Author: miguel

What is a Vision? Have you ever been struck by one? Been frustrated by not being able to draw or paint it? Whatever your answer might be, would you be interested in seeing Visions from eleven professional artists? If you’re curious, and in Northern California during September, you’re in luck.

I and ten of my colleagues will be sharing our Visions at the Seven Stars Gallery in Nevada City. The artists include Mira Clark, Gary Graham, Della Haywood, Aram Larsen, Molly Molly, Douglass Truth, Lil McGill, Margaret Lindsey, Ben Vierling, and Alison Kenyon.

The exhibition, presented by the Nevada City Odd Fellows, runs from Thursday, the 4th of September until Sunday, the 28th, at Seven Stars, 210 Spring Street. You can meet the artists at an opening reception on Thursday, 11 September from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

The Gallery will be open Thurs. — Sunday from 11:00 until 5:00. Come in a have a look.

A morning in late November, leaves scattering in the wind, shorter days, colder days, Madrid exhaling the last sighs of summer. My last day in Spain. I didn’t want to say goodbye.

John Singer Sargent, it was said, often chose a subject to paint by walking awhile, pausing, then spinning around once or twice, trusting. He’d stop and then set up his easel in whatever direction he happened to be facing. In a similar mood, I wandered through streets and alleys in the old neighborhoods with a sketchbook and no goal in mind.

By chance I found myself on the north side of the Prado. Crowds milled about, awaiting turns to enter the museum. Attracted by sunlight on the hillside, I sat on a stone bench and drew for an hour or so until the shadows lengthened. My bum got cold. I was getting hungry. Time to move, but the drawing felt empty. No problem: I’ll just take a photo of the scene and use it for reference later. Then I remembered: I don’t have a phone! It was stolen 3 months ago at Chamartín Station when I arrived in Spain.

Now what?

Stand up, stretch. Trust. I approached a stranger in the crowd. Would you help me? I showed him my sketch and explained the problem. He was a tourist from Mexico City and spoke no English. He agreed to take a photo of the scene with his phone and send it to me via email. We chatted about thieves in our respective countries, and laughed a lot. Hours later when I returned to my hotel, there was his photo on my laptop.

Madrid, city of my heart for more than 40 years, you are a parenthesis: On my arrival, you steal from me; when I depart, you offer me a friend.

The silver crescent of May’s first moon rises over the valley to the south of the
hospital where a silent ambulance waits below a sign in red letters: EMERGENCY

In an x-ray room at the end of a long hallway a technician in a blue smock assures
a white-haired woman that the fracture in her left foot will heal but not soon

Awaiting his turn with a therapist a man whose bride of sixteen months ago has left
him is enduring a panic attack and stares blankly at a wall in a crowded corridor

The father and mother of a boy who has been crying about a rasping pain in his lungs
are slowly being swallowed by their cell phones and slowly they disappear from sight

Two female EMT’s strap a roofer who has fallen off a ladder and fractured his pelvis to
a gurney and wheel him past security guards and sheriff’s deputies into the ambulance

The white-haired man of the white-haired woman waits on the far side of a waiting
room with a book and pencil and pen observing nurses pushing women in wheelchairs

Nurses give the roofer pills for pain and tell him that this hospital has neither doctors nor
equipment to treat his wounds but he will be taken care of in a trauma center in the valley

Crying softly, the boy lies down to sleep and a nurse covers him with a sheet as the white-
haired woman receives a metal four-legged walker to replace the foot she has broken

The ambulance with the EMT’s and the broken roofer pulls away from the curb and descends into freeway traffic toward the May moon crescent still rising in the twilight far to the south of the hospital.