Grandmother Karma: beyond nostalgia

Through the looking glass of tea, stories, and dark days . . .

Another memoir in the works . . .

Tim is reflecting on 1967, a year of many scenarios.

I do my usual mix of this and that, including painting in the studio . . .

A few thoughts about my grandmothers

are part of this December mix.

My father’s grandparents John and Ella Sommers Oelkers were German immigrants who settled in North Tonawanda, New York and operated a general store on Webster Street. My grandmother, Evelyn, grew up along with her five siblings in a large home on Goundry Street during the Victorian era of the first decade of the twentieth century.

A library opened in 1904 down the street from the family home. Established by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, this library was just one of more than two thousand libraries he made possible across the United States between 1883 and 1929.

I imagine Evelyn wandering about the neoclassical structure and looking up at the colorful leaded glass skylight. I imagine her selecting books—possibly The Call of the Wild, Jack London’s popular new book or Lewis Carrol’s well-established classics: Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871).

The building was transformed into a nonprofit arts center in 1975–the original skylight remains intact today.

I look forward to exhibiting several paintings there next April 2024 along with Mary Begley and Eileen Pleasure in our show to be called Three Degrees of Abstraction.

Three small works of mine are now displayed at the Carnegie and soon to be taken away during their annual December fundraiser . . .

A few other small works were donated in previous years . . .

Also, now on view at The Comma Gallery in East Aurora … two of my paintings are included in a theme show, Wonders, Wild and New.

This one called Watching . . .

This one called Working . . .

I mostly paint on canvas, paper or wood, but I submitted these whimsical works made a few years ago on discarded pizza boxes from local shops—Bocce, La Nova, Just Pizza–and our local shop with an especially great name . . .

Not the first time I took to painting on an unconventional surface, this one is so Buffalo and simply fun–also aligned with the notion of Wonders, Wild and New, a theme taken from a Lewis Carrol passage . . .

I recently heard part of Carrol’s Jabberwocky poem spoken by a hardened criminal on the second season of the TV series, Fargo.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
   The frumious Bandersnatch!”

I was fortunate to have two lovely grandmothers, Evelyn, the one who lived down the street from the Carnegie and Doris, who gave me a beautiful Lewis Carrol book set for my tenth birthday . . .

I never quite identified with all the jabberwocky silliness and I never read them cover to cover, but the illustrations are magical. My edition features the work of the original illustrator.

The prospect of adventure and any kind of tea party remain appealing–Madhatter or otherwise. I treasured the books enough to move them about the country with me to twenty different homes and somehow the looking glass aesthetic rubbed off. Last summer I posted Mirrors and a Hat, a mention of the many reflective objects in my environment.

As I have pondered the Alice books lately, it occurs to me that the book I recently published has a fairytale quality that parallels Alice, a version only possible a hundred years later.

ORDER HERE

One more parallel . . .

The first time I ever got up in a Karaoke bar to sing was with a friend in Idaho Springs, Colorado for my 50th birthday. We sang the Jefferson Airplane version of White Rabbit (along with Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots are Made for Walkin‘).

White Rabbit is on my music flash drive I call “car music.” I prefer listening to talk radio in the car, but when it gets too boring, the music comes on–old favorites that I often play on repeat over and over again–as I played this one just the other day.

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