What is French country?

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When I was old enough to drive, I wandered out in the Country Squire wagon, into the country some days, others to our local university town for shoes, or to Mapes furniture store. I realize this last destination is odd for a 16-year-old on her own, in frayed blue jeans, gladiator sandals, and Carole King hair. The store was half way to the university town, a stand alone building not downtown anywhere, on the four-lane thoroughfare running east and west through towns across our state's mid-section. It was a large, sprawling place, laid out in comfortably sized rooms with furniture arranged in home-like groupings. I found rest and inspiration wandering through the cool rooms, empty of people (all but one or two sales clerks who smiled and then ignored me). I breathed in color schemes and fine quality craftsmanship, the shine of mahogany, the luxury of damask, moiré and tapestry and the comfort of polished chintz. All the furniture was traditional, appealing to our conservative small rural community.

This was the era, in the early 1970s, when Colonial anything was making a big comeback, leading up to America's bicentennial in 1976. This callback to our own revolution seems to have also conjured another country's. French country provincial furniture was also all the rage, with its maple framed sofas and headboards with graceful curves and peaks. Mapes furniture store offered a couple of groupings of this style. I don't know how, but intuitively I disliked French country furniture, with a passion, and I all but ignored it. I felt it was fake, in a design sense. I knew it did not look anything like authentic country furniture in a French chateau or cottage. Where was the inspiration coming from, and how did it get here? I especially cringed at the artificial flecks of "wear" and wormholes in the wood. I knew that I would never purchase such a piece of furniture if my life depended on it. I was a fake furniture snob. I would rather own a threadbare velvet sofa from Goodwill than something created to look old.

OK, so now, as a true snob, I will talk about Paris. In 1997 my sister Nancy and I ventured out at the crack of whatever dawn a tourist with jet lag can conjure, and hopped on the Metro north to the edge of the Paris periphery, to the Paris flea market. I bought this 200-year-old French clock for Don at Marché aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, the place some believe to be the original "flea market" -- so named for the beginnings as "rag-and-bone" market stalls whose furniture was infested with bugs. It has come a long way since then, with shops that are priced way out of my league. This clock was priced at about its age: $200. Not bad, I thought.

One of the things that drew me to the clock was its obvious age and experience with critters. While the front and sides of the clock are embedded with brass marquetry, the back side has worm holes. Et voila! The early bird catches the worm.

I spent a couple of days in the French countryside back in 1975. I slept under the stars in the churchyard of the Vézelay Abbey (Basilique Ste-Madeleine) with a handful of fellow students and one rebellious professor. We awoke inside that stone wall with the one-armed cathedral at our backs (like a Sunday School child raising her arm, frozen in time), and a soft valley freckled with poppies spreading out like a calico comforter from the feet of our sleeping bags. This was after dining the night before in a simple dining room in a hostel, with plain wooden tables lined up, showing great wear, windows flung open to the sleepy sun shutting down the valley, we students, lined up in our wooden chairs under bare light bulbs overhead, one large bowl of pottery in front of us, filled first with soup, then salad, then meat and potatoes, carafes of wine centered on the tables like bouquets. Cool and warm, comforting and luxurious.

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End of August

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end of August

under juice, over fire
up the melon and down the peach

heat lightning, bug elated
passing the torch to sunflower’s wick

corn rows, wide-mouthed mile
top of the stalk frizz hair style

Ferris wheel, window peeled
ice cream drip upon the lip

bareskin toes, laundry snap
goldenrod and dragonfly zip

rose of dawn, the horse's laugh
life is far too short--by half!

garden gate, husband's whistle

ducks squat by the Canada thistle

naked arms, cotton skirt
wind blows (it's such a flirt)

drooling cat, summer fur
lazy nap, beating purr

tomato cheeks, basil nose
wilting thyme, Get the hose!

juice the veggies, sun the grill
summer’s here, still, still, still

~ Ruth

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Tattoos, like manna

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Young woman: May I help you?

