Mr. Imagination rises again

The renowned visionary artist who first captivated his Chicago hometown by turning castoffs like industrial sandstone and bottlecaps into fantastical creations stopped making art for months after a 2008 fire leveled the life he thought he'd made.
In 2009, Gregory "Mr. Imagination" Warmack left Pennsylvania and moved to Atlanta.
Grieving for all he'd lost – decades of art he'd made or collected; books, photos and historical documents; his beloved dog Pharoah and a family of cats – sapped the energy he'd once used to bring new life to old things.
In his hands, spent paintbrushes and mops had become shaggy-haired kings or creatures; mountains of bottlecaps found new life in giant thrones, sculptures – even clothes. Wire screen turned into dresses, faces rose up from cement and putty.
What was real didn't die, it just came back in different forms.
Turns out, living in Atlanta has been good medicine. Mr. I's friends rallied, he found a new home, time passed. Once he got his hands moving again, the work flowed. Some bubbled up from new places, like birds carved from salvaged wood. Some stayed rooted in the old, like scorched pieces he's reconfigured, repaired or left as they were.
This time, the life he's reclaimed is his own.

http://www.accessatlanta.com/AccessAtlanta-sharing_/visual-arts-preview-mr-826795.html
http://www.barbaraarcher.com/

such a deal

so i'd had a lovely walk in the old suburban neighborhood where a friend lives. it's 30 minutes by car to get there, but worth it for all the birds, traffic-free hills and patches of woods.
when i got back home, it was misting, not quite raining. no need for the umbrella. but somehow my arms were full anyway as i exited the car, so i slammed the door with my foot.
from the second-story porch next door, a woman with dark hair waved, smiling as if we were old friends. in her arms was a tiny white dog, smaller than my cat.
i waved back.
"nice dog," i say, loud enough to carry.
"free to good home," she yells back.
at first i'm wondering why a dog needs four names. then i get it.
"don't think my cat would much care for that," i say, pausing at the sidewalk.
"oh she loves cats," the woman says. "we have three."
"tempting," i say. "but i think we're good with just the one cat right now."
she shrugs, still smiling.
"i'm joy," she says. "this is celine," she points to a girl who's maybe 20, "and he's robbie." a toddler crawls on the clay tiles in his diaper and t-shirt.
i say my name twice before she gets it. i think about asking if they're cold out there without jackets.
we smile at one another, nod the way you do when you're not sure what to say next, and go our separate ways.

catching up on where i've been

so i'm back in the world of quick turnaround newspaper stories – snapshot journalism. the kind of thing where a conversation becomes a window to a life or calling and the challenge (and joy) comes from seeing how quickly you can translate it to the page.
this is what i loved most about my last three years at the ajc, when i worked out of the gwinnett bureau.
sometimes i'd have so much fun immersing myself in one or another of the county's fascinating towns, i'd wonder what it would be like to actually live there, instead of driving up for the day and pretending.
picturing a crashpad under the trees, just small enough for a bed and desk and hotplate, i imagined being able to watch a place go to sleep and wake up, to hear its particular cast of birds and smell its particular flavor of morning.
can you ever really know a place, i wondered, without living in it?
now i get to find out.
committing to a weekly column – wherein i'm never sure what will be next but i'm on the hook for it anyway – is a big part of the charm.
here are links to a few. the first is about painter rocio rodriguez, whose terrific show at barbara archer gallery in inman park has been extended through feb. 5.

http://vahi.patch.com/articles/local-artist-brings-her-art-back-home

http://vahi.patch.com/articles/rescuing-the-rescuers-2

http://www.reporternewspapers.net/2010/12/30/churchs-divorce-recovery-group-helps-singles-learn-loss/

kudos to mtv....

...for balancing out their maddening "16 and pregnant" franchise with a solid 30-minute look at abortion, a topic that seldom gets moving, thoughtful treatment anywhere. and thanks to salon, for reviewing a show that apparently only aired once, late at night.
say what you want about dr. drew, he's consistently a source of straight, respectful talk about sex, aimed at just the audience that needs to hear it most.

www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2010/12/29/mtv_abortion_show_no_easy_choice

who knows where the time goes?

