Announcement from Paper Kite Press & Gallery:
What Can We Make From the Pieces?
Friday, July 16th 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
When Marlea Waber (Dan’s mother) died, Dan came into possession of three portfolios of art, mostly from her student days, but some that was done later in life. She never completely stopped making art, but, her life didn’t allow her much time for it. After the family had taken everything they wanted, what was left was a couple of hundred sketches, studies, watercolors, charcoals, oils, collages, finished pieces…a really large array of work. Dan thought about what was going to happen to this work, now that everyone had taken what they wanted. He didn’t like the idea that it would probably just end up in a basement somewhere, and eventually find its way into a dumpster after a flood or a move or who knows what.
So last year he let every artist who donated work to the Anniversary Free Art show go through these portfolios and select pieces, with the intended purpose of using those pieces (in whatever fashion they chose, integrative, inspiration, destructive) to create new work for the July of 2010 show at Paper Kite Press.
This show is called “What Can We Make From the Pieces” and all of the artwork on display has been created using the art Dan’s mother left behind as seed material.
How the show got this title is a long story, but, it’s a good one. It’s actually the intersection of several good stories.
Dan’s mother was an art history major and a practicing artist back in the 60s, and was only a few credit hours short of a degree from the University of Minnesota when she got pregnant with Dan and had to leave school. While Dan was growing up, Marlea spent most of the time working in the accounting department of an insurance company–not the ideal job placement given her artist nature. Whenever she seemed unhappy with it (which was not infrequently), Dan, in the naive way that children possess, would say, “Well, why don’t you just go do what you want to do?” She would answer, “Because I’ve got responsibilities.” It didn’t take Dan long to realize that he was the responsibilities. So when Dan went to college, the first thing he did was call home to tell his mom he’d gotten there safely, and, he said, “OK, you’re on your own now. Do what you want.”
The following semester she enrolled in Chicago Theological Seminary and ended up getting her doctorate in Divinity, and went on to have a very successful (and fulfilling) career as a minister in the Midwest. An artist working in the medium of human lives, and she was very good at it.
She had a favorite story that she found quoted in one article referencing another about the difference between the notion of God the Father and God the Mother. This is a paraphrase of a paraphrase, but I think you’ll get the idea. The story goes:
A little boy hand made a birthday ashtray for his father, who loved to smoke a cigar in the evenings. When the father came home from work that day, the boy was so excited that he ran to greet him. He trips, and falls, and the ashtray hits the floor and breaks. The boy bursts into tears, and the father says, “That’s okay, I understand, it’ll be okay.” And the mother gets down on the floor and weeps with the child and says, “Now, what can we make from the pieces.”
That’s how Dan’s mother ministered, and, really, how she lived her life.
We hope you will join us to see what artists have made from the pieces.
Artists with work in this show include, as of this writing:
Steffi Schairer, Todd Little, Adam Handler, David Hage, Liz Revit, Don Rash, Skip Sensbach, Michele Broton, Dawn Leas, Ryan Leas, Shawn Falchetti, Angela DeMuro, Ellen Jamiolkowski, Lee Millard, Alicia Grega, Michele Kordek, Tara Shoemaker Holdren, Jennifer Hill, Loretta Mestishen, Kenna Tenneale, Stas Wrobel, Allison Maslow, and Billy Brandenburg.
Lee S. Millard vs. Marlea Waber, "Playboy - Special Fine Art Edition (Cover)", 2010, Dye print including scanned pencil drawings