November
Wind cleared the last leaf
There is no turning back now
Rise to face winter
Poetry Day: Haiku- November
Category: writing
A Song I Used To Know
A few years ago, when Betsy Ernst started talking about raising money so we could open our own Pottery Studio here at the Northport Arts Association I had one of those full body shivers. The kind that rattles your soul a bit and whispers in your ear, “Pay attention! This is gonna be good!”
The last time my hands were covered in slip and happily shaping things from clay was way back in the early 1970s out in Scottsdale, Arizona.
My good friend who had moved there from Morristown, New Jersey had gotten a brand new neighbor. When he introduced me to Sissy, she was unpacking her things after relocating from Asbury Park. Her former roommate back home was dating some musician named Springsteen. I wonder what happened to that guy. Sissy was a free bird, hippy-dippy chick like me and amongst her moving treasures were stained glass making tools and clay things.
She shared a lot of skills and we had a great time getting messy and making art. Life happened and things changed as they always do. Divorce. Moving North. Moving South. Remarriage. Kids. Work. Moving North again. Kids launching out into the world. Moving farther North. You know the drill. Somewhere along the road, things just filled in the space where clay used to live.
So here I am now, four days away from jumping into a clay class with the NAA teacher, Tina Greco and I am ridiculously excited!
When my kids asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year, I announced that I was going to take clay classes at the brand new NAA Clay Studio after the wedding season was over at Willowbrook. My son presented me with a clay tool set that has way too much stuff in it but I’m eventually going to use every single thing.
The point is that a lot of us left things that brought us joy somewhere back along the road and until the Universe drops a big sign in front of us, we sort of forget what we used to love.
Anticipating these classes is like remembering a song I loved. I can hum the tune, but I’ve forgotten the words. I’m thinking that when I get in there with Tina guiding me, the words will come back again and I’ll be singing some clay pieces to life with the same joy I had when I was 22.
It’s a great time to check out the classes at the Northport Arts Association! We’re growing more every day and the variety of classes is impressive! Renew your membership if you’ve let it lapse or get over here and join us!
Find your joy again and let’s see what’s been hiding in your artistic soul waiting to be asked to come out into the light.
Haiku: Wildflowers
Whomever wakes me so early whispering poetry to me, thank you.
Wildflowers
like wildflowers i
will always crowd the entrance
to your heart my love
NaPoWriMo 2022 #2 Emergence
out of hospitals
out of isolation
out of depression
out of rehab
out of all the places
where we have been frozen in our private winters
unmoving except for the mind
emerging slowly from our inertia
it will take a moment
standing on our unsteady legs
learning to walk in this new world
slow
like spring
and we will not be looking
like the healthy blush of summer
until that time arrives
until then
for awhile
we’ll resemble
dirty piles of snow on roadsides
bits of paper blown into the fences of our hair
just cold, wet, gray of April
when you see us outside again
but look at that
just there
beneath that piece of newspaper
a flower bud
fighting its way up
to feel the sun again
give her a little time
and she’ll emerge
as a brand new
primordial forest
NaPoWriMo 2022 #1 Red Rocker
The last thing out
of the old storage unit
was the red rocking chair
and with that goes the final
physical tie to
this place on a map
where people used to find me
on some soft wind
maybe you can hear
me singing to my children
as we rocked
drowsy head on my shoulder
breath evening out
eyes slowly closing
“So goodnight you moonlight ladies…”
A Visit To Gene Rantz’s Studio
There’s a quiet beauty in entering a creative person’s maker space.
A rough pencil sketch on a scrap of manilla drawing paper. Jars with carefully cleaned brushes that still hold just a whisper of Viridian oil paint near the ferrule. A box of pastel chalks; the pinks unused, while colors for shading nature rest as nubs and bits and powder. Tupperware boxes filled with used oil tubes that give away the color source of farm fields and rolling clouds out over the bay.
You can see which were the most beloved colors in the way the tubes had been rolled to get every last bit of Ultramarine Blue, Indigo, Prussian and Horizon. Just a few in the arsenal of blues that let him give the world what I now identify as a “Gene Rantz Sky”.
Last Saturday, Betsy Ernst and I went to Gene’s studio at the invitation of Bill Rantz, Gene’s son. He wanted us to pick some things for the Gene & Judy Rantz Youth Foundation Scholarship program at NAA. We gathered books, paper, brushes, paints and other things our young students can use.
We took our time looking around the studio while we chatted with Bill & Colleen Rantz and Lisa, from the estate auction house. Among the things left there, waiting … ready to get back to the making, there were books on art and books on philosophical meanderings. A small bird’s nest catching light by a window. A can of soup no doubt to remind him to stop and eat something. There were vertical stacks of sketches he’d done for practice at the Monday Night Figure Drawing Classes that Chris Woomer teaches.
There were easels and work tables; an enlarger for architectural sized copies and dozens of large and small tools for bringing to life whatever his imagination could conjure.
