An Artist Within

Wednesday Group

Emily Holcomb on the left, then SK, and Karen

We did several shows together

Yesterday afternoon Karen Schueler called me just to say hello. Karen was one of the three original members of Wednesday Group (of which I have posted earlier in the summer) and the winner of the Diana Grossman Memorial Award in the 19th National EGA Exhibit. I cannot say too much about the Diana Grossman Award and how prestigious that is.

I met Karen in 1990 when I taught in New Mexico for the first time. She was program chairman and therefore set up my two classes--a Hardanger and a blackwork. I saw her once or twice after that at EGA meetings in Albuquerque. In 1992 Mike, Barrett and I moved to England for Mike's work. We lived in a little market town called Newbury sixty miles west of London. By happy coincidence Karen and Fred and her two boys were living in Oxford while Fred was on sabbatical. Oxford is just twenty-five miles north of Newbury on the A34. At the urging of Barb Scott (thank you, Barb, for a lot of things, not least of which is this meeting), I drove up to Oxford one fine late winter day.

I had been to England several times before for various reasons, but had never driven there. Driving and direction finding and stuff like that were always left to my husband. I just sat back and enjoyed myself. We had moved to Newbury in late January and lived in a hotel while housing could be arranged. But I had a car that was furnished by the company Mike was working for. After a week of getting Barrett put in infants school (the local grade school called Saint Nicholas) and of acquainting myself with the town on foot, I decided it was time to start driving. Every day for a week, a rainy, gloomy week, I drove out the back exit of The Chequers Hotel (an old inn on the Great West Road to Bath and accommodations for the famous horse race track out south of town) and into the wilds of the English countryside. The lanes and byways off the main roads are quiet, especially on weekday mornings. I learned to stay to the left, to keep my heart stout on the seemingly one-lane roads that could hold me and a farm lorry passing in different directions. I never got lost and I explored the smaller villages of Inkpen, Blue Ball, Hungerford, and Kintbury.

But none of this prepared me to drive up to Oxford one fine morning--there was weak sunshine and slightly warming temps. The A34 is a highway that comes swooping down from the north, carrying major traffic to the seaport of Southhampton about thirty-five miles south of Newbury. I got lost in the maze of on-ramps and off-ramps just getting to the A34. When I finally got on headed the correct direction, I did fine until I got to Oxford. Newbury is a medieval town that was under special protection of Henry VIII. It is a market town that was founded in the mists of time. But it is "new" town and so was not in existence when Julius Caesar was tramping around. The tiny hamlet of Speen, now a neighborhood of Newbury, was a Roman town. Oxford is an old, old town. It was there before the Romans came with their fine roads. If a cow could wander through a patch of gorse and weed, then the path it wove was called a road.

SK on the left and Karen on the right

Team-teaching at Glorieta

I really got lost in Oxford. I couldn't find the right street for Karen's house. I went around and around, asked some people, and came to the correct cross road in my directions. Finally I parked the car and got out and started walking. After two or three blocks I walked up a little street that didn't have a name on it and I found a house with the right number. I knocked on the door and Fred answered it. I took one look at him and burst into tears. It was like an English farce. At any rate, I got there I met with Karen and we struck up a friendship that has taken us through a lot.

But I want to tell you about this phone call I had yesterday. Now remember, Karen studied art at Stanford where she did watercolors and other painting media. She has been in many art shows, won many prizes for her mixed media embroideries, including the New Mexico State Fair in the Fine Arts Division which is a juried and judged show. She has been in many EGA National Exhibits. Together we have shown in several galleries and venues around Albuquerque and have even had a show in Santa Fe. Karen is one of the best mixed media people that I know of in the country--and don't forget the Diana Grossman that she won this summer.

She moved to Delaware with Fred last year in August. She joined the local EGA chapter there--the Brandywine in Pennsylvania--and she started going to their stitch groups. She was at one of those groups recently working on a complex cloth piece when one of the ladies came over to look at her work. Karen showed her and the lady said, "You must be an artist." And Karen said, "Yes, I am an artist."

On the phone Karen told me that that was the first time she had ever said it like that. For the first time she told herself and the world that she was an artist. Finally, welcome to the big girls party.