Blog

I left the Boston Mills Art Show Monday, outside of Cleveland,and headed back to Saugatuck.  It is a six-hour drive, which leaves me plenty of time to think.

This is not a blog about the art show, I will leave that to Patti Stern or Leo Charette.  This was more about me, and the rest of us in this biz.

I have been driving this stretch of I-80 thru Ohio and Indiana for more than 24 summers (15 times coming back from Boston Mills).

It is reassuring to see the corn growing in familiar fields.  I have passed that same Ohio barn with its automotive signs on it for years.  seen the same campground outside of the big city slowly grow.  Stopped art Smith's restaurant in Wauseon,Ohio  for a sturdy farmers breakfeast.

I have seen a lot of familiar artists at that show over the years, also noted a number who have passed and are no longer with us.  So there, I have set the scene.

Between listening to Brit singers David Gray, and Adele, wail away to their heart's content (on Sirius/XM) it got me thinking for the first time about my mortality.  That is a very sobering subject.

How many more times is God going to let me run down this road. Or maybe we could phrase it, how many more shows will I be able to do before: cancer gets me, a stroke gets me, a bad back gets me, or hell, I just get to be an old fart who can no longer put up the booth and haul 40-pound boxes.

I turn 66 in October, been doing this for 36 years.  How much longer am I good for?Six years (that makes me 72), maybe 10 more years (that makes me 76) or could  make it to the big Enchilada and do it for 14 or more (making me a lucky, spry 80-something).

Many of my peers are dropping out now, in their mid-sixties.  You see very few doing it in their mid-seventies.  Hell, 80-year-olds should be in the Sunshine Artist hall of Fame.

Ellen was just telling me at Boston Mills, "You know Nels, you can't be climbing up on a six-foot ladder to put your roof on much longer, what if you fall?"

Boy I can see the headlines for that one.

                        TEQUILA-TIPPLING ARTIST TOPPLES AT (Insert a show, any show)

When she said that, she made me think I was almost ancient.  Trouble is, I feel just fine.  In fact I feel like I got a purring motor and can keep on going for a long time.

Sure.  I may get wiser, and by age 70 (yikes, only four years from now) and buy a booth with fabric walls.  Then I won't have to go up on a ladder beside my van to put my booth panels on the roof racks.  Maybe get one of those booths where you put the roof on at ground level and then raise it.  Maybe I would go to all canvas for my photos and get rid of all that troublesome glass that weighs so.  Hell, maybe I should just chuck photography and become a jeweler.  Then I could go to shows in a minivan, a light booth, and fully loaded revolver.

Heck I hear Luciano is thinking of getting out of the biz and moving back to Italy, will Galbo follow to France?  A fantastic black and white photographer, Rick Preston, who I have known for 30-plus years, told me at the Mills this was his last year in the biz.

A lot of good people have come and gone over the decades.  People who gave me great pride to say I knew them and really loved their work.  Some of my contemporaries who used to kill them in the 80's and 90's are having a tough time getting juried into good shows.

My clan of artists is slowly shrinking each year.  I try to reach out and meet some of the talented newcomers.  But you don't establish close ties overnight.  it takes show upon show to sometimes build up a relationship.

As long as I have my health, I will do shows.  Heck, I wouldn't know what to do with all my time if I had every weekend off.  I want to still drive down familiar byways, plus see new ones.  i like getting in the van for an art show and looking back in my rear mirror.  There's the cutest blonde, with blue eyes, following me again.  What will it be like if Ellen quits before me, which is likely.

Well, I thought about all this on the ride home.  It was the first time I ever thought about my having limitations in my biz.  I have always gone out with this unlimited passion for doing shows.  And then assuming there was no end of them.  I always thought Marchetti, a very talented painter, got out the right way.  When we used to do the nine-day Piedmont Art Fest in Atlanta, it was always a friendly contest to see who would be first in line with their van at teardown.  Usually it was Rene.  He passed away at the art show in his chair.  Just went out quietly and peacefully. Or Andre, the jeweler, died peacefully in his sleep, in his van at the Miami Beach Art Show, years ago.  They just did what they loved til their time came.

Somebody up there knows my number.  I keep hoping they misplace it and can't find it for a long time.

I got too many blogs about shows that I want to write.  I got dreams and aspirations about getting in Cherry Creek some day.  I got hopes about getting into Winter Park somne day.  Heck they have only juried me out for 26 years straight, after I was in three years in a row back in the 80's.

As Otis Redding sang,"I got dreams..."

I tell you one thing, i am still going up that ladder for a few more years.

Aloha, Nels.

And here now, if I knew how to do it, we would include Otis on YouTube, or better still, Jackson Browne singing the "Load Out" song.