The Newsletter of the Hewlett Woodmere Alumni Association
CONNECTIONS
Published Spring 2001

Artist Statement


             My art and life are about color and texture. Inside the beauty of the colors there is an intensity of emotion. The texture brings the real beauty, as the layers of our lives continue to build, as the years and wisdom add richness to our souls.            Somehow deep inside beauty there is always some tragedy. I take it as a gift. In my life from tragedy I have been destroyed again and again. Deep within I have found the strength, courage and sheer determination to put another foot forward, one step at a time, until I could run again, fly again, sore again. Always through the love and guidance of sharing people could I manage to reach out and expand beyond my own horizons, which in turn enabled me to be there for others.

              Performance, production, painting, organizing and teaching fills my life with unexpected triumphs. I left Hewlett and  didn't go to the moon, I went much farther in body and mind. For the last thirty years I have lived for the sake of art.

        I traveled to remote places such as London, England Chiang Mai  (Thailand) Marrakech (Morocco) and Tállya (Hungary) to work with artists of other disciplines in collaborative productions called "Moment of Creation" doing performance painting live  before audiences.

I was emailed this past winter by a member of my alumni  to write an article telling of  what I did after leaving High school so I sat down one day and wrote  it.    I like writing.
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              I slept on the jungle floor while painting with The Faculty of Fine Arts Chiang Mai University Thailand,  in a project for UNICEF and NGO's (Non Governmental Organizations). UNICEF supplied the paint we supplied the art for auction. The people of Thailand need to know more about AIDS. The auction of the paintings financed a mime trope to perform in the Hill tribe villages about Aids.
       As the only American and many times the only women I have seen the hatred in the eyes of the world towards "The Ugly American" I have also seen the hope. Me "The great white hope"? The promise of another  life, void of political oppression and prejudice.
      I was taken to a mountain from Chiang Mai traveling for a full day to meet a Thai Poet, Rung Wong Song a former professor in  Berkley California at UCLA. A professor before the Vietnam war. We talked all night about my America, his America and his orphaned wife from Laos. Rong speaks out in  lists " Alan Ginsberg,
Bob Dylan, John Lennon,
Peace demonstrations,
bombing, pain, death ".  I understood ," The Good the Bad and The Ugly....". Rong said  most of South East Asia had joined with the Vietcong not because they were communists, no  but because they were against the American oppressors of third world countries.
      Rong turned to me and blasted   "Who  Are you to tell us what to think".  His hero's, disillusion and the thirty years of hate. So we healed each others pain that long enriching evening in the open air off in the  mountains near  Chiang Mai.

Soothed by the tender company of Thai artists, poets and musicians.
     It's been  easy to reach other lands from Leiden, Holland where I have lived  for the past 6 years. I live with my husband Fred Rohde, a Dutch man, a photo journalist. Life has been fortuitous in that  Fred is interested in my projects and adventures and many times we travel together while he documents the activities. Italy, France, England, Austria,  Czech, (former) East and West Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Belgium, Columbia, Mexico, Hawaii, Jamaica, Haiti, Israel, Jordan, Morocco.

     This year we  again invited  to Hungary by the Hungarian Institute for Culture to work  again with  artists from the Eastern European countries. I will work again with composer Judit Bálványos in Budapest,  in a live performance, music, art and dance called "Moment of Creation".

     Again I  will travel to Italy soon to work with  designer- painter  Emmanuele Gori and his sister Anna- Maria, artist and owner of Bau-Bau anti-gallery in Amsterdam, where I exhibit  paintings.
             Each adventure is different even as the road was traveled before, everything is always new. I  have slept on floors in abandoned houses, in cars, on sofa's in artists garrets, in  castles,  penthouses, townhouses. Shared time with rich and poor alike, it didn't matter. That is all in the company I keep.

Creativity influences Creativity

        I worked with GreenPeace, War Child, donated paintings  for political fund raisers, manned the phone banks, organized  demonstrations, built award winning political floats for parades. I was even the model for the Four Seasons Fountain in World Wide  Plaza (50th street and Eighth Avenue). There I stand immortalized,  winter, spring, summer and fall,  27 feet high. Immortalized again and  again by poets, writers and  newspapers. Interviewed on  TV, Radio and Video.
     I meet with composers, dancers, painters, writers, photographers, musicians, Ambassadors, physicists, rocket scientists, teachers  world shakers. I hunger  to know the amazing things happening in our contrasting world. These intense simulations move something inside me, that motivates this desperate desire to create.   
         
Family is very important to me, I am close with most members of my immediate family. We are all doing well, with ten brothers and sisters, 9 nieces and nephews (so far) you would think it would be hard to keep track, but its not.  I am fortunate again to have an interesting thriving beautiful family. I love them.
       
      Although I am dyslectic, I wrote a book last year. Dyslexia did not matter, again there was  a desperate need to create. For me the world is filled with endless possibilities all because I keep my eyes wide open and my ears to the ground. I show up and follow up and always remember nothing is perfect, so I do my best and it works.