Lola and Lolo (with pipe)

16x20 acrylic on canvas

My Lolo was out of sorts.  Seventeen years ago, he’d crammed into Uncle Johnny’s car with some young cousins from Los Angeles.  They’d cut a swath across the middle section of country, en route to my Chicago wedding, stopping a couple times along the way.  Two-thousand ten miles, seven different states over the course of two days.  It was August, blistering hot, and Lolo was failing both physically and emotionally, as a lifetime of hard-living and the recent loss of Lola Ambrocia had reduced his once wiry, strong frame into a skinny, wax-like Madame Tussauds shell of his former self.     

The last time we saw him in the San Fernando Valley, he’d while away the hours sitting in his favorite chair, trying to kill house flies in the front room.  Because of complications from emphysema, he couldn’t enjoy his favorite pipe anymore.  Instead, he’d used scissors to cut a rubber band, and operating it like a sling shot, he’d snap at anything at which hovered in his vicinity.  It was as if he’d established his own La-Z-Boy “no fly zone” in the living room, meting out punishment with swift, unforgiving rubber precision.

During the trip to Chicago, they’d stopped at a hotel six or seven hours west of Illinois and Lolo couldn’t sleep.  He said Lola Ambrocia had visited their room late at night, in the form of a translucent apparition.  So bright was her visage, he couldn’t shut his eyes.

At the wedding reception we had a videographer who worked the room, recording well-wishes and pithy comments from the slightly-inebriated family and friends in attendance.  Lolo, who had been instructed to retire from cocktails at the same time he put away his pipe, lifted a party favor, offering a toast.  It was a small flower vase with a ribbon tied around the neck, about the size one would associate with dollhouse accouterments.  About halfway through wishing his best for Scott and I, in broken English, he lost his train of thought and stared blankly at the camera.  The smile disappeared from his face; tears welled up in his eyes.  He was still holding the tiny flower vase as the camera went dark.

Years later, long after he passed, more than one family member has had the peculiar experience of waking suddenly, their bedrooms choked by the aroma of tobacco.  It’s always the same sweet apple and cherry wood blend Lolo favored.

So You Think You Can Dance?

20x16 acrylic on canvas

The thing about dancing is it’s hard to not smile when you’re caught up in the act.  Something about moving your body, breathing, and getting your blood pumping seems to inspire the facial muscles, expose the teeth.

And what better reason could there be for dancing and smiling than a mid-summer house party, say, back in 1975?  It’s Kool & The Gang’s Jungle Boogie blasting on the brand new Pioneer Stereo System.  The windows are open, allowing a breeze to drift inside, while the sounds of the funky trumpets and rock-jazz guitar riffs ooze down into the yard.

The men are outside, sipping Old Style and smoking Salems.  They’re smiling too, but have no interest in dancing.  They know better.

Upstairs, Earth, Wind and Fire are now spinning on the wheels of steel.  The food is about to be served, the kids will be summoned from the alley. Begrudgingly, the men will stagger upstairs for a plate full meat, rice and whatever.

This had to be one of the greatest days in the history of the planet.

Spontaneous Elevation

20x16 acrylic on canvas

 

Not so sure we’re getting better or wiser, so much as just getting more efficient as we grow older.  Like German automobiles.  As if our days, nights, weeks, months and years are simply life components which need to be reengineered for maximum productivity.  We make “to do” lists, cut out the fluff, then begin checking these off, one by one, from sun up to sun down, day after day after day.We might accomplish more, or forget less, and at the end of the day reflect on the shallow emptiness associated with having mastered the art of time management.  We even schedule our fun, penciled in Saturday nights from 7pm to 10:30pm, and know exactly what type of wine and cheese we’ll enjoy a full seven days in advance. Now, this could all be interpreted as a rather large slice of art blog pessimism, and perhaps it is.  But it isn’t with hope.You don’t have to be a slave to the list. You can wake up and ignore the damn thing.  Throw on some grubby jeans, grab a camera and drive somewhere unusual.  Walk through the mud, climb a hill and look at the trees.  There are birds singing in the woods and shafts of sunlight splitting through the canopy of nature, right here in the suburbs.  No soccer games or Little League or other such malarkey.  No meetings or band concerts or work functions.  Nothing but an endless series of unfamiliar paths through the brush, lined with wild flowers of a million different vibrant colors.  In nature, there are funny smells and rocks which can be skipped across ponds and clouds and wind and laughter.  There is still fun to be had for those courageous enough to trash can all those pesky things which supposedly need to get done. I know this to be true, because I’ve done it.   Forget the list?  That’s something I plan “to do” more of next year.

Lost at Sea

24x30 acrylic on canvas

Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, there is a shark sporting Armani frames…

A couple years back we took our bi-annual trip to Florida and wound up at a secluded beach thirty minutes north of Daytona.  A great day, with big clouds and good sized waves.  Just us; my husband, the kids and I, having the time of our lives.  We were there for several hours, and just as I started to pack up our things, Scott and the little ones turned to walk out of the sea when a large wave roared up from behind and knocked them down.  Scott lost his glasses during the spill, and was legally blind for a day or two, until we could purchase an over-priced replacement at an eye doctor in the Orlando Mall.

