Lorna Ritz and her pet, Kukumba, who she says is “not really a cat, but something I dreamt up.”
Photo courtesy of Mark Prince
Visual artist Lorna J. Ritz has announced there will be an upcoming show of her work at the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, New York in 2011.

She currently has a show at the American Ambassador’s residence in Caracas, which will be there for the next three years. She also exhibits at The Oxbow Gallery in Northampton, MA., and the Alan Klotz Gallery in NYC,  Her work can be found in numerous private and public collections.

How long does it take you to work on a painting, from start to finish? Do you work on more than one at a time? 

I work on one painting at a time, and to silence. My students sometimes ask if they can watch me paint, but I tell them: ‘You’d be bored.’ I spend so much time just standing there silent within, waiting, watching for an idea to come. It always does, but only when I am in a meditative state. Therefore, a painting can take six weeks, studying it everyday, working on it, making changes, then studying it again. I seem to know how to access a place from within from where imagination flows, so that there is intent in the brush marks. 

How do you know when a painting is done? 

It never is. I could conceivably work on one painting forever. It would just keep evolving into something I like more. But I let a painting go when its statement is real, alive, and showing me more each time I study it, so I let it live there instead of changing it all over again. The colors each sit rhythmically tied to each other and so no longer need to be exchanged yet again.

Do you ever feel like working more on paintings that you finished in the past?

No, that moment is gone and I am just not there anymore.

How has your work evolved? 

The space in the paintings has deepened over time, there is more to see, more you want to experience, finding places where you want to be, that you’d never have previously imagined. Painting is another form of travel, discoveries made along the way.

Who and/or what have been your major influences? 

The Japanese painter Kimura, who lived in Paris 20 years; Joan Mitchell; Robert Ryman; Jane Wilson; my mentor, James Gahagan; the last paintings of Monet; Bonnard’s color; the French painters, Corot and Poussin, and yes, still Kandinsky.

What inspires your paintings? 

Landscape, experience, and time.

Do you listen to music when you work? If so, do you have a favorite genre, and how does the music affect your work?
The way I paint simulates improvisational jazz, which I listen to only after I paint, or to get me started. When I work I listen to wind, the sound of rain, snow falling, birdsongs. I don’t want my eyes to get interrupted by others’ rhythms, especially when I get so involved in the music.

How do the titles relate to your paintings, especially in the case of the ones with more unusual, poetic titles?

Each painting finds it title after I take it off the easel. I live with the painting when it is hung on the wall, until its essence finds its name. For example, I did a painting while I was in mourning for my Father, who was very dear to me. The colors were my Father, his presence. The painting titled itself, “Eternal Presence.”

What’s your biggest challenge as an artist?

If you look at my resume, you’d think I am successful. But I have debt. Paint and living costs could conceivably change my attitude if I allowed them to do so. I am a good painting teacher, which is how I have always made a living, but schools are hiring much younger artists now, so I have no stability, just some teaching gigs that have allowed me to keep painting. When I could not afford paint, I ripped up corrugated  cardboard and made collages, or drew; (I always have crayons), so nothing stops me from being at my best painting-self, except for those times I do feel like a ship lost at sea in a storm caught in everyday personal life problems. Then another of my best selves rises up and I then conquer that, too. I keep discovering what keeps me strong, reinventing my solid base which keeps getting challenged by life.
Is there anything you would wish for in public policy to help artists?

In Europe if you have been painting as long as I have been, and have the body of work that I do, the government venerates you and financially shows it. In this country, the successful corporate people are the ones venerated. Art is always the first thing to go, when there are cuts. In the newspapers, the title page is the “Arts and Leisure” section. Public Policy would, in my dream of dreams, title one section “Leisure” and another “The Arts.” And being the teacher that I am, one would think that with my many years of rich painting experience that I would be grabbed up by the colleges who need serious painters who know how to articulate visual ideas.

