Blog

Gathering the Troops

by klgonnerman, posted in Uncategorized

I feel a change in the air. Between farewell speeches and the first press conference for our President Elect in 167 days, the last 48 hours have been full of milestones. People are lining up event after event to express their views. Confirmation hearings are in the works. The anxiety is palpable.

Honestly, I’ve had a hard time finding the right art to keep me going – it’s been a dark couple of days.

So I started an inventory of my favorite badass female characters to join my support team. I thought of the ladies in Steel Magnolias, who laughed through their tears and kept right on going. Erin Brockovich, where Julia Roberts’ rough and tumble heroine raised hell to right a wrong. Katniss Everdeen, the empathetic warrior of The Hunger Games. Lisbeth Salander of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even Elle Woods in Legally Blonde.

I know I’m forgetting a million terrific characters.

I want a list of badass women a mile long, so that I can call on each of them when I need more strength than I currently have.

This will likely be a rough time ahead. I don’t know about you, but I need the biggest, badass group surrounding me – real and fictional – to keep me going. Let’s make the most amazing list possible.

Who would be in your list of badass heroines to keep you going right now?

The Art of We

by klgonnerman, posted in Uncategorized

I listened to a beautiful speech last night, full of ideas I believe in, from a president I respect and admire.

Words and ideas stuck out as if they were little dancing memes:

The most important office in a democracy: Citizen.

All, not just some.

WE.

We all need each other. We are powerful. We can. We are not alone, and we shouldn’t try to do big things alone.

The art of WE.

 

Wit and Whimsy

by klgonnerman, posted in Visual Arts

We took a photo of this mural in Downtown L.A. on one of our neighborhood walks, and I’ve framed it and toted it from office to office. It’s a red PARKING sign, with the last three letters faded and a young girl swinging from a swing that hangs off the “A.”

It’s one of those beautiful combinations of whimsy and deep message. I can picture myself in the swing, the wind in my hair as the swing reaches higher. Just by three faded letters, the artist reminds us that we can turn something practical into play without too much sacrifice.

I’ve interpreted it as a reminder to play, to enjoy life, to swing high sometimes.

Every once in a while, I wonder if I missed the real meaning of the piece. What if I completely missed the memo and have it all wrong?

Misinterpretation is a risk inherent in all art and its consumption. Every time we put something out there, it could be misunderstood. But what if it takes on new meaning? Is that okay? Can we be okay with putting art out that has a life of its own, that we can’t control?

Better to put it out there than to hold it close, afraid of what might happen to it when released into the world.

If you have a different interpretation for this mural, or any of the other pieces I discuss in this blog, please share. Because sticking to my own interpretations gets boring and I’d much rather hear from you!

Look Twice

by klgonnerman, posted in Movie, Visual Arts

Moonlight grabbed me from the first I heard of it. An online description summarized it as follows: “A young man deals with his dysfunctional home life and comes of age in Miami during the ‘War on Drugs’ era.”

Given all my recent learning about mass incarceration, race and the impact of the War on Drugs,* I was all in to see this story take shape. Before it came to Hartford, I took a drive to Boston just for Moonlight.

It was so much more than any one sentence can summarize.

Moonlight is the story of Chiron over three stages of his life, as a kid, teenager and young man. As a kid, he doesn’t fit in, and he’s on his own a lot. His mom works hard and struggles with a drug addiction. It’s a story of disconnection and connection. Chiron meets good people who care about him and betray him, who he loves and wishes he didn’t. Drugs and the drug trade are a constant thread, a ticket to survival and destruction all at once.

I could watch Chiron’s story again and again, to take in the nuance and appreciate its many layers. It’s a story that resists easy summary, multifaceted and true to life. I was amazed by how well done it was.

There was just one thing that didn’t make sense to me. The poster. It seemed so basic. Just a picture of a face in the moonlight. I felt that it didn’t do justice to the story.

Then I looked at it again.

I had missed the nuance completely. I had looked too quickly, and hadn’t noticed that the poster was three faces spliced together, each with a different purplish hue to represent a phase in Chiron’s life. It was a story of three people in one, a picture of transformation embodied.

I was wrong. The poster was perfect. I just had to look more closely.

It got me thinking. What else had I missed? When else have I glanced too quickly, and missed the layers of meaning? What else had I not noticed?

After that, I renewed my commitment to noticing. To paying attention. To looking twice.

Because art, as in life, is all about the layers. How could I have missed that?

*If you haven’t seen Ava DuVernay’s 13th on Netflix or read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, make sure you add them to your list. There’s so much more but these two are really powerful and chock full of important information.

Not for Nintendo

by klgonnerman, posted in Literature

It snowed yesterday. Consistent hours of powdery fluff, the kind that blankets the world and makes everything brighter, more quiet, and muted.

My little neighbor across the way – she’s two I think – wielded a shovel twelve times her size and danced in her boots.

As I watched her delight, I remembered a book: The Snowy Day. Do you remember it too? It was about a little boy enjoying a snow day, with illustrations that looked like paper cuts but were actually watercolor. He wore red from head to toe, and he looked back at his footprints in the snow.

What I didn’t realize until I looked it up was that the book was written in 1962 and featured one of the first Black main characters in a children’s book. The hero’s Black face is etched in my mind, but I hadn’t thought of him in terms of the historical context. What a statement that choice made – at the time, and even decades after it was written.

My memory of this book was automatic, and it reminded me of something important: What we read and consume as kids shapes us in ways we will never realize.

So let’s make sure we curate the books we share with our children. Let’s make sure they get messages we want them to receive, and that they see people of all races, religions and circumstances.

I used to be that aunt. The one who always gave books. Not just books, but books that were different. I thought they were interesting and important. I’m sure they were received at first as strange.

I stopped doing that a while ago, in favor of gift cards so the kids could have some autonomy. Let’s be honest, I wanted to be the cool aunt for a change. I wanted them to like what I gave them.

Watch out guys, I may be going back to strange books.

Because art solidifies ideas in our minds from an early age. And how could I possibly allow Nintendo to do that work?