Me: Yes, I have a strange request.

Young woman: What's your strange request?

Me: I have a blog, and I'd like to talk with someone for a few minutes about tattoos, and take pictures.

Young woman: Sure! . . . Perry! This lady has a blog . . . .

I had recently met a delightful woman, who happens to have tattoo "sleeves." Not having spent time with anyone who had so much skin covered with art, hers has been rumbling around in my psyche. Suddenly in the middle of one insomnious night (that's about perimenopause, not tattoos), I knew I was curious to know more about tattoos, especially for people who see all their skin like a canvas. So on my lunch hour yesterday, I walked across the street from my university building and dropped in on Splash of Color. This is where I accompanied Lesley one year when she was 15 or 16 to get her eyebrow pierced. The next year her dad accompanied her to a different tattoo shop to get a tattoo on her back, which she wanted to wear with her magenta organza prom dress and bleached punk-spiked hair. If you're under 18, you must be accompanied by a parent or guardian for a tattoo or body piercing. Friends thought we were nuts. But we were pretty sure that conceding on these requests was a small price for maintaining openness and understanding with our teenage daughter. This is Lesley's pretty tattoo, at the right.

There were a few minutes waiting in the lobby while all the clients were being assisted that I had second thoughts and wanted to flee. I had never done anything like this (had I?), just dropping in and introducing myself to strangers for an interview. But as soon as I met Perry and Kris (the owner), they put me at ease with their gracious welcome.

 Perry introduced me to Sue, a visiting tattoo artist from Chicago.

Sue was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri.

"When did you get your first tattoo?" I asked.

"I was 13."

Concealing my surprise, "Did one of your parents accompany you?"

"Oh. My mom looks like me. Everyone in my neighborhood looked like me. I would have been odd if I hadn't gotten tattoos."

Sue has been creating tattoo art since she was young and realized she could do better than what had been done on her. She takes her portable craft industry around the world. She has drawn tattoos in Barcelona, Milan, Puerto Rico, Manhattan, Chicago and now East Lansing.

Sue told me about one U.S. town where she worked, I forget where (I'm a blogger, not a reporter, dammit), where there was a state penitentiary. Most of the people who lived in town were on parole, and they came into the tattoo salon regularly for tattoos.

"These were big, burly, intensely macho types, and they weren't interested in having a woman tattoo artist paint their big art. There haven't been many female tattoo artists traditionally, and so it's hard for them to trust us. It took me years to build up a 'portfolio' that would show people that I was good at what I do. I watched while the male artists got the big jobs, and I was stuck with the $50 roses or hearts on teenage girls' ankles or wrists. Tattoo creation involves a lot of trust. I've also had to help young women understand that this is an expression of their own taste. They'll ask for a rose. I'll ask them, 'What color?' They'll ask, 'What color is it on the art I picked out?' I say, 'It's blue, but this is yours, and you can decide.'"

I said to Sue, "You're a tattoo adviser!" I told her I'm an academic adviser.

The writing on Sue's neck says, Die Trying. And here are her hands, with HOLD FAST.

After a few minutes Kris, the owner of Splash of Color joined us.

Kris told me about how she trains people in the tattoo industry on health and safety. More and more states now have certification and inspections, though the inspections are lax. Health inspectors don't know what to look for. These are the same inspectors who check up on restaurants and nail salons. There isn't a lot of specific training out there for inspecting a tattoo parlor. But Kris is helping to raise that standard and keeps her tattoo shop impeccably clean.

Kris and Sue explained that many of their clients have past lives they want to forget. Some have served time in prison and are moving on in a new job where gang tattoos or memories of prison are unwelcome. So some tattoo art that Sue paints is to cover up previous tattoos. In fact, she has gang tattoos of her own that she has had covered.

Shop owner Kris showed me her art. She is not an artist. Her wrist says Hang Tough.

