Original Art Sundays No. 235: The Next Sharp Invitation, p. 7

The books are printed, the grant is submitted. Funds reimbursement expected soon.
Until then, the work goes on, as we know it should.
I solicited feedback from some folks at Spring Con this weekend, and am waiting for their responses.
The last page of the current story:

I'm very satisfied with this page.
I could have gone nuts rendering the angelic figure in Panel Two, but sometimes simple is better.
There are almost no backgrounds on this whole page. For the most part, that's the way I wanted this one. I was keen for the sense of floating- first being held aloft by the twine, then feeling free in the dress.
I find the freehand borders here particularly effective.
In upcoming stories, I have an even higher emotional content. This is problematic. It's a balancing act between the integrity of the work and how much the reader can, or chooses to, take. How responsible is the creator for the reader's reactions? It's easy to say one has no culpability. But we try for responses to our work. Who's to blame if we succeed?
No easy answers here. As my sister Pat once told me, I don't have the answers, but I'm starting to learn the questions.
The printed version of the work to date jumps over a BIG part of my life, going from this period to adulthood. Those stories will be completed in some form by the time of the faculty art show in the fall, in which parts of this work will be exhibited.
Next: a new Sharp Invitations story.
As promised, I am re-posting the whole story below.

New Year, Old Birthdays

Well, here we are, less than two hours into 2012. I'm about to turn in, but I wanted to get this up as early in the year as I could.
I'll post art later today.
The New Year is an occasion for celebrating recent accomplishments and looking forward. But for me it's always had a bittersweet overtone.
My Father was a New Year's baby, so I'm reminded of him as each year starts.

This was taken in 1958, two years before my parents' divorce and the birth of my youngest brother.
I always thought two things about this photo. First, that's the  shortest hair my Mother ever had. Second, my Dad looks terrified.
My Dad divorced my Mother to marry another woman while Mother was pregnant with by brother John.
We didn't hear much from him for ten years after that, and Mother was in complete denial about the divorce, at least to us kids (though my sisters found the divorce papers in the attic, so they knew, but didn't tell the rest of us). So as I grew, he was a blurred memory and a cipher that held a vague promise of return.
When I was 15, I went to live with my Dad and his new family, at their suggestion. I learned a lot about life from them, as I did from my Mother, but I was too scared, selfish and stubborn, and too much a self-styled teenage rebel (translate: I was kinda a jerk), to accept the lessons from any of them until years later.
So it goes. I suspect that's part of the human condition. Dad was fond of the Twain quote- "when I was 18, my father was so stupid. By the time I was 25, I couldn't believe how much smarter the old man had gotten."
Before I finished high school, I had moved into my own apartment- a spectacular disaster that ended with me moving back in with Dad and Audrey briefly 6 weeks after graduation, followed by my hitchhiking up North to live with my Mom and attend junior college for a couple years.
I saw Dad sporadically after that, always wanting his understanding, never quite sure how to get it. When you talk to your parents, it doesn't matter how old you are, you're always a kid.
I came out to my Dad shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. I was able to see him one final time, and had one last shot at us really understanding one another. This photo was taken during that visit to Atlanta, twenty some years ago.

I was stunned at his fragility. I remembered him as being so large and powerful, and near the end, he looked like a breeze would do him in.
We had about an hour to talk while everyone else was out. I think he was as afraid of me as I was of him. We danced around each other, and were just starting to get into some of the really weighty stuff when the rest of the clan returned. So there were some things I never got to ask him. I wanted to push harder, but hey, the man was dying, and I already felt like I was kicking him when he was down just by being out.
However, after Mother died more than a decade later, I was entrusted with her correspondence with Dad leading up to the divorce. Between that and conversations with siblings, I think I've pieced together what I needed to know.
I'll not go into further detail on matters around the divorce. Suffice to say, I've come to terms with both my parents, as we all must sooner or later.
Now, I think about the good things I got from my Dad: a love of laughter and music, a passion for knowledge, some skill as a cook/chef (in addition to having a Master's in Engineering, he ran a catering business on the side), and a fierce sense of loyalty that I can't always live up to.
I also got some bad things from him: difficulty managing money, a bit of conflict-avoidance, and a fondness for a well-turned ankle.
I didn't get his singing voice, which is too bad. He was good.
Now I think of him more with fondness than regret, and as I do with Mother, I see facets of him in myself often, and it always takes me by surprise.
I can live with that.
So happy new year to all, and happy birthday to Charles Robert Bender.