I can almost laugh about it now.  Almost.

The next year we were at the same beach.  Another perfect day.  Scott didn’t wear his glasses in the water this time, but during the two-hour drive home to our place in central Florida, we drove through one of the worst torrential downpours in state history…with stretches of highway under a foot of water, zero visibility, cars piling up alongside the road.

The next time we go to Florida, we’re going to try a different beach.

We can see things a little more clearly now.

Roots and Origins

acrylic on canvas

I’ve known Rica a long, long time; back before the moment captured in this portrait, with us posed outside St. Vincent, proudly brandishing our Spelling Bee ribbons.  She eventually moved away and attended a different high school, then somehow wound up in Hawaii for college.  We reconnected in our early 20s, after her triumphant return to the mainland, and we became fast night club buddies, spending wild weekends at Ka-Boom, Shelter and other Chicago hot spots from back in the day.

Then real life kicked in as it always does, where careers and fate conspired to pull us apart once again.  For close to ten years, I had no idea what had become of my dear old friend and spelling bee competitor; until fate, airplanes and limousines stepped in. 

My husband works as a limousine dispatcher, where most of his job centers around telephone conversations with customers looking for vehicles at O’Hare or Midway airports.  During the course of a typical work week, he might talk to a thousand different people, heading in and out of town for various nefarious reasons, but one night a familiar name from our past appeared on his logs.  Rica, or someone with the same exact name as our mutual friend, was on the line, looking for a ride home.  It was a busy shift, with four dispatchers on duty, four phone lines ringing off the hook, but somehow Rica (who we’d later discover had just moved back to Chicago from Texas) was on the line with Scott.  With several phone calls in the cue, and the herky-jerk chaos associated with a busy livery office, Scott paused and asked if she was the same person who had grown up with Joyce Dino on the west side of Chicago.  There was silence, and then a yes.  Yes!  She grew up with Joyce Dino. Yes, it’s the same Rica.

Fast forward to almost two years later, and she’s every bit as much a part of my life as back in the day, when we wore funny skirts at St. Angela.  She’s one of the “good things” in my life, and much has happened since the unexpected phone call brought us back together.  We’ve shared dinners, wine and fun.  Made new memories, and talked of good times from the past.  We’ve organized a class reunion from our elementary school, and reconnected with the other two young ladies from this portrait, as well as many, many others.  We’ve joined the Facebook craze and expanded our networks even further.  We have vacations planned for next year and beyond.

As I painted this, I thought about how astonishing this was for me personally. Astonishing, really, but not unusual.  You hear stories all the time of friends and family losing touch with one another, then reconnecting.  It’s really a universal theme of the human experience.  It’s why we wake up, go to work and pick up the phone.  You never know who’s going to be on the other end.  It’s reconnecting with those dear to you which makes life worth living.

Break Time

16x20 acrylic on canvas

Even when you enjoy your career, there are periods of stress, doubt, fatigue.  In the midst of the gloomiest days, I confess to sometimes wishing I could push a magic eject button and catapult away from my circumstances, go back to a simpler time when the world seemed like a huge white gesso canvas, waiting for shapes and colors to be applied. An existence filled with unlimited possibilities, and a never-ending series of new experiences.

As I worked on this latest portrait, featuring my cousin Rose May and two friends from the old neighborhood, I realized I’d finally found my magic button. It’s located inside the bottles of acrylic paint, hiding inside the decrepit photo albums and scrap books. 

The kids in this portrait are at a forest preserve, hot and sweaty from running around and laughing, now resting comfortably (ouch) on croquet mallets.  An adult has convinced them to stop, at least long enough to snap a photograph and preserve the moment.  And thirty years later, I have a transformational experience committing it to canvas.  It makes me feel happy.

I don’t want to stop.  I want to run around and laugh forever.  I’m going to dip into my acrylic, thumb through my albums, leaf through the scrap books and push the magic button for eternity.

My job is just my job.  These paintings are my life.

