I can hold hopefulness. But only if I can acknowledge the grief.

 
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Missing you Alden Andrews. Missing MaineWorks. Yup.

Grief.
I can hold hopefulness. But only if I can acknowledge the grief.

Memory from April 3rd 2017:

“Life is always throwing curveballs and the recovery community is certainly not immune to the destabilizing challenges we all face. Grave medical diagnoses of our children. Having to serve additional time in jail upon suspicions. Family illnesses. Dire circumstances. I watch over and over as they face situations- that would take my breath away and paralyze many I know- with a grace that I am in awe of.”

Amy Stacey Curtis, I'll be celebrating your birthday all day long...

 
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It was my microbiologist daughter, Anne Madden, who taught me to wash my hands for the time it takes to sing the Happy Birthday song twice through.
During this COVID19 social distancing I find myself noting whose birthday it is on any given day and washing my hands repeatedly throughout the day singing Happy Birthday to them.
It's a funny little practice that has risen from functionality
(it makes me slow down the process and wash more thoroughly and more often) to spiritual ritual. I enjoy it. It brings that person(s) closer to my attention. Closer to my heart. And that helps reduce all this distance and isolation.

Amy Stacey Curtis, I'll be celebrating your birthday all day long singing 'Happy Birthday Dear Amy, Happy birthday to you!' in the spirit of your recent singalongs....ALL DAY...after I go for a walk. Before I make coffee. After I clean the rug...again. Before making lunch. After. Well...you get the idea.

Happy Birthday to our brilliant superhero of the heart and healing, you bedazzled beauty made of sweet stuff AND that highly polished intellect.Wow.

This is another photo from our recent collaboration.
Please see Amy's full blog post at www.theartistplan.com

This is a favorite image from the Bates Mill event for me. Amy Stacey Curtis meets that lens unapologetically.

 
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This is a favorite image from the Bates Mill event for me. Amy Stacey Curtis meets that lens unapologetically. Without filter, and I don't mean an app. Her intensity and her determination show. No attempt to 'make pretty' and I love that. I also love that her cape is being tended to by volunteers / assistants / friends / devotees that helped make this happen...and for whom Amy is expressing gratitude.

Please see Amy's full blog post at www.theartistplan.com

http://www.theartistplan.com/colossal-cape-collaboration/

An artist who doesn't create things so much as experiences for her viewers...

 
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“Since completing an 18-year art project in Maine’s mills, Amy Stacey Curtis has been tackling a new ambitious project, battling a severe neurological illness and disability possibly caused by untreated Lyme Disease. When another neurologist tried to determine if she’s schizophrenic, he asked if she thinks she’s a super hero, three times. She didn’t tell him about the cape she wears to give her strength. He wouldn’t get it. It flows behind her, long and purple, with a gold and red butterfly, sequins and rhinestones…” - Amy Stacey Curtis

This is the bio Amy offered as her introduction before she presented at a PechaKucha Portland Event last year. And as the emcee I was flustered and honored, with my heart pounding, to introduce her. Here is an artist I have exceedingly high respect for. An artist who doesn't create things so much as experiences for her viewers. She creates for us opportunities for discovery, insight, perspective....sometimes exalted, insightful, occasionally painful and often humorous. Anyone here ever try and erase those un-erasable letter outlines in her MEMORY show? As a participant I was offered an embodied experience that some things, like memories, never erase completely away no matter how hard I rub with one of those gum erasers she provided us?
She offers with her blocks and balls and outlines and graduated cylinders a powerful platform for startling metaphor. Her work offers the extraordinary gift of our experience as a living, breathing aspect to her work.
Always moved by her articulate, keen, mathematical precision she has also showed a level of heart that is equal to her talent as she has wrestled with illness. Many talents may be crushed by less dire medical/health circumstances than what Amy has faced. Her journey of the last few years, for those at all familiar, has been a journey of deep penetrating terror and bewildering debilitation. And for someone to emerge from that cocoon spun of suicidal prompts into the light of day into her beloved mill, expressing gratitude for all that have supported her on her way ( and there have been many) ARE her wings.
Showing up at the mill I was moved not only by Amy's devotion to that space but by the level of attention,bordering on devotion as well, of her friends and volunteers. They dearly love Amy as an artist. As a person. And it is mutual.
Amy Stacey Curtis, my superhero, who offers the 100' yardage of her cape as a garment to provide each one of us with the same comfort now.

http://www.theartistplan.com/colossal-cape-collaboration

The Extraordinary Amy Stacey Curtis standing in her beloved Bates Mill...

 
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The Extraordinary Amy Stacey Curtis standing in her beloved Bates Mill with a 100 foot super hero cape trailing behind her woven of the love and support she has received while battling and recovering from recent illness.
Honored to bear witness to her beauty.

http://www.theartistplan.com/colossal-cape-collaboration/

Emily's Oysters. Fresh from the sea. To your doorstep. At a social distance.

 
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This is Emily Selinger. She sterns for the lobster boat the Haley G. But she's also a kickass oyster farmer. Emily will deliver fresh oysters to your door step. Honest. Fresh from the sea. To your doorstep. At a social distance.
www.emilysoysters.com or follow her beautiful Instagram account at #emilysoysters.
Fresh oysters a few hours from the sea. Maybe we can all help support local folks at this crazy time and stay healthy too. You might not ever have fresher product. Thanks Emily Selinger!

Deeply missing the Pioneers of Recovery.

 
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Deeply missing the Pioneers of Recovery. These are tough times and we may not have realized all those previous tough times were actually some of the good times. You are all in my heart though that is not what will pay your rent, or child support, or fines and fees, or your food bill.

Memory from March 27 2018: I have never been more convinced than now that we each see what we see and that that view is utterly unique. How we see ourselves matters. How we perceive our situation; How we chose to meet challenges; How we frame our experiences...all the work of recovery. A powerful lesson for us all.

He doesn't like the camera much. But that day, a year or so ago, he gave permission.

 
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Dear Anonymous,

He doesn't like the camera much. But that day, a year or so ago, he gave permission. Gave himself to the image. The moment held a gravitas for me.
I had just been asked to read a letter to him from his mom. The carefully scripted handwritten letter was worn and wilted from the repeated crumpling from fist to pocket and back again.
It was full of love.
It was full of I love you son.
And I fell in love too.
All of us wanting to go home.

Oh, the heartbreaking complexity of our human hearts.