We saw watercolors, oils and pencil drawings in every stage of completion that sat looking back at us as if to say they were on the way, but not there yet.
My favorite things were the paint palettes. Covered in whatever dabs and smears and mixes Gene needed while he worked. Wood and hardboard and even a piece of glass held the primordial soup from which each creation emerged unique and beautiful.
And the glove. That one hit me in the heart. The cloth glove that Gene had used so many times to blend and smooth and wipe a wet canvas that the paint had stiffened it. I stood it up on the worktable so I could take a picture and that was the thing that had me step away and shed a few tears. So real and so tangible, this simple glove awaiting the hand that needed it.
And there were new supplies at the studio as well. Stacks of brand new canvases, watercolor paper, oil paint sets and lots of picture frames!
So many of us were friends of Gene and his luminescent wife, Judy, who moved in the world like a human bundle of wildflowers. Losing them both, one after the other, was a stunning reminder that life is short and we’d better get on to making our own contributions to the world sooner rather than later.
Now, it’s your turn. On May 15, 2022, Bill Rantz will be holding a sale and auction of Gene’s studio contents. For artists looking to add to their supplies, the items I’ve mentioned will be available for sale. And for those of us who want a memento of our friend there will be an auction. Artifacts of a life well-lived; small treasures and tools; sketches and art pieces, wooden art boxes and work lights amongst the offerings.
Part of the proceeds from the sale will be donated by the very generous Rantz family to the Gene & Judy Rantz Youth Art Foundation Scholarship Program at NAA. We are grateful and we want the Rantz family to know that we will continue to hold Gene in our collective hearts.
I’m pretty sure that if Gene were here he’d say, “Ok. people. That’s enough. Get back in your studios and make something.”
~~~
You can donate to the Gene & Judy Rantz Youth Art Scholarship Foundation and the Gene & Judy Rantz Memorial Bench Project here: https://www.northportartsassociation.org/gene-and-judy
And, please, take some time to visit Gene’s website and be with his art for a moment. https://generantz.com/
Are you a Plein Air Painter? Come on up to the top of the Leelanau Peninsula this July and join the Gene Rantz Plein Air Paint Out at the Northport Arts Association! https://www.northportartsassociation.org/call-for-artists
And, if you’re interested in the auction coming up this May 15, 2022, Check in at the NAA website for details. https://www.northportartsassociation.org/
Words & Photos by Mimi DiFrancesca Heberlein, V. P. NAA
Above Images from Gene’s studio by Mimi DiFrancesca
Poetry: Where The Stars Come From
Inspired by this photograph by Marc Nugent, Member/Photographer of the Northport Arts Association. We are studying the works in the Starry Night (Dark Sky) show currently hanging and writing poetry that emerged from our studies. Here is mine today. Fitting as we have just learned that fellow member/artist, Gene Rantz passed today, just a few weeks after his beloved wife Judy passed. They were a helluva love story….
Where The Stars Come From
I know where the stars come from
They’re the rising sparks
That floated up
From the bonfires of our love-
Each brush of fingers
Sparked and jumped
Every time we touched
I saved them all
And made a gift to the sky-
Selfish in the giving-
Sent to where I could still
see them burning
You’re gone now-
Decades on
Still young and perfect
dancing with the embers
And I am still here
Looking up
Not so young or perfect
But, I have a million stars-
Evidence of us
It’s OK.
I’ve just loved you from over here
Poetry: From Nothing
from nothing by mimi difrancesca ©2021
the unseeable
between
everything-
that
dark matter-
that blackness
beside the stars-
the infinitesimal space
between the smallest of particles-
that is where I began
moving out from nothing
taking physical form for
this brief dance
and then-
i will leave a shimmering trail
of light and spark
behind when i return
to where i began-
i am something
from nothing
Poetry Day: Rogue Wave
Rogue Wave
out of nowhere
he knocked me off my feet
and pulled me under
deep into his world
i never struggled-
happy to drown
in all that surrounded me
i traded air for water
and separated from the world i knew
floating in filtered light
Rocking with the current
until much later
When he was done
and took me up again
To lay me on the sand
where I stared at the sun
and let it burn me
until I hurt everywhere
inside and out
he was my rogue wave
there and gone
as if he’d never been at all
somewhere below
on the side of a shipwreck
i etched my name
in the soft wood
with a broken shell
proof that i was there too
NaPoWriMo2021 Poem #30
Well gentle readers, this is it. The last of the 30 Poems in 30 Days for National Poetry Writing Month in 2021. Some came easy. Others were extracted with forceps through an orifice that will not be named. Like getting the lactic acid moving in your stiff knees, if nothing else, rising to write for a month straight will get your creative wheels greased and moving again. It’s time for longer pieces now. Maybe some painting next. Whatever you do, follow the words of Joss Whedon- “Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.”
Word Ninja Girl 