What advice do you have for young or new artists?

Don’t sell out by following trends. Look within, and look out and around you, but don’t have your head stuck in the gallery scene. Get life experience. Fall in love with your medium so that your distinctive voice can be heard through it. Then, build upon that. Community is more important that competition. Care about each other and help each other all along the way.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

I ‘listen’ for the hidden secrets embedded in the paint itself, and to how it wants to move across the surface of linen. The surfaces of my paintings resemble ancient walls, in that there is a sense of history alive in them, through the repetition of the “placement and replacement” of paint many times over. It is necessary to go through the search process each painting. A painting gets born when it has a specific presence that comes alive in it, that seems, for me, to come together only at the very end through the last accoutrements that fine-tune it.

Lorna holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute, New York. She has extensive experience as a teacher, both in the United States and abroad, and has traveled through the U.S. Information Agency. The recipient of several awards, she has exhibited at Smith College Museum of Art, The Painting Center, New York City; the Fine Arts Center’s University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, among other institutions. She also traveled through the “International Program” through the Augusta Savage Gallery to work with artists in the Townships in Cape Town.

The way I work, one painting begets the one yet to come. The paintings grow out of each other. My paintings come from the things around me that I see, such as ancient mountains, (the Holyoke range formed by glaciers), clouds and their cast shadows on these mountains, the open hayfields where I live, and memories of shapes and colors that rise up unexpectedly from memorized places where I have traveled. It is how colors relate that guides me. My color combinations come directly from landscape, or from architecture when I am amongst structures as inspiring as the Alhambra, with it’s bodies of water strategically flowing that are companions to them. My painting is ‘edited memory.’
The physicality of oil paint lends itself well to how I locate light falling on the mountains from the sky of a particular day; I love moving paint fluidly around, both thinly and thickly, scraping and repainting it. The surfaces of my paintings resemble ancient walls, in that there is a sense of history alive in them, through the repetition of the “placement and replacement” of paint many times over. (I try to convince my students that they can’t expect to get it right the first hundred times, that it is necessary to go through the search process). I feel like I am at a construction site breathing life onto the canvas through a simultaneous building up and a tearing down of color. I love to see open, breathing, moving space create entry way inside the picture plane of the flat surface of linen. It is the act of breathing life onto the canvas that enables the painting’s surface to be like windows or mirrors into which to look. It is the architectural construction of a painting that moves me. A painting gets born when it has a specific presence that comes alive in it, that seems, for me, to come together only at the very end through the last accoutrements that come along so naturally and pleasurably, and fine-tune all that is already compositionally holding together, rhythmically tied.
My paintings are not objectified; they don’t hold objects, but they do hold spirit, souls, and memory, all of which rise up in a form conducive to be said in paint. The paint finds it before even I do, that makes how colors relate be everything. My paintings ‘sing’ through the light that emanates from the color combinations themselves.
I explore ideas just as an improvisational musician finds his “lines.” The dialog between ideas lives in me like a fascinating story I’m telling. The painting has to have a life of it’s own unlike any previous painting’s life. I want to see what happens through the “chance encounters” I have with paint, ‘in the moment.’ Free like this, invention surges up and I paint out of curiosity: a problem area in the painting becomes a foreign country in which to travel. I continue to strengthen the major concept as it is forming it’s way to becoming “whole.” I can never quite get there, but I get closer as I develop my skill, over time. I enjoy the struggle and the search, reaching for the inaccessible, referential to landscape that is not overtly stated, but implied. A familiar shape worked out in the last painting gets obliterated in the new one, for it cannot have a name that has already been spoken. My painting process is always unsettling, completely passionate, radical, and driven, but it is the paint itself that guides me to a place of wonder. The painting has to be better than the idea, which was the painting’s original intent.
What I look for when I carry my easel out to the landscape for the drawings done ‘on site’ is composition, ‘where’ a mountain will sit within the space of the four edges of paper in relation to the trees in front of it, clouds behind it. I seek as deep a space as I can, so that when I see that the sky moves behind the mountain, I simultaneously see that the foreground field comes up towards me. The movement between them is the compelling force of the drawing. I study the light of the particular day, find it in crayon, as though the mountains and trees and sky and the shadows from clouds are all glowing from within, responding with so much life to each other. Newly discovered color relationships, for me, come from some one dramatic event that has taken place in the sky, or on the land, at a particular moment that burns in me to paint. The horizon gives prelude to what is beyond landscape in the paintings; so, I want to push it there.
Each of my paintings represents a crystallized chunk of formal experience, as well as being very personal at the same time. My paintings are earthy, rock-like and weighty, and yet they have in them the rhythm of the sea. I am a nature painter; the nature “out there” coupled with my own internal landscape. My “inner” finds the equivalent “out there.”
I have a need to communicate personal experience, to send waves of emotion that look like the painting got painted with little conscious effort, having a quality of a time distortion effect, even though the painting took months of concentration to pull together into what whole impact it finally becomes. The journey is never over; I always see more to do, but then, knowing when it is time to move on to a new painting is an art form unto itself.

