I retrieved information about Laura Young’s first exhibit at Campbell Steele from a metal filing cabinet in the basement. Pulling a yellowed newspaper page from the folder, I marveled that The Gazette had devoted more than 25 square inches, in the Sunday, May 16, 1999 “Arts Section” to a color photo of the artist’s painting, “Candy-Man”. Not only does The Gazette no longer even have an “Arts” section- “Accent” and “Hoopla” have displaced the straightforward nomenclature of the newspaper of more than a decade ago, but the appearance of photos of works exhibited at private galleries almost never happens.

But this post isn’t about that. This post is about Laura. I met Laura soon after she and her husband, Tom Aprile, moved to the Midwest. Maybe it was 1995. Both were on faculty at the University of Iowa. Laura still is. “Candy-Man” was a painting from a part of her career in which hard edges, vivid color and broad, gestural strokes and drips of pigment vied for attention on large canvases. The painting was purely abstract.

It would be speculation on my part to describe why such a confirmed abstract artist would then spend fifteen years laboring in the realm of representational painting. Merely speculating, however, has never deterred me from pressing on to wonder why people do what they do. At some point, I recall Laura remarking that she wanted to be confident of her drawing skills. I understood this to mean that she wanted to be assured that she could draw and or paint credible images from observation. And, through the years I saw still life and landscape paintings that proved that indeed she could do that.

Dark Sea XL by Laura Young

Then, shortly after visiting a show of Tom’s work in the galleries at Kirkwood Community College, I learned of his sudden death. I thought to send a note to Laura, but I felt oddly shy of intruding on her grief when an entire arts community seemed to be rallying around her. So I waited, and last spring, in the university’s faculty exhibit, I came upon the first of her “Dark Seas” drawings. These early charcoals, and a trove of pastel drawings that followed, miraculously distill the artist’s experience. Broodingly abstract horizons yield to delicately rendered light in each drawing, and with alchemical grace the artist has created beauty in the face of great loss.

Dark Sea XXIII by Laura Young

It’s an honor to present the work of Laura Young in our show that opens today, Thursday, October 20th. Please join us.

A postscript borrowed from Wendell Berry:

“…The dark again has prayed the light to come down into it, to animate
and move it in its heaviness.
So what was still and dark wakes up,
Becomes intelligent, moves…
Walks, swims, flies, cries, calls, speaks or sings.
We are all praising, praying to the light we are…”

On the sauna-like evenings this past week, Craig and I dug out our bathing suits and went off to the Marion Municipal pool. Initially, we both admitted some predictable trepidation – worries over exposing all that imperfect flesh and our merely adequate swimming skills, but all that dissipated with the first restorative plunge into the pool. Since then, while swimming, I’ve found myself also watching and envying people diving, cannon-balling, and just jumping from the diving boards at the deep end of the pool.

Small, eager me

I recall being six or seven years old when my father taught me to dive, not from a dock or the side of a pool, but from a board. While there was good reason for a small, timid girl to fear instruction from the sometimes reckless, thrill-seeking Bud Steele, never did that fear seem more justified in my young life than when I stood at end the spring-y, narrow plank of a diving board that extended eight feet out and six feet above the murky depths of Tabor Lake. But, having been coached to “tuck my chin, point my toes, and arch my back”, I dove. There were the requisite number of painful belly flops, before I mastered the skill of “diving head first”, but there was also, finally, an unalloyed thrill when I dove perfectly, with a fish’s streamlined silhouette, into the lake.

At work in my studio

I write this in the week that I will turn sixty years old. This has been a year in which I concluded my teaching at Coe- not to retire, but rather to get to work. Indeed, I’ve worked all my life to be able to walk into my studio and work all day. It remains that there is, by plan, the serious business of running the gallery. I share that responsibility with a team of wonderful people with the goal of keeping me AT WORK IN THE STUDIO. Since January, I have created several figurative, botanical and collaged artist-book projects that I anticipate exhibiting here, in West Des Moines and Omaha. There’s more planned. And, there have been a few belly flops, but that trepidation about diving right in… is GONE.

Closing in on 60

In an inimitable gesture of celebration to mark my birthday, Craig has created the event: “Zero to Sixty at the Speed of Steele”. If you’re around this Sunday between 4 and 7, and you’re reading this right now, please join us! Jules cake (carrot and champagne), bounteous cheese plates, fresh bread, great wines, excellent beers, and refreshing sodas and juices will abound. Don’t bring anything but good spirits and wishes.

Oh. This past week, I walked to the end of the Marion Municipal pool’s diving board and executed what I would describe as a perfect dive. Excelsior!

I confess that I burst into tears when I drove past a billboard in downtown Cedar Rapids heralding the first Marion Arts Festival. Hard won, the product of a Herculean effort on the part of an intrepid core of believers, the festival had become a reality. Since 1993, during this week in May, I have awakened on Monday morning and listened with no small measure of trepidation to the week’s weather forecast. In 1993, that forecast predicted rain. Nonetheless, the morning of the first annual Marion Arts Festival dawned fair, and though attendees were dancing in rain by the end of the day, they realized a small town event of unprecedented quality had occurred.

That’s the way it is. And, the 19th Marion Arts Festival goes on, rain or shine, this Saturday, May 21st from 9 – 5. Of course, we always hope for “shine”, but if the weather gods do not favor us, we’ll pack an umbrella and walk between the raindrops as artists from across the country converge on Marion’ s Uptown City Square Park.

