If you’re like me, then you remember playing on the swings.
Pumping your legs and trying to go so high that you could touch the sky. You remember, don’t you? Yeah, you do 🙂
Remember how adults would say that you were too big for the swings, and that you were gonna break it? And then they’d tell you to get up, so the little kids could swing. And you’d look around and there weren’t any little kids in sight. Yeah, you remember. Me too 🙂
On hot summer afternoons, we’d take turns standing up on the seat and swing high, our knees slightly bent, as we arched our body back, as if we were flying! Us catching a breeze.
We had some of our best conversations, our most innovative ideas and arguably our best thoughts while hanging out at the swings.
Even now, all these decades later, I still love swings. You too?
From amateur status to professional, I have had difficulty redefining myself with a name that others have spent decades to become.
“She Named Her Daughter Hope” (courtesy photo)
“She Named Her Daughter Hope” was the first painting I ever sold. It was one of my first paintings to be exhibited. It was also my first showing at Piano Craft Gallery in Boston and their first sale abroad to Scotland.
From my perspective, I’m still the skinny little girl from Dacia Street, who became one of the first female linesman in the City of Boston. I’m always “Techny-Gal” a telecommunications technician, and a Fedex truck driver.
Each step of my journey has been a cause for celebration, commemorated with the proverbial feather in the cap. And in between those achievements, I also became a mother and a wife.
By the time I was 40 years old, the idea of making any new achievements was long behind me, I had so to speak reached my peak. And although I would never live vicariously through my kids, I lived happily for them. They were the center of my world.
For me, becoming a “Stay-At-Home-Mom” was a no-brainer, but it was a decision that effectively put an end to my career, as technology moved up to the clouds without me.
And then the unthinkable happened, the babies that I had so diligently helped to raise, grew up! Which was the whole point of being a parent, until it wasn’t.
In 2017, my kids moved out and left their childhoods behind. The magical memories reverted back to reality, like Cinderella’s carriage, the little treasure box with the painted heart on top, went back to being just some painted popsicle sticks that the girls had glued together.
In our new reality, my husband and I repositioned our chairs. Now we faced away from the stuff they left behind- the lucky rabbit’s foot, the tennis rackets, and a baby doll, who like us, was no longer played with.
“The Empty Nesters”
And I was just coming into my independent new life, when a devastating illness upturned my world. But somehow that burden opened up a new vista and I discovered that I had a hidden talent, that is I could paint. And as quiet as it’s kept, I might’ve never known it existed inside me, had I not become sick.
“She Pretends. Making Positive Out of Negative Spaces”
Since 2020, my work has been invited to sixteen art exhibitions, it’s been featured on a TV show, included in four art catalogs and twice appeared on billboards. And I’m very proud that one painting, temporarily installed in Boston’s historic John Eliot Square has been included in the permanent public art archive, listed by longitude and latitude https://bit.ly/3Cq7Ix4
Somehow I’ve managed to live an ordinary life quite extraordinarily. I call myself artist ❤️
Back in October 2021, I took a virtual art course @nyccritclub 👏💕 (my art presentation.)
This class forever changed my life. It was informative, captivating, and supportive. It helped me understand the nuances of the art world and introduced me to some very talented artists with successful practices.
Invited gallerists shared colorful stories, that were both uplifting and realistic. I learnt so much and when it was over, I began to call myself #Artist
I’m so grateful. Thank you 🙏 ❤️ @hilaryldoyle @catherinehaggarty @brigittemulholland & et al
My greatest take aways from the course:
“Network. Take art classes. Engage with other artists. Show up at art openings & be part of the art community.”
Yes!!!
If you’re interested, open enrollment for @nyccritclub ‘s Fall Classes begins in two days💯
art #artclasses #artistssupportartists #throwbackthursday #ilikeyourworkpodcast #artcommunity #dopeart
Subways have always inspired me. Tethered in one place, I look at the passengers and try to imagine their lives, juxtaposed to my own. We strangers who are intricately connected while traveling underground. Oftentimes my mind wanders, lulled by the clickety-clack of the metal wheels racing along the metal tracks. My body sways unintentionally, until I hear my station being called out. And I make haste to get to the sweaty doors, that like any great opportunity won’t stay open indefinitely.
“She’s Arriving. Right On Time”
A Kodak moment captured without the use of a camera or a Polaroid.
So another exhibition is closing & I’m so honored to have been invited, “Who We Are” at the Loading Dock Gallery in Lowell, MA. On Wednesday a new Landscape exhibition will be opening. It looks awesome! 🙏
As for me, I’ve been moving slowly, but steadily in the art world. And although it hasn’t always appeared apparent, my progress has been steady. I can see it in my earlier pieces, compared next to my current efforts and I’ve gotten better.
Olive Sustenance (2017) “24” x 18”
I always pivot. Endlessly, how could I not? Like most people my confidence wavers, so I change the approach to my work in an effort to prop my self-esteem up.
Questioning everything, because life is a classroom, and because the only stupid question is the one we haven’t asked.
If we’re lucky, there will always be these openings and closings of exhibitions. Society needs art.
It’s a balancing act of emotions, trying not to cry that it’s over, and smiling proudly that this thing happened to me, to actually get to write “Once upon a time I showed my work in Lowell”. What an honor!
In July, three of my works invited to exhibitions completed their showings : Norfolk, Virginia, Newton and Lowell, MA.