Living Room, July 1982

16x20 acrylic on canvas

This is Brooke, Muffy and Buffy. Well, actually, it’s just Vicky, Joyce and Marie, and we are the coolest of cool Preppy posers in the entire western hemisphere.  We worshipped the whole upper crust-East Coast thing, but were hopelessly mired near the bottom half of Chicago’s West Side blue collar barrel.  This didn’t prevent us from vigorously going through the motions, though. All three of us went to Kroch’s and Brentano’s at the Oak Park Mall and purchased Lisa Birnbach’s seminal work, The Official Preppy Handbook.  It was a parody, of course, but we followed its words as if Moses himself had dragged the sacred text down from Mt. Sinai. Marie and I would save up our allowance (mostly bags of coins), and take the Chicago Avenue bus downtown to Saks Fifth Avenue on Michigan Avenue to purchase Izod Lacoste shirts.  They cost about $26.00 at the time and when we were short money, we’d run over to my mom’s office at the Rehab Institute of Chicago to beg for funds. At one point, we got to know the salesman’s name at Saks (Bill) because we had to carefully lay all of our change out on the countertop to count it. In this painting, we are in the middle of a sweltering hot July afternoon, but sporting jeans and (in my case) a button down top!  Marie used to calculate the value of her church wardrobe, during the homily at St. Angela…from her pearl earrings, Lacoste shirt, Lacoste belt, Lacoste Chinos, Swatch Watch, argyle socks and Sperry topsiders.  She realized this stuff, um, La-Cost La-Mucho!  Amen. She’d probably deny everything, as she’s grown into one of the greenest, most frugal friends I know.  Marie frequents resale shops and eats vegetables grown in a community garden and eschews the television and all that. Vicky has gone through many fashion styles as well.  She moved out to southern California before high school and went hardcore 80′s punk, with the Mohawk and whole shebang.  Now, she’s a rather stylish mom, with a normal hairdo…similar to that in this painting. At our 25th grade school reunion last Summer, Vicky came bearing an old copy of the Official Preppy Handbook, which she’d picked up second-hand, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  My Preppy faith had wavered a bit in recent years, during a personal crisis of upper-crusty-ness, but now I’m back.  Bill, if you’re out there, man, get ready.  I’m coming to Saks with a plastic bag full of quarters.

What Size Are You Now?

16x20 acrylic on canvas

This is me, surrounded by the paparazzi, at my 8th grade graduation.  We’re on the red carpet, in front of the church, after the glamorous ceremony and mass, taking pictures with all the other celebrities: Sister Mary; the teachers, priests and families.
    Since you’re probably dying to know: My dress is from Madigans, which was located in the Winston Plaza strip mall in Melrose Park, in the shadows of a race track and some honky-tonk joints.  This was where we bought all of our finery, special gowns, party gear, fresh off the rack.  Thankfully, Madigans has long since gone out of business.  Sometimes, when the gettin’ was good in the old Dino household, we’d venture downtown to Lord & Taylor at Water Tower Place, or hit the Marshall Field’s at the Oak Park mall, to find whatever was in vogue at the time.  This was an era when nylons, silver flats, and Gloria Vanderbilt’s ass-chokin’ jeans represented the pinnacle of high fashion.
    Auntie Evelyn is in this shot, peppering me with questions, as if she were working for TMZ.  She wants to know what dress size I am, ask about my weight.  This is how it begins with most women, family and friends torturing us about our physical shortcomings.  This is the sort of psychological water-boarding which penetrates our souls, stays with us forever.
    This past summer, we had our 25th class reunion.  A bunch of survivors from the old neighborhood, reunited for an unforgettable night of cocktails and truckloads of Italian food.  As I munched Calamari Fritti and Rigatoni del Pastore, Auntie Evelyn was still there in the back of mind, asking me what dress size I wore, how much I weighed.  Do we ever graduate and move on from our own insidious obsessions?

Raquel

 

This is my dear friend, Raquel, at the start of a sun-splashed Chicago day last June.  It turned into a marathon affair, beginning with 10am wine in the lobby of the swanky Palmer House hotel, snacks in Grant Park, photos in front of the Art Institute lions.  There were cab rides and more glasses of wine and Starbucks products.  There was Navy Pier and a high-speed, laughter-filled boat ride on Lake Michigan.  There was a nice dinner in an ethnic restaurant where many bottles of pinot and shots of Grey Goose were consumed.  There was a buzzy, warm, post-dinner stroll through the greatest downtown in America, then more cocktails with Rica, Vicky, Vlady, John and Jeff.  There was a late-night, drunken wrestling match between our loser husbands in the lounge of a Five Star hotel.  There was a menacing security guard, and some awkward apologies, and a near arrest.  Then more pinot grigio and shots of vodka.  And after Raquel and Eddie went home, there was another dinner at another Chicago landmark, and by this time we were well into the next day, eighteen hours after our first toast.  Vlady, the youngest of the bunch, suggested we go dancing.

Happy Birthday Raquel!  Here’s to more unforgettable days!  (We’ll leave the husbands at home)

Float

11x14 acrylic on canvas

If it wasn’t for the old, moldering photo albums and scrapbooks compiled by my dear mother, most memories of the first fifteen years of my life would be completely lost to the ether.  And perhaps that would be okay, you know?  There’s a lot of stuff I’d just as soon forget.  Like my perpetual shyness, or when I ran away from kindergarten my first day of school, or that I used to enjoy (barf) the J. Geils Band.

And then there are other things, little still photographs of anonymous moments, five-second mini-movies, sounds and smells and emotions which I can’t seem to forget, but can’t really remember, either.

This parade, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, is one of those amnesia clips tacked inside my grey matter.  Why am I on this Filipino-themed float?  Who are those other kids?  What’s the occasion?  Wazzup with the whole Filipino-nurse obsession?  What year is this?

1981, I think.

For the life of me, I can’t zone in on too many other details.

Except one.

As we sputtered past the main grandstand, I looked up and saw Jane Byrne, Chicago’s first (and so far, only) female Mayor.  She waved at me and smiled, and I waved back at her, and our Filipino-themed float kept sputtering past.

I’ve never forgotten that.