Leaving Waco: Our Home
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Some people only see the destination and miss the journey and some watch each step and have no idea where their footfalls are taking them. I stride forward somewhere in between with my attitude toward living. As a rule, I see the steps (particularly the next time after my children leave roller skates on the stairs late a night when I journey out in a half sleep), but my normal way of viewing the world is working on a vision for the future. Houston will be the latest new adventure in a life of adventures. Although I have known it from afar, journeying there to enjoy the four repertory performing arts companies: ballet, theater, symphony and opera, visiting the museums, art galleries and artists’ studios, and finding new eating places to celebrate with our daughter, her husband and our two grandchildren, I do not know it like the thrill of driving over the hill and seeing Lake Waco again for the first time or stopping in Shipley Do-nuts early in the morning and having my “usual” in front of me before I even open my mouth to order. Houston has many Shipley Do-nuts but not my personal Shipley Do-nuts. That will take time to create. I came to know Houston artists over the fourteen years that I directed the exhibitions at the Art Center. Many are still friends but I will be seeing them now as a fellow artist. I know that situations change relationships. Waco people know me by sight as I work out at the YMCA because of the years of belonging to an exclusive club of idea people, the Tribune Herald’s Board of Contributors. I plan to continue to send back articles. Some things are hard to lose. After writing for the newspaper for over eighteen years, I still get email reactions to what I think and write. People take you into their homes and share their lives with you. Another adventure started in 2000 with new retirement time for my own full time painting and journeying abroad on the many Fulbright grants to share with the world what I learned about museums, working with people, raising money and teaching art. For me, any new adventure has to have the continuity of teaching and searching out new images and ideas. It always has. I will continue to journey abroad and help communities see that art is more than a luxury for the elite. It is a stable for the spirit of all people, lifting them into a better future. It is with great happiness that I see others picking up the dream of an art complex downtown. When I return in 2020 for the celebration of Visions 2020, which was started after the disaster with the Branch Davidians, bringing the community together to dream the large dream for Central Texas, I hope to see that new cultural complex downtown and all the economic development that it will foster. My wife and I will journey back to Waco at least once a month to visit our son who still works at HEB. My monthly luncheon idea sessions with B. Rapoport and other friends are important as a continuity for opening my mind. Some will ask, “Why move? You have all that anyone could wish for in Waco: friends, a continuing dream, and chances to travel and exhibit your art work worldwide.” All this is true. Therefore what is missing? As an artist, even with some international recognition (recently being included in Who’s Who in the World), I need a market for what I do. The art work is piling up and as I grow older I want to get it out of the studio into the homes of fellow Americans. I have taken the years of 2000 to 2005 to build a body of works of art which have not been seen. The galleries are in Houston. The art scene for new ideas is in Houston. MD Anderson and St. Luke’s Hospital are in Houston (two world-known establishments for fighting cancer and heart disease, battles I initially won in the 1990s). Our grandchildren, Erin and Matthew, are in Houston. I have lived my life with one eye on the future. With strong feelings for Waco remaining, it is time for the new adventure. One of the exciting things about living is not knowing what is around the next corner. |
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