I told Sue and Kris about the lady I had recently met, with sleeves, and how she sees her tattoos partly as reminders of life messages she wants to give herself, and not just to others.

"Oh yes," said Kris. "A lot of people get words written on their bodies to be like a mantra. They want to remind themselves to hang in there when life gets hard. There those encouraging words are, every morning when you wake up."

Sue and Kris spent almost the entire lunch hour with me. Kris, who has a 13-year-old daughter who hangs out with her at the shop, said she has tried working in places other than tattoo salons, and she always comes back, because of the open, caring atmosphere. She's owned Splash of Color now for about 13 years (if I remember right, no notes).

"I love having my daughter grow up in this environment where people are accepted for who they are. I've never seen more accepting people than these."

I thanked them for their time and willingness to answer my questions, pose for my camera and be posted on my blog. On the way out, I stopped in one of the rooms where Perry was painting an American eagle on Russ, a Harley Davidson club member.

Perry showed me his arm, which has undergone four treatments of tattoo removal.

"Why are you having it removed?" Dumb question, and I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

"So I can get a new one."

Do you recognize that woman on Perry's left leg? Oh. I forgot to ask Perry what his new tattoo was going to be. Drat.

Even though I don't anticipate ever having art permanently painted on my body, it's fun to think about what I would get if I did. What symbol of my life? What words for a mantra to see fresh every morning, like manna, except that they don't rot overnight? I don't know, but I like knowing that these women keep on keeping on with a little help. Hang tough, Hold fast, or Die trying.

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The Fish

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ENG 229 Intro to Poetry Writing. It's the early 1990s. Ruth is a non-traditional college student in her late thirties in a class with 20-year-olds who are educating her on current music before the professor arrives. 10,000 Maniacs and these new friends are helping her see that these are the days. On the first day of class they had filled out a survey about their personal mythologies, a term Prof. Wakoski took from Carl Jung and focused on in her poetry and teaching. Ruth revealed she was a Baptist preacher's kid wrestling with the hook, line and sinker of the faith of her parents. A few weeks into class, Prof. Wakoski reads The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop. Before this class Ruth has never heard or read much poetry outside of the cultural icons such as Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Thomas' villanelle Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. Immediately upon hearing The Fish, Ruth is hooked. Wakoski finishes the poem and asks:

Did Bishop intend her poem to be about Christ? In her bottomless, observant description, she gave us material to interpret it that way if we want -- the fish, a symbol of Christ, and the five wounds (Jesus' were two in his hands/wrists, two in the feet, and then the lance in his side). Maybe there's more. But it doesn't matter to me, because her language and imagery are so achingly beautiful (ugly fish, yet beautiful too), that the poem, just about a fish, is plenty. My favorite word in this poem: isinglass.

The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

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I named our elegant barn cat Bishop after Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop the barn cat understands the silent graces, and teaches them to me. (But I think she would not have let the fish go. And that is another kind of grace.)

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Family (H)art

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Come in, come in, just follow the crowds (hehe). I hope you don’t mind if I indulge myself. I have created a gallery of visual art by members of my family. It’s my gift to me mostly, an acknowledgement of the love of growing up with Art as a recurring character in our family tree. It’s long, but you can be grateful that every single member of my family is not represented. In total we number 70 living souls, if I count correctly (math is not my strongest subject), but I am only including the visual artists, several of whom have passed on. I'm sharing 15 artists in all. I am defining visual art narrowly, as what you can hang on a wall (except for one exception, one of Lesley’s). Please click on the images if you’d like to see the details enlarged. I’ll start from oldest to youngest, except me. I’ll be last, but it doesn’t mean I’m saving the best for it. I’m just trying to be polite. Of course just look at pictures if you don't want to read all the information about the artists. I wouldn't blame you one bit, I know you're busy. This is documentation for my family and me as much as anything.

DISCLAIMER: I took photographs of many of these images, or the artists did, so there might be glare, or distortions. Blur your eyes when necessary.