Original Art Sundays # 42a: Photoshop painting

The page, the page.
The next page of A Private Myth is on the board. It's all penciled and everything. But no scanner access till Tuesday.
So my choices for the blog:
Post a mediocre photo of the pencils (not enough range to get good lines), or wait for a proper scan.
While pondering my choices, I played with Photoshop a bit.
I started looking at some family snapshots from a get-together we had a few months ago.
Next thing I knew, I was reworking a very bad image, trying to see what I could do with it.
Here's the original image.

Believe it or not, there is some information there!
Fixing this image, using some adjustments and filters, and some hand recoloring, I came up with this.

Amazing what's really there!
I added a texture to compensate for the graininess of reintroduced color. Blurs will only take you so far!
The colors are a bit muted, but if it went to print, it would print at about 135% of this color, which would be about right.
By Friday, the next page.

Saying goodbye to my Muffin

I usually don't post much really personal writing, but bear with me.
My ex's daughter, Emerald Rose Foss, was killed in a car crash on Friday, October 9. As today is my ex Linda's birthday, it strikes me that it's time to write about this.
Linda was pregnant  twice during our time together, and miscarried both times. We both took it hard, but it seemed to me at the time that she wanted to be a parent more than I did.
We were together for the better part of 7 years. Our parting was complicated, hard and painful, as partings usually are.
Linda and I remained close to varying degrees after we parted, no small feat given the conditions. When she was pregnant again some years later, I was so happy for her (at least when I wasn't preoccupied with my own completely unnecessary melodrama).
I knew Emmy Rose all her life, not as much in the later years as I could have. But early on we were the best of buddies. I started calling her Muffin when she was 3 or 4. She said, "I don't like that." I told her, "well, you can call me Muffin if you want to too." So that's how it was. She was my Muffin and I was hers. I went from changing her diapers to taking baths with her and reading her to sleep.
I got a very small taste of what it was like to be a parent. Not so much that I could say I got it all, but enough to know I might have been good at it, and that it was something that would have made my life fuller.
But misgivings are of no use, except to understand.
Emmy and Linda came to my graduation from MCAD, and I was so glad to have them there.

This is after the ceremony. That's Emmy Rose in front by the center rail (what a smile!), flanked by Kim and Jenny to the left and me to the right (in the blue dress), and Linda right behind me.

Here's Emmy asking me about my work at my Senior show, again after the ceremony. This is in 1999.
It's a shame Emmy's face isn't in this picture, but I hope my smile says it all.
Eventually Linda and Emmy moved to Grand Rapids to be nearer Linda's family. I saw them when I could, but I must confess I missed many opportunities.
I had been up North to see my family for my neice's baby shower a few weeks earlier, and thought about calling on them. But I made the fatal error of thinking, "I'll do it next time."
Two weeks later, the phone call from my sister telling me about Emmy Rose's death.
I wanted to say something profound at the funeral, something deep and worthwhile. What came out was a pile of blubbering and a few kind words for Linda and her family. I don't think anyone minded, but I was embarrassed and frustrated with myself.
I had it all worked out in the car, and none of of it came out. I know, it's not about me, but it mattered to me to say what I had to say, and I blew it.
Here's what I wanted to say.
I'm trying to make sense of this. Of course, it doesn't make any sense. Like the song says, I can't shout about spiritual labels when little ones die and big ones thrive. Why should Emmy Rose suffer?
About 8 years ago, I went to a benefit lecture/ prayer service some Tibetan monks were giving. They were trying to get their brothers and sisters out of Tibet before the Chinese killed them, which sounded like a good idea. During the lecture, one of the monks talked about the elimination of suffering.
There was a Q & A. Trying to come off like a big deal intellectual, I asked the monk if the elimination of suffering was a good idea. Isn't suffering necessary to appreciate joy?
The monk said, "Yeah, maybe. But I still don't like it."
That floored me.
The Book of Job says "man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." Aside from the poetic imagery, which I really like, that means something more. We are the sparks that fly upward.
We are sparks. We are souls with bodies. We are energy wrapped in stuff.
That's all we are.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only moved. So where did the energy go when it stopped running Emmy's body, this body that was 90% smile and 10% fire?
Where does the energy go?
My money's on up there, to rejoin the larger energy we call God.
I will miss Emmy for a long long time, and try to forgive myself for missing as much of her life as I did, while embracing the time we did have together. I know it's going to be hard for Linda for a long time, and I will make more time for her if she'll let me.
So long, Muffin. You did the good work. I'll catch you on the other side.

This is taken from the facebook memorial page for Emerald Rose Foss.