“In Northampton some one went around lighting houses on fire while people slept around Christmas time, one right after the other. People died, and some lost their houses. Everyone was so nervous to sleep at night, but the arsonist was caught and confessed. The community came together to help the homeless, such as us artists turning artwork into money at auction to raise funds.

Within days the earthquake tore Haiti apart. My friends, a painter and a poet, lost their child there. Close to them, coupled with watching the destruction and death on the news, was terrible, terrible. A husband stood vigil over the rubble under which his wife lay. Eventually he heard tapping. He ran for rescuers, who began to remove some of the concrete, and then the man heard his wife’s voice. Very carefully more rubble was lifted, until she was pulled up into the daylight; even w/broken bones and dust in her eyes, she was singing the national anthem of Haiti.

Being proactive helps a little, so that there is at least some vestige of control by doing something positive, (re: sending money I don’t even have, but sending it anyhow: such a small drop in the bucket). In this tragedy, the outpouring of compassion and actual aide and money and medical care reinforces my faith in the goodness of people: but, why does it take a tragedy like this to make it be so? We are partially responsible for keeping Haiti poor, and now we show up and can’t get food to the people because the infrastructure that was minimal anyhow is demolished. Big boats with supplies can’t get close to shore and there is only one runway at the airport. Maybe I still can’t sleep straight through the night, maybe my painting has shifted from the direction in which it was going, (I stopped painting and eating for four days), but spirit survives: if that woman could sing, I can paint.”

Painting and Life Writings

“My introduction to Jim Gahagan came as an undergraduate student of his at Pratt Institute in the 60′s. I was also studying realist painting under Lennart Anderson at the Art Students League. I felt frustrated because something in me was not getting expressed. That something missing was emotion, which abstract painting satisfied and has lasted. When I worked with master painters, they said I was too emotional, (when painting skin, hair and eyes. This felt like me going to church and having to pray like everyone else). Then along came Jim, who happened upon my getting so frustrated I mushed with my hands right into the paint of a figure I had been painting for over a month. “Space,” he said. “Look at what you’ve got.” I put a thin line of orange around what was mud, then a blue dot to vibrate against the orange, and then a warmer blue, and there I was, engulfed with expression through how the colors moved the space. I could say that Jim, being the dynamic teacher that he was, both blessed and cursed me for life, for once the trusting of color to move space took hold, I sacrificed everything for it. Whatever depths to which I now find myself enmeshed in my painting came from this very seed. The choices I have made in my life continue to deepen roots from this very same seed. Reinforced when I was only in my 20′s, Jim asked me to teach painting at his new school in a geodesic dome in northern Vermont. I endured black fly bites that sent me to the local hospital, embarrassed that my mouth was over where my ears should have been. I was a child who did not know to get myself out of the woods where my easel was holding a painting of a waterfall I wanted to finish as I got stung again and again. Long lavish after-dinner nights of Pat and Jim bouncing ideas off each other fascinated me at that time. Then Jim would take me into his studio so I could see new paintings. Our conversations then were at their best. They weren’t always so good for me when at 4am when Jim was quite awake he’d talk my head flat onto the dinner table, until I would hear Jim say, ‘you tired? go to bed.’ Then he’d paint until early a.m. as Pat and I would begin to awaken. Jim always got the better of me when I was too tired to talk and became a good listener. He always had so much to say about so much: painting, of course, politics, of course, his experience as a medic during the war, his insight into people we knew, and, I listened. The demise of the geodesic dome is another story someone else will surely tell. But we taught there, worked from the model there, critiqued each other’s work there, and lived the life of an artist to the fullest, as though in another time and space, which remains with me to this day. This is how Jim ruined, (kidding), and blessed me both.

