s reach long enough to discover who I am.

Years after the roof went on and the door was hung, images of the house appeared in my paintings. But, ironically, I have spent precious little time there since the structure became habitable. What, then, made me undertake the restoration? Possibility, I think. What have I brought away from the experience? An understanding that potential resides within each of us, and—if we are fortunate—we develop it into something wonderful.

photo credits: top, Thordis Simonsen, 1984; bottom, Betty Hurt, 2004

Being There

This is the window I recognized in painting #114 shown in the 4 July 2011 post. It belongs to the "sheep corral" I purchased in the Greek village, Elika, in 1984. The purchase was motivated by an inexplicable urge to have a village home of my own to return to after having rented there for two years. At the time I committed myself to the house, I had no idea what my relationship to the village would look like in the long run. Indeed, since taking occupancy in 1991, I have returned often to Greece as an independent small-group travel guide, but I have spent precious little time under my red clay-tile roof. This year I spent only 10 days in Elika.

When I used to consider my relationship to the house, I thought of it in physical terms—walking the footpath to my door, pruning my two olive trees, mixing mortar and setting stone. Being there, that is to say. But my understanding changed when I began to see evidence of the house in paintings I made while residing in my other home in Colorado. Every image in my oil pastel gallery on my web site, for that matter, represents some aspect of my Greek experience: the house, a chapel built over a spring, a heather-clad hill under a fall sky, an olive tree. True, I immersed myself in day-to-day village life side-by-side with my neighbors and am referred to as an Elikiotissa—a woman of Elika. True the house restoration has been a hands-on project spanning many years. Still, I was surprised to learn through the painting experience that, while the window in the photograph above looks out to sea, the opening depicted in painting #114 is a window into my soul.

Beyond the Stars

For years I had envisioned this oil pastel painting (#114) from 2005 on the front cover of Dances in Two Worlds—the realm on one side of a window expansive and bright, that on the other side implied but not defined. I understood that the image draws one in—perfect for a book cover. It is, I realized after I had completed it, a representation of the window of the house I have been restoring in Greece.

On the back cover, I had pictured a photograph of me replacing the lintels over the door of the house. It captures the intimacy of my relationship with stone that is conveyed by the painting. And it refers to one of the themes—my life in Greece—that I write about in the narratives that accompany the paintings in Dances in Two Worlds.

But my graphic designer, Sammy Lee, was not satisfied with this cover. She wanted to take the design to a “higher level.” “What do you envision?” I kept asking her. Finally she said she liked to watch me apply ink to my monotype plate with my brayer—the sweeping gesture. (Whether by chance or by design, Sammy and I had started printmaking together with Mark Lunning last fall, and I engaged her to design my book straightway.) Suddenly, I got it. Going from the first painting I had ever made (as an adult) reproduced inside the book to the most recent painting, before going to press, on the cover!

Sammy had always wanted a cover image that would “wrap” from front to back. This was my chance to give it to her. I also promised her an image that would wrap the cover flaps as well.

I was excited. I had already been painting what I knew to be the Wyoming sky (see #185 in the book or on my website gallery). The next thing I knew, I had painted the Wyoming night sky I write about in the first essay, “Fireflies.” The tall narrow proportions of these night sky paintings did not fit the book’s page size, however, and Sammy and I were both disappointed not to include them in the final manuscript. But now I had a chance to bring the metaphor of the Wyoming night sky full circle by painting it for the cover.

I was as scared as I was excited because I had never before worked “on demand.” Painting for me had always been about letting go of control, not taking charge of the process by prescribing the outcome. When I went to the studio the next day, I prepared a plate the exact same size as the front and back covers combined. I kept the idea of a Wyoming night sky in mind and visualized white space for the book title. Then I got to work. #197 emerged.

The day after that, I set about, in the same manner, to paint an image that would encompass the flaps as well. The entire time that I worked, I focused on the possibilities, not the outcome. Intuition took me where intellect would never have traveled. On which side of the window does intuition dwell? In the deepest recess of one’s inner landscape? Or somewhere beyond the stars?

