You better run, squirrel!

I'm not really a fan of New Year's resolutions, but I have to admit, they do motivate me.  Last year, I participated in the Haynes Apperson Festival four-mile run in July.  I would like to say I ran it, but I did quite a bit more walking than running.  My resolution for this year is to participate in the Haynes Apperson and run the whole four miles.  I guess it may be more of a goal than a resolution.

Running has always intimidated me, and I think my struggles with it were more mental than physical.  I have to admit that I am growing to enjoy it; especially running outside as opposed to on the treadmill.  I still have a long way to go before I can run a solid four mile stretch, but no one said New Year's resolutions are supposed to be easy!

So What'd You Think of An object of Beauty....?

I’ve been twice to the International Basel Art Show which takes place every June in Switzerland and have witnessed dapper gentleman in houndstooth buying paintings by Hans Arp for $20,000 and overheard many an avant-guard nabob negotiate superior sums on their cell phones. I’d wondered who these people were, what kinds of lives they lived. In Steve Martin’s latest novel, An Object of Beauty I was given some insight into this world of art that fascinates.


The book’s main character is Lacey as described by a nerdy and likable narrator, a writer for ARTnews. She is an enviable femme fatale type: attractive, witty, appreciator of and surrounded by the finest of worldly things, driven by intense amition to succeed, ensnaring millionaire art dealers in her charms, moving free of self-doubt or timidity. I think Lacey’s complexities reveal Martin’s understanding of women in general.


When Lacey sells her Grandmother’s Maxfield Parrish painting in a dubious way in order to stay in New York and pursue her dream, readers see just how unscrupulous, almost immoral she is. Especially when said Parrish painting depicts her own grandmother as an enchanting youth, a dear testament to an ongoing familial link to art, artists, and to beauty. This ambitious move renders her shallow, vacuous, as the New York art scene seems after the terrorist attacts of September 11.


I found the book to be a fun and rollicking read while maintaining an intelligent tone. I think it would adapt well to film. It is also, most importantly, powerful in conveying art’s inherent value to humanity. This was aided by the twenty-two reproductions of various artworks found throughout and especially felt from one effectual scene in which Lacey hangs a painting by Milton Avery on her apartment wall. Readers witness the Avery catalyzing an almost spiritual transformation of her apartment, turning it from a student-like, juevenile space to a harmonious, exquisite, mature abode. She has a revelation at this moment, understanding why people collect art, value it, invest in it.


It would be hard not to come away unaffected by An Object of Beauty. It seems likely that readers of every kind will have a new or refreshed understanding of art, even be stirred to collect or investigate it further.


It’s impassioned author said shortly after buying a painting by William Michael Harnett, a 19th century still-life painting (from New York Times article November, 2010): “It’s absolutely great to live with. It’s better than television. There’s not a day I don’t look at or spend some amount of time with an artwork.”

My Thoughts on An Object of Beauty

I am not at all familiar with the world of art that extends beyond my children's drawings that hang on my refrigerator, so reading An Object of Beauty was a learning experience for me. Because I know very little about art and the culture surrounding it, at times I found myself wanting to skim through the descriptions of the works of art that are throughout the book, but I persevered and learned that while I may not understand what makes a person want to spend thousands of dollars on a piece of art I can respect that they do.

The main character's personality and story are what really kept me interested in this book. To me it seems the main character, Lacey Yeager, uses any means necessary to work her way up in the art world from a clerk in the basement of Sotheby's to eventually owning her own gallery. Her relationship's with people more often than not revolved around what a person can do for her and her career than her actually being a friend. I found the stories of her escapades much more interesting than the descriptions of the various work of art she comes across. I often found myself wanting to like her, but never really being able to.

I enjoyed reading An Object of Beauty because it made me look at another slice of the world. Although I will probably always be someone who takes a quick look at a painting and then moves on to the next, I will remember that while I take it for what it is, there is always a different way to see it. I learned that while it may just look like a painting of a field there is always more than what meets the eye. All you have to do is look.

Childhood Home for Sale

After dancing around it like a maypole, you and I sat in its shadows, laughing, squishing the translucent, gooey grapes into our mouths, throwing the dark paper skins into the summer sky, spitting the seeds.   It was just a season or two after dad trimmed it too much and we thought it would certainnly die that we ate its grapes with our eyes on mom and dad, hoping they both tasted sweetness at the same time.  

We picked colanders full of the concord grapes and brought them inside, some cracked with juices attracting fruit flies.  

In late August, brown with sun, hair stiff from pool water,  we’d slip around back to see if the grapes were ripe.  We’d part the branches, crawl under the weighted arbor, where bunches hung free among spiders.  Handfuls of gummy sweetness into our mouthes, we strewed seeds around us, giggling, chewing gemmy morsels.

This Victorian grapevine that someone planted long ago, that survived the tornado of ’69, gave us so many seasons of fruit.  Even when the Japanese beetles seemed to stir its every leaf, even when the neighborhood kids picked and threw so many grapes at each other rather than eat them,  there was always enough.

One year mom made a circular garden and dad planted an apple tree beside that grapevine.  The apple tree matured and gave bitter, hideous, bulbous fruit.  The ciruclar garden was overgrown with weeds, torn up, and hissing, mutilated, inbred cats crept in.

The vine was just out of view from our childhood bedroom window.  We grew up,  it grew dense, neglected, like a forgotten elder.   The fertile field behind our house became pre-fabricated, chem-lawned home plots.  A floodlit parking lot replaced the restful darkness of night.