Tonight Emily and I went to the Smithsonian exhibit at the Lightcatcher Museum: “1934: A New Deal for Artists.” Artists were commissioned during the depression to show America. Some uppity eyes have seen these same paintings because FDR hung thirty-two of these in the White House.
One of the most striking paintings was of a young African-American girl staring into the viewer’s eye as she sat in front of a red checked tablecloth, her dress casually pulled up showing the garters on her stockings. Her dress like one I’ve seen in pictures of my mother, and Shirley Temple, at that age in the 1930s, light green with tucks draped from the shoulder and a white collar trimmed in lace. I didn’t realize girls so young wore garters.
There were stylistic pictures of industry, especially of factories and changing cities. New buildings tall and gleaming towered about older buildings, showing the painter’s pride in the building progress that was happening during the times. The paintings show people in similar circumstances of today, men trudging off to work in jobs they aren’t accustomed to doing. Long lines at food banks.
Often the paintings represent pride in what is being built. But when I pass all the empty buildings on Cornwall, Sunset Square, it doesn’t look like we need new buildings. I believe we need to rethink, re-imagine our cities. At least during the depression the cities were walkable and cars hadn’t taken over. We hadn’t polluted our oceans. It’s hard for me to believe that I live in a time where libraries and schools, the park service, don’t have the funding they need. Although I believe my daughter is getting a good education, probably better than what she would have gotten in the 1930s, I worry about her future. I find it alarming that voters voted to cut back government revenue, that the mad cries of the tea party want to cut back government services. Who will pay for the safety net?
In one picture at the exhibit, the older red brick buildings were being torn down. Another painting was of a gleaming white underpass painted over a photograph, another of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction. Rich red brown hills looming in front of green fields, rustic mail boxes representing the new rural mail service. A claustrophobic red brown painting of a man with a pneumatic drills under the ground in a gold mine, his chest sweaty from the hot, dirty work. A panther in a lush tropical forest, his black fur against a bright red flower in the deep green forest. Two monkeys in the jungle – representing the Brooklyn Zoo in New York. A group of people recording at a radio station, including an exceptionally pretty woman with manacled hair. Many of the artists had similar bold, colorful styles, rolling shapes. A group of colorful ice skaters in snowy Central Park. In some paintings the dark, somber colors suggested the distress of the times, so similar to our own.
We dashed out of the exhibit after an hour to see “Five” the Bellingham Community Dance Theater production for its fifth year. The dancers from the production I’d been in, “In the Context of Life,” were dancing. The dancing was sensational. The dances ranged from light hearted to intense to funny to fascinating. The women’s bodies moving gracefully, angularly; they moved on the floor, over each other, flying through the air into each other’s arms, over, under around each other weaving in and out like poetry. Either I haven’t seen any modern dance before that was to my taste or my taste has changed to enjoy watching modern dance. Emily enjoyed it as well.
At intermission a woman who had seen “In the Context of Life” told me my piece was her favorite, that I was beautiful and she loved it ! Imagine that. I thought my piece a bit drab compared to the others. I exclaimed my astonishment to Emily when we got back to our seat and she leaned over and kissed me and told me that I w as beautiful. It was a magical moment that stilled the world for me.
It is two different experiences watching a dance and being in one. How I felt about being in the dance varied from night to night. The experience subtly changed me into being more who I want to be. Pam told me all the hard throwing herself on the floor has taken a toll on her body so she was only in one fanciful piece with Angela. They wore black wigs and black and white dresses, twins from different mothers. Vanessa, who was so saucy and playful in the community dance, was intense and athletic. If I hadn’t spent so much time watching her in the other dances, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Ella seemed the most like I’d seen her in the pieces of “In the Context of Life.” The evening uplifted me.
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