Welcome, won’t you come in? Would you like an audio guide? They’re only $5. Or you can leave your photo ID. (I don’t really have an audio guide, I was just kidding.)

Corn, by Grandma Elizabeth

1 Grandma Elizabeth  b. 1870 d. 1957. My dad’s mother was 47 when Dad was born (and his dad, also a minister, was 70 when Dad was born and fought in the Civil War!), and I do not know if I met her. She died in Charlottesville, Virginia less than a year after I arrived. When my older siblings knew her, she was deaf and used an ear horn to hear. I know little else. Were we ever surprised when Dad was dying gently on a hospice bed in his dining room in 1995, and someone found this corn painting of Grandma’s in the attic. We had never seen nor heard of it, or that she was an artist. Lucky me, it’s hanging on the wall in our bedroom. (We don't have a formal dining room, where it would be more appropriate.) Sorry about the glare and distortion, I tried to photoshop it out and just couldn't get all of it.

2 Grandma Olive  b. 1891 d. 1960. I’ve posted about Grandma Olive, my mom’s mother, many times at this blog. I have no memory of her, she died when I was 3 or 4. After graduating from the Art Institute in Chicago, Olive was a professional artist/designer/illustrator in the 1920s and 30s. She designed clothes for Vogue and wallpaper for Thibaut. Her pen and ink drawings illustrated World Book encyclopedias and newspaper ads. You know that curious little sepia girl studying life from my sidebar? It’s one of hers, from a page in World Book, below. In this gallery I’ve also included a cabinet she painted that now lives in our family room. Mom said her mother used to go tromping on the streets of NYC looking for dilapidated bargains and would bring them home and doll them up. Below is also her cover illustration for the Bayonne Times (she resided in Bayonne, New Jersey) when the NY Holland Tunnel opened – the world’s first vehicular tunnel.

Illustration in World Book Encyclopedia, Grandma Olive

The "bastard" cabinet (so-called by an antiques dealer
who said it mixed many styles)
that Grandma Olive rescued and painted

Cover and detail in the Bayonne Times, on the event

of the opening of the Holland Tunnel, by Grandma Olive

3 Uncle Jimmie  b. 1906 d. 1994. My dad’s 10-year-older brother. The subject of a poem I posted. Uncle Jimmie had his own printing company, and he used to send us calendars at Christmas with prints from his carved woodblocks. Woodblock prints require a long, arduous and painstaking process, with a different block carved for each color, leaving the rest of the design uncarved and left for another block, then having to align everything perfectly.

Woodblock prints, by Uncle Jimmie 

4 Mom  b. 1916 d. 1997. Though my mom was a musical artist (pianist, choir director and composer), not so much a visual one, I’m including sheet music from an operetta she wrote based on Alice in Wonderland, which I only just learned about from my niece Shari, herself a splendid pianist, who inherited her grandma's handwritten sheet music. It has Mom's maiden name on it, but I have no idea when she wrote it. I think the flourishes of musical note flags are lyrically and visually beautiful. I sat by my mom on the piano bench as a toddler while she composed, watching her play a phrase, then transcribe the notes onto staff paper, painstakingly, one phrase at a time. Eventually I started pounding out melodies after hearing them repeated so often, surprising everyone. Too bad I didn't turn into a prodigy.

My mom's composition of the operetta, Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, never published

5 Dad  b. 1917 d. 1995. The image of him at right is the day he pronounced Don and me Husband & Wife. In his early days as a minister, my father supplemented his income with signs he painted. He was a fine pen and ink artist as well and created his own bookplate, below. Engravers duplicated the image on his and Mom's gravestone. Hart was his name, but it was also an animal (another word for deer) in a beautiful Psalm verse that represented his heart for God: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, oh God.  ~ Psalm 42:1.

Dad's pen and ink bookplate.

