Update on Elliott

 

Sunday, June 24, 2012 – Update on Elliott

Elliott’s life, and to a large extent, a mine as well, continues to be defined by his level of pain, which changes from one moment to the next.  He’s now experimenting with a Lidocain patch in addition to his extended release painkillers.  Even when he gets some relief, he’s exhausted from the near constant struggle to deal with the pain.  As a result, he has to lie down frequently during the day, and he uses his walker even in the house.  I refuse to say he shuffles along, but he definitely moves more slowly.

Although his life is limited by his physical condition, Elliott hasn’t stopped working on his garage cleanup project.  He has found some real treasures, including the old apron he's modeling in the photo.  Our trash containers are filled to the brim, and we’ve made several more trips to Goodwill.  In addition, we’re working together to sort through paintings in the garage and to choose pieces to hang on the blank spots on the walls.   Size is a consideration.  Many of Elliott’s paintings are very, very large, and we simply don’t have the wall space to accommodate them.  However, there are a number of “smaller” pieces (48 inches or less) that have been stacked in the garage for years.   Since they’re covered in thick brown paper, I have no idea what they look like.  When we took them upstairs a few days ago, I felt like a kid with a pile of presents to unwrap on Christmas morning.  Most of them looked familiar because they belonged to series such as Zs or Division of the Square.  But there was a big revelation when we removed the wrapping from one painting I’d never seen before.  It was a black and white painting from the Cube series, dating back to 1979.  The composition was clean, spare and very linear, which gave it a startling freshness.  

We started the actual installation yesterday and so far we’ve hung seven of Elliott’s paintings.  There are still some small blank spots on the walls, which we’ll fill with my collage work.  During the coming week, we’ll go through the pieces that are stored in the drawers of the flat file and choose some for framing.  Then I’m thinking of holding a Summer Salon to usher in the “new” works that will grace our walls.

Also, we made a trip down to the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton so I could pick up my second piece from the fused glass workshop (seen from different angles in the photos above).  Matt came along, and after seeing all the fused glass on display, has decided that he wants to do some work in this medium.