but she's not sending you a Valentine.
Back in the fall, I taught a class related to the artist Clyfford Still. Clyfford Still was an abstract expressionist, one of the first and most famous during his time. Yet today, his name isn't as well known as artists like Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothko. This is, at least in part, because Clyfford Still did not like to sell his paintings or even show them in museums. He believed that to understand an artist's work, you needed to see ALL of it, in the same place. He believed this was true for all artists, not just himself. He rarely sold his work, so when he died, it was all collected at his home (most of it in a barn). He left his paintings, all of them, to the American city that would agree to build a museum for just his work. After about 11 years, Denver won, and today you can visit the Clyfford Still Museum, not very many blocks from our house.
I learned all this because I taught a creative writing class based on Still's work. The connection this has to Valentine's Day is that Amelia shares Clyfford Still's artistic vision for her work. She wants to keep it all together.
For weeks, we've been making Valentines. We have probably made 40 or 50 different kinds of Valentines. But Amelia has refused to send any of them away. They are "too beautiful" and she wants to keep them. When she was younger, I could have sneakily mailed some, but not now. She has a running inventory of them. She files them in various places and even sleeps with some of them.
So, you will not find a Valentine from Amelia in your mailbox today. Here are some photos to make up for it. We love you.
Back in the fall, I taught a class related to the artist Clyfford Still. Clyfford Still was an abstract expressionist, one of the first and most famous during his time. Yet today, his name isn't as well known as artists like Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothko. This is, at least in part, because Clyfford Still did not like to sell his paintings or even show them in museums. He believed that to understand an artist's work, you needed to see ALL of it, in the same place. He believed this was true for all artists, not just himself. He rarely sold his work, so when he died, it was all collected at his home (most of it in a barn). He left his paintings, all of them, to the American city that would agree to build a museum for just his work. After about 11 years, Denver won, and today you can visit the Clyfford Still Museum, not very many blocks from our house.
I learned all this because I taught a creative writing class based on Still's work. The connection this has to Valentine's Day is that Amelia shares Clyfford Still's artistic vision for her work. She wants to keep it all together.
For weeks, we've been making Valentines. We have probably made 40 or 50 different kinds of Valentines. But Amelia has refused to send any of them away. They are "too beautiful" and she wants to keep them. When she was younger, I could have sneakily mailed some, but not now. She has a running inventory of them. She files them in various places and even sleeps with some of them.
So, you will not find a Valentine from Amelia in your mailbox today. Here are some photos to make up for it. We love you.
