The FAR® Blog

For a place that is reserved for quiet and a day of rest, libraries on a Sunday are some chattiest places on earth. As a former employee of the public library, one of my favorite conversationalists was an artist who went by the name of Matt C. He was” a big time glassblower in the ‘70’s”, as he put it, and knew all sorts of  amazing stories and people. He would feed them to me, bit by bit, enchanting me with tales of artists, week-end trips to New York and the artists that he had met, stories about his young daughter, and of course his own life and philosophies. He had since given up glass blowing but found he better enjoyed his days when he awoke each morning to work on a series of oil paintings about his ancestors. Staring at the canvasses on the wall, he would paint bits and pieces until it was as though they had finished themselves. He said it just felt better to walk through the world each day after he worked on these pictures of his life. After he finished them, they were shown at one of the local galleries in town. I found myself standing there with tears in my eyes as I saw the stories he had so carefully recounted to me coming through in soft, muted, earthy colors, generations living and breathing on the canvas. 

So this one goes out to the Sunday painters and library lurkers, the very salt of the earth.