sandy denny's windswept lonely song is never far from my mind. her voice, the scratchy british grandeur of it. the images and waves of richard thompson's guitar. and her question, a heartbeat that sounds like home.
who does know? it's a riddle, a koan, a question mark that rolls on and on.
i know it's all circling, never resting. it's not a straight line the way we imagine in times of too much to do and the choking worry of not enough time to get it all done; not a ruler to be checked off in millimeters or inches, hours or minutes.
more a river that we swim or wade along.
i remember september and october and november. writing, scrubbing old walls till they are clean enough to paint. remembering and forgetting.
and here it's december, nearly the end of. i treasure the last days of each year, reluctant to let the number i've finally gotten used to -- 2010 -- leave; reluctant to get used to the new one. they change so fast.
a story before going.
on christmas day, i was in a tiny church in the florida panhandle. it was my grandmother's, when she retired to that corner of the gulf of mexico, and then my parents. my father's last christmas -- 2003 -- he'd created a songbook of christmas hymns for the church, joined the choir to add his voice to theirs. i'd gone in hopes of seeing a copy, snagging one even.
i arrived late, grabbed a seat in the back, grateful to sing those once-a-year songs with a crowd of strangers.
across the aisle, a huge man in a hunting jacket held a whimpering yorkshire terrier on his lap. everyone pretended to ignore it. i wondered how he'd gotten it past the usher.
finally, at a quiet part in the homily, a woman in a bulky fur turns around to complain to the wife, who wears all black but for a thin gold ribbon banded around her short gray hair.
"can you please do something?" she whispers. "the dog is distracting me."
the big man doesn't give his wife time to answer. "it's a baby," he hisses, "alright? he can't help it!"
her white-headed husband turns around to see who's yelling at his wife.
"don't stare at me!" the big man says, louder. "turn around! you can move if you don't like it!"
it's right in the middle of the sermon, and for a second we wonder if the young priest will intervene.
he's up there talking about light and love and waiting and the birth of a tiny king and his audience is torn.
the fur coat and her husband stand without looking back and move five pews up.
the big guy pets the pocket-sized fur coat in his lap and stares straight ahead.
finally, he gets up slowly with his dog and walks out the door.
his gold-banded wife looks around with a smile, nodding at anyone whose eye she can catch, "sorry. i'm sorry. sorry."
and on it goes.
the little gap inside what was expected closes, and everyone sings aloud the words they know by heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2xODjbfYw8

in these times

it's tempting to let the political storms rage on their own, to stay out of it, to let the crazies tire themselves before moving on.
so many of them are fronts to sow discord, to pit us against one another, to generate enough smoke that what really matters can be obscured.
sunday mornings honor thoughtfulness, whether you find your inspiration in scripture or newspapers, literature or film. it's when i most miss the kinds of shaggy conversations my parents excelled at, both natural and lifelong teachers who valued rhetoric and logic, poetry and passion, and could talk for hours about the lessons of history and civilization.

if latin -- which was called a "dead language" before its surprise return to high schools -- and the proudly low-tech game of chess can be rediscovered by the young, is it crazy to hope that debate teams could return as well? we have never needed them more, to bring back the art of weighing ideas on their merits, to understand that moral high ground is not the same as real estate. it does not belong to whoever shouts the loudest or pays the most. everything isn't relative.
two of the voices i came across this morning said what i was thinking far more persuasively than i could. i'm grateful for their voices.

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/real-americans-please-stand-up/?src=me&ref=homepage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPPxBrtrH1c&feature=player_embedded

happy anniversary, mom and dad

In New York City on this day in 1951, my parents walked down the aisle at St. Thomas More cathedral in Manhattan as husband and wife. She'd just turned 24; he would be 26 in four days.
By today's standards, the wedding was small -- one maid of honor, one best man.
The cake was tiny. Guests look crowded into three long tables.
The reception appears to be in a hotel, but which one isn't clear. If I remembered to ask, the answer didn't stick.
What did was the faith and hope that carried them that day, that danced them around a banquet hall, that kept each one reaching for the other's hand.
Their joy streams forth from the grainy black-and-whites. They cannot know their shared life will eventually bring six children in 10 years, work they love and challenges they struggle to meet, an illness they cannot beat. Or which things will strengthen their bond, which nearly break it.
All that's certain is the word inscribed inside their wedding bands along with the date: Caritas.
Greek for love -- the selfless kind, the way God loves, the way we strive to love one another -- it was their guiding star, their anchor in stormy times, their rock.
Wherever they are now, the next world or someplace I can't imagine, I like to think of them as they were 59 years ago today. Their faces so innocent and beautiful, so glazed with love.