This month, two more close: St. Louis, MO and Cambridge, MA.
Crossing the Zakim Bridge in Boston
Still it’s a melancholy time, an ebb & flow. The giving & receiving of quiet moments, spent painting alone. This going… This coming. My art journey continues, ride with me.
Art can be essential to good health, as well as maintaining good health, or a quality of life worth living. I know. Because, I live it each and every day.
Soon, a lot more people are going to understand me, my art and my story. In a pivotal moment, I’ve decided to share more, to tell my story because I hope to inspire a stranger🙏💕
So as I pivot, I need to say that I’ve met some amazing people along the way. And I’ve learnt so much, about art and the art world. The administrative parts of an art practice, the PR part that’s so brilliant, especially when your art is on television and the strokes of genius that people share along the journey.
I’ve also discovered an abundance of unsavory types, opportunists and shysters, people willing to use deceptive methods to talk to me about my art. With effort, I’ve been able to duck and stay above the fray.
All of it has helped me to become who I am today. And I’m forever grateful and stronger.
I’ve been painting for six years and as I look through the images of 200 paintings, it’s clear to see how my art has grown, and those who know me, also know that I’ve grown into the depths of being an artist.
Today, I begin a new solitary journey and I just want to express my gratitude to all those who’ve helped me along the way. You know who you are, from Zoom meetings to late night phone calls to the virtual hugs during this never-ending pandemic…
Some people have been posting some pretty sad & divisive things here on LinkedIn And while I’m aware of free speech, I maintain the need for respect & decorum. With that being said…
I won’t be doing business with a bunch of you. I won’t work with or for you. I won’t be a patron at one of your stores or restaurants & I won’t refer you to my family & friends. In fact, I will check your posts to confirm why you no longer exist to me.
This is particularly true to those folks on Linked in with uteruses (working or not).
If you were one of the women openly celebrating the dismantling of Roe vs Wade, I’m disappointed in you. I understand your opinion is personal, I understand that you personally would never have the procedure, I’m not interested in that. Because what you eat doesn’t make me run to the toilet. What concerns me, is that you would superimpose your opinion on all women. Treating us as if we are less equal, I assure you we are not.
Why you would agree with some old men seated on a bench and allow them dominion over another woman’s body— your mother’s, your sister’s, your daughter’s or your aunt’s— is beyond the pale.
Most of you already know from having menses, that there are systemic inequalities in society & the work place that need to be fixed. So what about fixing those, so we can really have a public celebration?
I climbed telephone poles for a living. When I became pregnant my boss looked me dead in the eye and said, either I would climb telephone poles or I would lose my job. Because as he put it, men don’t have that problem. And when I refused to climb, he agreed to let me have an office job at half my pay. I called the Massachusetts Labor Board and they advised me that he was within his rights. It always stuck with me.
In closing, if you’re one of the people celebrating the dismantling of Roe vs Wade, please don’t bother replying to this post. I have zero interest in your commentary.
What we post to the internet is forever and I want future women to know my story, that is
I disagree with Scotus’s decision. That two of the old men have questionable histories, one has a wife with questionable ties to the failed insurrection of January 6th. These people should not hold lifetime appointments and wield such power over a woman’s body.
Because when something is working you don’t tamper with it. It was always understood, that if you don’t want to have a procedure done in America, you don’t have to. But it should be medically & safely available. Period. Pun intended.
To all the other women, who for 50 years understood that #RoevsWade was working, regardless of your personal opinion, thank you.
Recently, an artist that I highly respect, ventured out to see my work and possibly meet me at an opening exhibition at D’Art Center’s Surface: Texture& Patterns in Norfolk, VA. The only thing was, I wasn’t there.
There’s a lot of reasons why an artist can’t attend an opening reception, sometimes it’s simply an issue with distance and nowadays there’s the pandemic. But I would’ve loved to have met her 🙂
I’m grateful that technology has allowed so many artists to show their work via the internet and online exhibitions. And sometimes I’ve been fortunate to have attended a reception via Zoom.
But as convenient as that’s been, it can’t replace seeing the work, up close and personal. Because for me, there’s something about physical art that just gives me the feels. Et tu? 🙂
I love to stand in front it, to see the lightness or the depth of the brush strokes and to study how a sculpture has been worked. It’s then that words become a cheap replacement, incapable of properly describing what my eyes see, without touch, how the art makes me feel.
So, last month I made a conscientious decision to bring my work closer to where I live, so that I could attend the opening art receptions and see the art curated into an exhibition. And to perhaps, meet people— the curator, the gallerist and the other artists— because it’s the complete experience that I need, to see the work and to get the feels 🙂
With that being said, I’m so honored to have my work invited to multiple venues in Massachusetts.
This summer my work will be showing at the Katheryn Schultz Gallery in Cambridge, MA (July 5 -30) as well as the Hopkinton Center for the Arts in Hopkinton, MA (July 19 – August 26) and at the Loading Dock Gallery in Lowell, MA (June 29 – July 31)
This is also the final week to see the Art as Salve exhibition, which was extended at New Art Corridor Gallery in Newton, MA.
While I know not everyone will come to an art opening, because they can be boring (as my artist friend says). But I like them, from meeting the people to all the excitement that art brings, like the feels!!
*Special note to Chris L., again my deepest apologies.
DaNice D Marshall TechnyGalleries 