There is not a ‘painting-day’ I am not thanking Jim for his generosity, idealism, wisdom, and for his paintings, with which he has left me abundance. he was a very important teacher for me. I am carrying on a dying tradition, through my own teaching and my own painting. Jim has come into my dreams and I feel his presence always.”

I only know winter is here because I succumbed to unpacking my Jeep of my portable outdoor studio, (drawing boards, two easels, stacks of oil crayons, paper, and recycled frames for new drawings). Three days in a row I set my easel up, only to have to pack up ten minutes later, sulking. I was drawn to the changing color of the mountains, (now blue-black, distanced from what had been ruby red two weeks ago). I watched these changes day-to-day, as each hue only lasted a day. I wanted to document it all, but had to pack up the easel each time I set up, as the fingers froze, crayons dropped in the hay, $5. here, $6. there…I spent more time bent over searching for the crayons than drawing…could not find them most times, (but will in the spring); neighbors talked…then scolded…’Go home.’ A damp 8 degrees w/wind yesterday, it is time to paint indoors until May, then back out to the barn. I had a great drawing season this Fall but the process is just never ending. Like I say, I will go out kicking and screaming, “I’m not done.”

I took students of mine to the Smith College Art Museum. One of the paintings I talked about the longest time is Monet’s ‘Poppy Fields,’ forgetting even that the students were there. As I studied the painting, I made discoveries in this same painting I have looked at for decades that I had never before seen, as I talked my way through them. When I turned and saw my students’ faces, not only were they ‘there,’ but they looked enraptured, which stunned me, realizing that had come right along the journey with me.

I ‘critiqued’ the left side of the Picasso figure painting as being ‘flat,’ and unresolved, so I think he rose up from his grave and punched me in the nose at 4am.

I told a jazz pianist how I paint many long hours but only at the last does the painting begin pull togther with acoutrements, and he jumped up, as a fellow-improvisationalist, and exclaimed, “Yes! That is how it happens!” My carver/sculptor friend in northern Vermont feels the wood in the dark in her basement, just touching the shapes that beget ideas from beginning to end. She counts on the touching, seeing through her hands as process. We all come into the world lucky or not to have found our way ‘in.’

Starting painting, (now that I have paint, as I was too long without funds), was the hardest part. I was a coward. But when I painted on the canvas in my sleep, I knew I was getting involved with a new painting, so the fear was gone. My dream held my hands in the paint, and I awakened feeling like I was able to breathe again.

Late Autumn landscape drawing , 2008 I am loving the long dark shadows that take place at only this time of year. The blue in the sky is unusually brilliant at mid-day; then, all of a sudden, the orange-yellow late- day sunlight falls on the fields as night comes down fast, and all that sky blue becomes a whitish yellow-orange.

