Ricki Stuart 1990
Woman
I just returned from visiting my mother. Ricki is living in a dementia care home in Florida. She has suffered many vascular strokes, and she is, well, also a tad loony. The second time she tried to drive to Woodstock in the middle of the night from Ft. Lauderdale prompted a serious review of her independence. She is 87. The psychiatric unit where she stayed briefly, called her joyride "going AWOL", a charming phrase reconfigured for civilians. Except the docs didn't know this about Ricki. When I was a kid, she would jump in the car in the middle of the night and drive ten hours. Her ruthless anxiety prompted her to do unexpected things, but at her current age, this is considered crazy, then it was just impulsive. She's now settled into her new gated and locked down accommodations. Sounds sucky, but wanderers can get into serious danger. Ricki would try for a third go at Woodstock, where she spent her happy salad days sampling the shrooms and the weed.
At any rate, HarborChase ain't Woodstock, but it's not the Snake Pit either It's a beautiful place that you nor I could ever afford. My mother may be crazy, but she is not stupid. She has a great pension, an annuity, and Social Security. Smart lady.
My mother has always been a tough survivor, a rough and tumble Brooklynite, take no prisoners, public school art teacher. My mother also was an abstract expressionist painter in the 1950's, an acolyte of de Kooing and Pollock. Her readings included Edgar Casey, and Carlos Castenada and Joan Grant. She has been a long term member of Eckankar and the Theosophical Society, and swore she could turn green water into red water. My brother and I were not convinced. Let's just say that by all descriptions of a real artist, her unconventionality, her dabbling into eccentric fringe arcana, and her refusal to abide by middle class rules makes her the real deal and I am the poser. After all, I am the one who made my bed every day and slowly slipped into a compulsive and a controlling envelope for my life. Chaos and disorganization, the hallmark of my mother's life sends me into a rabid frenzy. Last night my husband was eating an apple in bed. (He probably won't ever try that again.) He swore there were no crumbs.
My friends envied my life. It was cool visiting my house. My mother allowed me and my friends to paint on any surface, in any room. The halls were a rambling substrate for any artistic impulse. My room however departed from this aesthetic. I got myself some tape, and painted my room in black and white stripes. Bars, really... to keep the craziness outside my personal space. Ricki was a courageous woman. Her mother, my grandmother was born in NYC in 1898, and was wrapped up in all the trappings of a Victorian sensibility. Read STERILE. No stuffed animals in bed, the nannies and the maids raised you, and physical affection was as rare as rain in the desert. And aside from all other extreme pathology in that household, this Brooklyn shtetl of the damned brought no warmth or nurturing to my mother. My mother was broken, but not lost for good.
My mother transformed her grief and fear into her art. But success and recognition were beyond her. The one thing that I have learned from Ricki, in the most austere, painful and minimal of all lessons is this one:
Never confuse your career with your art. It's all bullshit anyway. A rigged game against women, and especially older ones.
More coming about Ricki and me.
Love,
Rebel Belle
My mother transformed her grief and fear into her art. But success and recognition were beyond her. The one thing that I have learned from Ricki, in the most austere, painful and minimal of all lessons is this one:
Never confuse your career with your art. It's all bullshit anyway. A rigged game against women, and especially older ones.
More coming about Ricki and me.
Love,
Rebel Belle
