Artistic – Sage Telling Your Story

December 1, 2015February 26, 2019

Artistic, by Betsy

As
a youngster in school or Girl Scout meetings, arts and crafts was always one of
my favorite activities. I am very
grateful for the time spent making things because I still enjoy making things.
So when I started thinking about today’s topic, I naturally pondered the
question what is the difference between an art and a craft.

I
decided that art is a creation of the imagination, a craft is the result of
making something by hand which is a copy or an impression or a depiction of
something else. Further investigation reveals that the word craft comes from an
old English then German word originally meaning strength then later,
skill. Skill is the key word here when
it comes to the word origin. However,
the meaning for me is broader inasmuch as I have crafted many an item without
the application of an ounce of skill. At
least so it would seem.

In
my dotage I have taken up the craft of counted cross stitch. My friend Carlos has shown some beautiful
examples of his work. The two main
skills required for this craft are patience and good eye sight. Also being systematic about transferring the
pattern from a paper to the cloth is essential.

Is
this art? Technically, in my opinion it is not.
I may be creating a piece based on a painting or an artist’s rendition of an object or a
scene. It is imagination that produces
the image upon which my craft is based.
That’s
the work of art. Designing the cross
stitch pattern and then stitching it is the craft. Does it matter to me which it is called?
No. Call it art, call it a craft, I really
don’t care. I enjoy doing it. Another of its assets is that it’s a great filler activity very useful
when watching sports on TV, when waiting for commercials to end, or when
watching something entertaining which doesn’t require a lot of concentration
(which is most of television, by the way.)
Other times when it is a useful activity are when waiting or when one
can’t sleep.

A
few years ago in our travels to the National Parks, I noticed in the gift
shops, cross-stitch kits of scenes from whatever park we were visiting. So I bought that first kit that I found, and
have been buying them and completing them since. So far I have Monument Valley, Zion NP, Rocky
Mountain NP, and I am currently working on Arches NP. I think it will be another year or maybe two
before I finish Arches as it is quite large; that is, if I work on it
regularly.

My last visit to a National Park was about a
month ago when we spent a day at Denali NP in Alaska, home of Mt. McKinley now
called Mt. Denali. I found no craft kits in their gift shop, but later in
Anchorage I came upon a craft shop that had cross-stitch patterns for typical
Alaskan flowers and animals. As a result of going into that shop I have now, I
think, four or five cross-stitch projects waiting to be started. Considering that some projects can take two,
three, or even four years to complete, I realize I better get on with it. So many projects, so little time.

By
the way, I also knit baby blankets, so if any of you are expecting to be
expecting in the near future, let me know early on (before you are showing) so
I can get started on a baby blanket.

Ahh!
So many projects, so little time.

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the
GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change). She has been
retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities
include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor
with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of
marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys
spending time with her four grandchildren.
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing
her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

July 22, 2015February 26, 2019

Artistic by Ricky

Anyone who knows me at this point in my life will know that I am mostly a critic of the artistic skills of others. I learned all about the art of being critical from 66 years of living and listening to others criticizing me and my efforts and activities. I also have some practical learning in the world of art. At one point, while attending art classes for two years, my teachers gave me high marks for my creativity and technical skill with media and color application.

So as not to seem braggadocios, I will share with you some pieces of my work to prove the accuracy of my statements about my skill.

The first piece of art I will expose you to is from my early career. Like many an artist, I began with still life, in this case some fruit. Notice the excellent application of color and texture.

While living with my grandparents in Minnesota and being somewhat depressed, I next entered into what I refer to as my blue period. Using a waxy medium, I created this beautiful colorful drawing of my home back in Redondo Beach, California, complete with school bus.

I then improved my style and technique to the point that my next piece you will see was described by my art teacher as nearly as good as Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Modesty prevents me from contradicting her opinion.

Having reached the pinnacle of my technical skill in the world of traditional art, it was time to let my creativity run loose. The result was a decision to “marry” the styles of Salvador Dali with that of Picasso’s later works in impressionism and cubism.

The response was less than I had hoped for and I vowed to withhold my obvious talent and skill from the sight of the artistically insensitive, critics, and public.

By way of contrast with my work above, here is a recent piece of art by a famous artist. If my work doesn’t qualify as high quality, neither does her piece, in my opinion. Yet she is elevated to fame, while my works are dismissed.

Pablo Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”*

My knowledge of artistic techniques is now used to evaluate the work of others and hold them to the same rigorous standards applied to my works.

I have created nothing of quality art since that time.

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

February 27, 2015February 26, 2019

Artistic by Lewis

[To my
audience: Please be forewarned that what
you are about to hear may be infused with more than a soupcon (süp- sän) of “artistic
license”.]

When
I was about eleven and on the cusp of discovering that there was something
about me that was likely to relegate me to the margins of society, I began to
explore the ways in which American popular culture might open up avenues of
expression to me that would help me to wrap my arms around who I was and, more
importantly, how I might fit in.

It
was 1957 and there were circles of American society wherein people leaving the
movie theater or concert hall might be heard to say things like, “You may
have noticed that [take your pick] Liberace/Sal
Mineo/Anthony Perkins/Montgomery Clift is a bit on the ‘artistic’ side.”

As
people who say such things often were prone to doing so in soft voices, I
mistakenly heard them to say that the actor at issue was “a bit autistic”. I thought it appalling that a loving god
would see fit to bestow two such strikes upon a child from the moment of their
birth but I counted my blessings in that I seemed to have been passed over for
the autism part and moved on.

Knowing
little about autism and anxious to avoid drawing attention to my own proclivities
when it comes to members of the male gender, I, thenceforth, associated being “autistic”
with anyone exhibiting a combination of three or more of the characteristics of
the classical homosexual persona. That
is–as Wikipedia describes Franklin
Pangborn, surely one of the most “artistic actors” in Hollywood
history–“fussy…, polite, elegant, and highly energetic, often
officious, fastidious, somewhat nervous, prone to becoming flustered but
essentially upbeat, and with an immediately recognizable high-speed patter-type
speech pattern.”

I
thought I had stumbled upon a fool-proof guide as to how to behave so as not to
elicit any suspicion whatsoever that I might be “queer”. I set about to find the movie personality who
embodied every antithetical quality so I could emulate him. He had to be stoic, insensitive, blunt,
laid-back, modest (even falsely so), unflappable but downbeat, slow-spoken and
have nerves of steel. In a matter of seconds,
it came to me–Rock Hudson. We all know
how that turned out.

About
the Author

I came to the beautiful
state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I
married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas
by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working
as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman
for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured
that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I
wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just
happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both
fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I retired and we
moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years
together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One
possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group
was there to light the way.