Mom and Dad's grave stone, with Dad's art work
(that's the headstone of my childhood Dr. Garlock behind)

6 Boots, aka Ginnie  My sister.

I grew up watching Bootsie draw. She drew this girl very early, in high school I think. Now she uses Soul Girl as her avatar at In Soul, her blog, after I suggested it, since it so perfectly represents her spirit. She is also an inspired photographer, and I am including a photo of windmills, one of her favorite symbols. She lives near Amsterdam with her wife Astrid, where they are legally married. (When oh when will we catch up in the U.S.?) I like that both these images are about wind. Her blog is In Soul and her photoblog is Hart & Soul, where she unfolds her beautiful eye and insights into life.

Soul Girl, by Ginnie

Windmills, by Ginnie

7 Bennett  My brother, who passed away in 1996.

I’ve blogged about Bennett a lot. I think there is no one who has shaped my world view more than he did, eight years my senior. He loved to shoot rustic scenes in Nova Scotia and New England. He shot this Greek Orthodox priest in Greece in the 1970s. (Do you think they were related?) Bennett died before the advent of digital photography, and I think he would have loved it, though he also had his own dark room and loved to spend hours deep into the night developing prints. I have no way of knowing if this print I photographed was one he was happy with, since he discarded so many out of perfectionism. My photo of it also does not do it justice, and one of these days we’ll need to scan it or its negative (I think one of my nephews Paul or Todd, see below, might have Ben’s negatives). This photo, which he made a very large print of, won grand prize at a photography show, and was breathtaking. I have also included the poster he used to advertise his work. The grasshopper was his “avatar.” (Again, sorry for the glare on that one.)

Greek Orthodox priest, by Bennett

Bennett's photography show poster

8 John My brother.

John and Bennett are in the photo at right at the Acropolis in 1970 -- John is on the left; click to see their handsome faces better. John is my closest sibling in age, four years my senior. We spent many hours at the kitchen table sketching, and I was always amazed at his abilities. Strange story of synchronicity: As I was preparing this post last weekend, Don found the following charcoal John did of our dad in our barn in my dad’s things, quite by accident, accompanied by the touching poem. In a quick phone call to John he told me he believes he created them together sometime in his teens. I'll type out the poem here, because it touches me and expresses something of my own sense of things growing up.

You were tall and I was small—

I gazed wide-eyed at your legs and feet.

You’d hear the ring, then answer the call

and head off down the street.

(I tried, when you walked,

to follow along, but your steps were hard to reach).

And it seemed to me you never talked,

except to pun or preach.

Your silent side was good for me;

it helped me grow inside.

I watched and listened, and I could see

the heart you couldn’t hide.

I remember well one hurtful day

how you loved me in your quiet way.

You stood at my door with tears in your eyes;

your heart reached for mine with pain-laden sighs.

When I was liddle I watched you diddle—always on your knee;

You were tall and I was small, but I knew it was just for me,

‘cause after awhile—

you’d smile.

~ John

charcoal of Dad, poem to Dad, by John

9 Todd  My nephew – my sister Nancy’s son.

Todd is a web and graphic designer, among many other things. The first image, titled “Esther,” is a pen and ink drawing he created in high school. Todd has also started a photography business doing photo shoots with models (his web site is here). The second image of Margaret was shot during a photo session at our farm.

Esther, by Todd

Margaret, by Todd, shot at our farm

10 Paul  My nephew -- my brother Jim’s son.

Paul's four kids are often his photo subjects. Paul provides design for software professionally and is also quite successful selling his photos at iStock on the side. (His best seller? A hospital emergency sign.) I fell in love with these two portraits of his kids Lydia, Eli, Aden and Clara, when he posted them at his flickr photostream, taken at our family cottage about a month ago. In fact, these images were what got me inspired to do this family gallery. They remind me of a cut-out silhouette we had done at Knott’s Berry Farm when Lesley was little (right).

