Sunday meant corduroy trousers for visits to old maid aunts and grandparents. Keeping clean, sitting still and quiet with no fighting on davenports while Mom and Dad caught up with what was happening with relatives. The great aunties were Mom and Dad's aunts. No great uncles, just aunties with hard rock candy stuck together in a bowl.
Auntie Eva was one of those we made regular visits to. She had parakeets and plants everywhere, in every window. Her photos of relatives, long gone, were framed and collecting dust on side boards with silver tea servers. Some in Civil War uniforms. Dad would get lost in memories of scouting trips, looking through photo albums Auntie Eva kept out on her dining room table. My sister, Patricia, would play something on the stand up piano to get one of Auntie Eva's parakeets to sing. Auntie Eva would confuse that she had made some of my trousers, she always had to check how they fit and if they needed to be adjusted. Once I had to take them off so she could fix them, something Mom did to me all the time... I would sit in the bathroom in my underwear wanting to go home. Mom alway said she was so proud of me for not complaining. It was Mom who made my trousers, not Auntie Eva. She had made Dad's for him when he was a kid. The bathroom was full of small makeup jars, which Auntie Eva had collected when she worked at the Aurora Coat Factory. Mom said Auntie Eva couldn't pass up buying makeup from the dimestore on her way home from work. Watercolors of flowers hung on the bathroom walls.
That might be where I got my need to fill my interiors with clutter. At home there were books everywhere and Mom, too, filled the windows with plants. Us kids were shown how to grow sweet potatoes in a glass of water. Clutter gives me an excuse to fill my paintings with splats of color, like an orange pillow on a black afghan, while surrounding a girl with open books. Dad never liked us leaving a book lying open. We were given holy cards to mark the page we were leaving off at. When someone my parents knew died they were given a card with a picture of some saint on it and a prayer on the back for the departed. I remember these things now like Auntie Eva's collection of makeup jars. It might be why I go overboard with my interior scenes. Overboard is how I feel about what I do with my art sometimes. I am painting to please myself though, so if I go a bit too far with clutter I at least am being true. I paint books open in paintings and hear Dad saying, “There is a holy card on my dresser. “