The tiniest bit of oranges and yellows came through the branches of the apple trees in early October, but each day there was more yellow- -green, cadmium yellow, and yellow-green orange variations. Then all this symphony of sounds became more brilliant, and then the deep orange reds showed up two days later, between my bouts of teaching, and then there was more of it, (don’t I sound like I am telling a story)? and now the mountain is ruby red, glowing even in the dark. I ran out to the mountain to do a 10-minute quick sketck today, as it was raining. Tomorrow will be perfect, if the rain does not diminish the rubiness. Each set of colors lasts a mere day. Now all the leaves are down except on the mountain; thus, that deep dark red forming the sensuous curves of the mountains!!! I shall need tiny pieces of blue sky to counter it, coupled with those big physical heavy clouds I so love to draw.&

“Mt. Norwottuck and Apple Tree” 10 X 13″ cray-pas crayon

South Africa has a most perfect balance of beauty and danger, (to the extremes of both), coupled with an imbalance between wealth and poverty, where anti-apartheid is still new, so society continues to act it out in subtle ways. For example, late this afternoon I convinced my driver, a black South African, to take the 30-mile shorter route along the ocean route rather than the way he chose to drive, through traffic, and mall drag-strip USA-type roads. He was afraid, telling me how every so often the gangs stop motorists, and ‘I won’t tell you what they do to them.’ I asked him to look at the map and decide for himself, (which was the way I convinced him), so we went along the ocean route. All along the way I heard more stories of terrible things that happened on this beautiful road. The Police do not help people. Even the Police have security guards because Police stations are robbed of ammunition by gangs. The signs along the way had

bullet holes in them. I was coming from the Township along the ocean route was all I knew.

I had visited the driver’s family the day before, which is how I got ‘my driver’ in the first place. The house was like a prison, with two heavy metal doors and an electrical fence on the outside; it took my driver 15 minutes to enter his own house. His wife scolded him when he left and forgot to set the alarm. His neighbor has all the same precautions, but one night when he went home and opened his garage door, he was kidnapped for ransom by someone waiting in the bushes for his arrival to pounce on him, and he was never seen again.

Being January, none of my contacts at the University came through, as school was on vacation. How was I going to get inside the townships? I was there to meet artists, sent by my University where I teach. The townships are the only real Africa here. My driver refused to enter the township, so I went by myself. I was instantly converged upon, suddenly so white a person, with, “What are you doing here?” I looked at the person resolutely and said, “I am a painter. I am here to meet artists.” A long silence hung heavily, until I was told to wait, so there I stood just inside the entrance, (but alas, I was ‘in’ the the township), aware that people were gathering, staring. I waited 15 minutes, with wonder inside my body instead of fear, whereupon no less than 20 people came over to me and again I was asked by the same person, with the same intonation, “What are you doing here?” to which I said, “I am a painter. I am here to meet artists, to see the work being done, to exchange ideas. I want to meet painters.” His response: “You showed up. Come with us.” I was taken to studio after studio, as the crowd behind me grew proportionately. I was cooked for and treated with as much respect as I had for everyone I met. All I kept thinking about was color: everyone wore bright colors, the cardboard houses were painted brightly, as though color was spirit instead of money, the mosaic work was intensely colored, paintings were lavishly layered with thick paint, and I, having made a life of passionately loving color, was acutely aware of how color moves here unlike anywhere I have ever seen it move elsewhere.