Clara and Aden, by Paul

Lydia, Eli, Clara and Aden, by Paul, at our cottage

11 Mark My nephew -- Ginnie/Bootsie’s son.

Mark shot this spontaneous family portrait of us on the frozen lake over New Year’s one year. That’s our family cottage on the hill in the upper left of the photo. Mark is a computer programmer and also studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops. I’m trying to remember why we were smiling so geekily in this photo, I think we had just been skating around and slipping on the sliding ice like spazzes. We’ve paused for Mark and are holding on to each other for dear life. Oh! I just noticed . . . that scarf hugging Lesley's head is one of the only things I've ever knitted.

Family Portrait, by Mark

12 Rachel My niece – my brother John’s daughter.

Rachel lives in Utah with her husband Swede and is dying to have her own studio to create art again. She teaches English and math to special needs students in middle school. I just love this acrylic Paris painting, her own version of Starry Night. Don't Swede and Rachel look like they were just tango-ing?

Paris, by Rachel

13 Lesley   My daughter.

Lesley went to art school in Detroit (College for Creative Studies), earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design, and a minor in Fibers. I have some gorgeous wearable art she has made. When she has time and energy after working very hard as a commercial interior designer in NYC, she knits, makes beautiful jewelry and creates re-styled clothes from vintage. I have included her charcoal self-portrait from art school, an interesting technique of covering the paper/canvas with charcoal then rubbing out the drawing with an eraser. Below that is a photo of a retail space she spent about 18 months designing with her boss at Spin Design where she still works, including the design of custom furnishings. I am especially fond of the gold mesh chandelier "sheaths." It is the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet’s newly opened flagship store on 57th Street in NYC. I think the least expensive watch they sell is about $10,000, so please do browse -- you might bump into Arnold Schwarzenegger or Meryl Streep, who are AP customers. I like the juxtaposition of Lesley’s bohemian art school self and the posh watch store.

Self, by Lesley

Audemars Piguet flagship store, designed by Spin Design (by Lesley and her boss)

14 Peter   My son. 

Like my mom, Peter is a remarkable musician (guitarist, arranger). But he is also an artist and amateur photographer. This painting is one he did in Advanced Placement Studio Art in high school, in the manner of Peter Max. The photograph below that is one he shot in Hilo, Hawaii. Peter continually inspires me with his photographs and also excels at videography. (The photo of Peter and me is from a few years ago.)

Purty Gerty, by Peter

Hilo puddle, by Peter

15 Me My self.

I can draw some, but I don’t apply discipline or practice, so just sketching something once or twice a year means I haven’t developed my skills. The sketches span decades: a young man in a magazine while I studied abroad, Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain a couple of years back, an imagined girl 20 years ago, and a drawing for a Christmas card around that same time. If this is not your first visit to this blog, you know I love to take photos. The first photograph below is probably a favorite of mine, shot early one morning in October 2006, when I went out on Horseshoe Lake where our family cottage is, in Lesley’s kayak, with my little point and shoot Olympus. I watched the moon set and the sun rise in that two hour float. If you look very closely, you can see geese on the water at the left. The next photo is the same lake, same morning, the sun rising in fog, just about 30 minutes later. It may look silent, but dozens of geese were honking (like vuvuzelas). It is a strange feeling to hear something so loud and close, that is invisible.

Sketches, by me

two photos of Horseshoe Lake

top: moon setting -- can you see the geese in the mist at the left near the horizon?

bottom: 30 minutes later, sunrise

by me

Well, that's it! Thank you very much for visiting my family gallery today. I know it was long. Bravo for getting down to here. You can put your audio guide thingie over there by the door before you leave. Now the sun is up, and I hope you found some visual pleasure in the comfort of your chair.

There is more artistic talent in my family, including Nelson who designs kitchens, Susan who plays piano like a goddess, Nancy who decorates houses that should be in magazines, Jim who has skilled craftsman hands, and their many children, and their children, who are fragrant with artistic talent as well.

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