The Fundamental Note

W. W. Norton published my first book, You May Plow Here: The Narrative of Sara Brooks. The Fundamental Note published my second book, Dancing Girl: Themes and Improvisations in a Greek Village Setting. I first came across the term “fundamental note” in the late 80s. A book club where I had been guest author with You May Plow Here had invited me to join their group. I don’t remember the title of the book we read or the name of the author or the details of the story—it was about a British woman adventurer who drove her car all the way to the Near East around the time of the First World War. Something like that. I don’t recall the context in which the words were used. I just remember the term: the fundamental note. I liked the sound of it.

And the meaning. In music: the root of a chord, the generator of a series of harmonies. The perfect name for the imprint that would publish stories about the women in the Greek village I had come to call home—and my life with them. Differences notwithstanding, I came to understand that the women of Elika and I have in common feelings that need to be expressed. We have in common a spirit that wants to be set free. We share this yearning: to sing the fundamental note that vibrates within.

Knowing this, it seems appropriate that The Fundamental Note has now published my third book, Dances in Two Worlds: A Writer-Artist’s Backstory. The essays and the paintings I made during the past 20 years document obstacles I have faced, questions I have asked, actions I have taken. The process of writing and painting transformed how I experience my past—what had often felt like a hindrance has become a positive force. The past has become my ally. And the yearning has given way to gratitude. The fundamental note—sung over and over again—in technicolor.

A Sustaining Activity

This is the painting I mentioned in my previous post. Why make them wait to see it, I asked myself. So here it is. To me the piece looks like a finger-painting a kindergartener might have made, but I was 44, and I applied tempera paint with a brush. Naive though it is, the hallmarks of my work to this day are revealed in this scribble: bright colors and bold lines. In Dances in Two Worlds, I describe the circumstances of my upbringing that primed me to paint. And I write about the forces that inhibited me from doing so. Significantly, two generations of women behind me—my mother and my grandmother—had communicated "the validity of creative self-expression as a sideline but never as a sustaining activity." When I finally did give myself permission to paint...those vibrant colors and the dynamic lines! I sometimes think there is only one explanation—three generations of women are making themselves heard with every brushstroke I make.

Dances in Two Worlds: Origins

Dances in Two Worlds—a book by Thordis Simonsen

Dances in Two Worlds—a sculpture by Michael Mrowka

You might wonder what this 2-sided found-object wooden totem has to do with the book by the same name. The sculpture came first, the book came later. The book was named after the totem, which I describe in the title story, where I also explain why the piece appealed to me and why I took her home twenty years ago. I thought you would like to see her. I met the artist, Michael Mrowka, in a Jungian painting group where I began to paint in 1988. (My very first piece is included in the book.) Of course, when I purchased the sculpture named Dances in Two Worlds (to celebrate the publication of Dancing Girl), I had no idea the next book I had in mind would be named for her. And even though I was commuting between Denver and the Greek village, Elika, at the time, and I had already begun to paint as well as write, I had no idea that my life itself had become a dance in two worlds.

Genuine Encounters: Welcome

Welcome to "Genuine Encounters—in travel and the arts."

I first came across the term "genuine encounter" in Ramona Gault's review of my second book, Dancing Girl: Themes and Improvisations in a Greek Village Setting. The book contains warm, spirited accounts by and about the people of Elika and my relationship to them. "Some of [the stories] made me cry for their purity," Gault wrote. "Some made me laugh out loud. [Dancing Girl] is a genuine encounter." (Northwest Ethnic News, May 1992.) Whether I report on my forthcoming book, Dances in Two Worlds: A Writer-Artist's Backstory (June 2011), or I take you into my printmaking studio, or I send news from Greece, I hope that each post will in some way be a genuine encounter for the reader and writer alike. Please let me know how I am doing!