Our indomitable director, Deb Bailey, with an unwavering eye for excellence, has shepherded the festival to its present premier status- best in the country for its size-for the past six years. “It’s about the art” has been her mantra throughout every phase of planning. All of Uptown Marion is proudly groomed to welcome visitors, and a host of volunteers and I urge you to join us this Saturday- rain or shine!

It’s important to remember that complaining about weather – however hot, cold, icy, rainy or snowy – is pointless. In direct defiance of repetitious weather advisories forecasting ungodly cold, I have installed new work by Marcia Wegman and John Beckelman; displayed new pots by Sarah German; surrounded myself with blooming, or about-to-bloom, amaryllis plants; and, I have spent the past five days drawing their spectacular flowers.

The contrast between John’s richly textured, contemplative abstractions and Marcia’s naturalistic drawings of the southwestern United States heightens an appreciation of their distinct qualities and their coloristic harmony. The delivery of all of the work left in her studio heralds the move of Sarah German from Iowa to Austin, Texas. Pots and paintings all look fabulous in the front gallery, while I’ m pretty certain that I look a bit silly amidst all the nodding blooms of my studio amaryllis plants. Leonard Cohen’s evocative lyric that describes “the cave at the tip of the lily” always comes to mind as I use charcoal to explore the tonal beauty of these flowers’ heavy blossoms.

Amaryllis drawing, in progress

That’s it. There are so many reasons to visit Marion’s Uptown, and Campbell Steele is just one of them. Bundle up, and come on over!

I lied. That’ s not quite it. Craig has likened my early morning studio garb to that of a Taliban fighter. All that I lack is a gun – this, despite recent efforts by Marion City Council to assure my 2nd amendment rights. My fashion choices will change as the cold moderates.

Working on amaryllis drawings in my studio

I had one of these moments this morning. Craig had commented to me that Dori Vogel, the owner of The Dreaming Bear right around the corner from the gallery, has a fun web-site and blog. So, as I sipped my morning coffee, I treated myself to a peek.

Dori’s blog positively bursts with excitement about what’s new with her work, enlargements of studio space and on and on with loads of fun photos of funky stuff.

I felt shamed. Why wasn’t I busily assembling photos of Deb Martin’s long-awaited stoneware delayed by a succession of unfortunate events, or Louise Rauh’s new beautifully formed aluminum floral pendants?

May Apple in progress in my studio

A day in my life includes work on some new drawings for one of my favorite long-time customers, helping Craig lift the “History of Orthodontics” into the van for eventual installation, finding the perfect place for Ben Jensen’s wood-fired ceramics amongst Marck Nystrom’s substantial plates and bowls, taking down Kim Nalley’s posters in the wake of her marvelous concerts this past weekend. Tana Acton is in this morning at nine- more about that soon.

In the meantime, grab a cup of coffee and check out Dori’s blog at The Dreaming Bear.

Violet

“These will be so great for a Mother’s Day post!” Maggie crowed after I sent her my first drawings of some spring ephemerals that we hope to use for a collaborative project. In short, I’ve done the drawings and the plan is that Maggie (and Charlotte) will produce letterpress cards from them.

I was genuinely excited to get to these drawings after finishing a commission that had dominated my time. (I’m not complaining.) First, the “spring ephemerals”–those most delicate and stalwart of flowers that are the first to show their faces in the woods—were just about to be past their brief, blooming peak. Second, few things delight me more than to find these harbingers of the change from Iowa’s punishing winters to glorious spring.

Dutchman’s Britches

I did many drawings. The Dutchmen’s Britches were the most problematic, and caused me to conclude that it was best to render of each plant only as much as you might furtively pinch off in a woods that is not your own.

Oh, and Mother’s Day is BEFORE the Marion Arts Festival. Our jewelry, pottery and glass make particularly wonderful gifts that no other mother but yours can receive!

I have done a lot of crazy things in a lifetime lived as a “working artist”. Pair that status with a lifetime spent with Craig (easily the most outrageously creative person I have ever known), who seems to have an inexhaustible supply of great ideas, often, (but certainly not always!) executed by all the talented, hard working people with whom he surrounds himself, and you come up with how I spent my winter. And, how I spent my winter accounts for the deafening silence from my blog.

Hard at work, with Giant – my constant companion – on my lap

I’ll try to make this quick! Since January, my activity has been singularly focused on completing a commission for the orthodontic office of Dr. William Olin, the man responsible for the beautifully straight teeth of two of Craig’s and my three children. (Praise be to God that Maggie came WITH straight teeth!)

The clamped up frame, drying; the frame, assembled; polishing the frame up with steel wool

As it happens, Craig had conceived the idea that, in addition to the art that Dr. Olin had installed in his remodeled office, he needed a mirror in which his patients might check their teeth while coming and going from their regular orthodontic appointments- and not just any mirror. Craig made an elegantly crafted walnut frame for a large, beveled-glass mirror. Surrounding the mirror he created twenty small, framed openings. In these openings are now twenty paintings that whimsically portray how tension exerted in a variety of ingenious ways on a variety of subjects’ teeth, in a Rube Goldbergian fashion, will straighten said teeth.

Hard at work on one of the 20 panels

I never thought I would ever do anything like this, and now, well, I’ve done it! This weekend we’ll be installing the paintings in the frame, and then, away it goes! So, if you’re at all curious about the enforced silence from my blog, perhaps you’d like to stop by and see a mirror worthy (I hope!) of the unexcelled talents of Dr. William Olin.

So! I’ve paired up a couple of etchings of my own in a holiday package. I love these miniature nudes that capture the grace of a feminine gesture in a few lines. Stop in the gallery to have a look!