The District Six Museum, an exhibit regarding the forced removal of all kinds of people, (blacks, “coloreds,’ mixed races, Jews, Muslims), exhibited how the people lived peacefully together just outside of Cape Town. Apartheid forced everybody out with bulldozers, and today the area is a mere field with only the Muslim Chuch left standing. The Museum sold me a book on the town before the government destroyed it, and I met the man who founded the Museum, as his family was removed as well. As well, I went to the Castle, which is now a Military Museum. The guard closed the door to the dungeon so we could experience the darkness, dampness, isolation and fear that prisoners endured for years, cramped together, for all of 10 seconds that I will never forget. On the second floor of the castle are studios for artists, a residency program. In a little room were four women from the townships sitting together making paintings out of beads. From the corridor I heard their exchanges in the form of laughter and song. When I entered, (taken by a social worker), they fell silent, but from then on we made friends and soon enough we were all exchanging laughter together. One of the women has a pure spirit and heart, like a child; a really calm, happy, proud, curious and humble spirit. Everything that came out of her felt like a deep dark ruby-red velvet cloak on my shoulders. . Her name, Neliswa, (from Guteletha), means ‘calm.’ (Not being a calm person myself, I got to study close-up what it must be like to be so). On a small counter was a black beaded necklace, and before I even knew it was her work, or if it was even for sale, I loved it, inquired about who made it, so she picked it up and gave it to me as she said, “I did, and it’s yours.” I insisted on paying her for it so she asked for $7. That money goes back into the township where she lives and can feed her family. I gave her $25. And she

protested, but I won the argument. Whenever I wear it, I feel her spirit.

There was constant brazen muggings on the trains. I myself had a near mugging on the train, but only because I became a target when my acent was perceived at the ticket counter as ‘a foreigner.’ . Since I have eyes behind my head, when a young man asked me for a rand , I had already felt him breathing right onto my neck as his friends surrounded me, in Kauk, (two towns north from my stop in Muizenberg). The attendant chased them away, but I had seen their quick split seconds of heads peeking around the corner; they jumped onto the train as soon as the train doors opened, w/o tickets, (because the attendant was not watchful enough. The only reason I got out of trouble is by jumping off the train at the very last second just as the doors closed, as they rode away more stunned than furious. Then, I had to wait for the next train, while I talked to the attendant, and this time, he heard me, almost too late. I saw what they were up to in their eyes, close up. Maybe an ancestor helped me this time. The trains, if you travel third class, are safer, as in 1st class there are unexpected robberies at the hands of impoverished people, even in the middle of the day, at knife point. Terrorized by the storiesI hired a bodyguard who was Congolese and very kind and good to me. He was a refugee from the Congo who had not seen his family for ten years. His country was run by a dictator who was housed in Morrocco until he recently died. “Papy,” as he was called by his four younger sisters, (which is probably why he is so gentle), was learning about Cape Town and wanted to become a tour guide; I ended up teaching him things I discovered about which he did not even know about Cape Town. He learned to grab my hand when we crossed the street because I continually looking to the left instead of to the right when crossing. Even as a dancer, my body did not learn this rule, and I can safely say that Papy

saved my life at least a dozen times.

I took Papy to Robben Island where he had never been. It was an extremely painful experience, to actually be in the cells, to feel what that time of apartheid imprisonment had been for those people who were incarcerated. . Prisoners, (lawyers, doctors, professional men, were torture done had to ‘earn’ a blanket to sty warm, as most did not, sleeping on concrete floors. Prisoners were forced to mine the lime in the rock, but they were smart, and got educated by Mandela in the cave, over 18 year’s period of time, discreetly. One way prisoners communicated was by pretending to play tennis; they would miss a play, which went over to the other side, when a message was inserted into the ball and bounced back, thus enabling communication

I traveled to the townships and squatter camps of Langa, “(Sun),” and Gugulethu, “(Pride).”Also, Nyanga, “(Moon).” I hired a driver whom I knew would give me the full stories without censorship for tourists. He realized right away who I was and held nothing back, as he had once been involved in the movement and got blacklisted, even beaten up. I was taken to a very small office in one of the townships with a torn, old rug and two tiny windows, one computer, and old posters on the walls, run by three women who make the needs of the people with whom they are in direct contact known. They are the Real Parliment, these same three. Each one had hope, looked worn, but wise. I was taken to the very sites where people, (children and women just walking by), were killed, one site where seven young men were shot in the backs of their heads. One white student, Amy Biehl, who was driving through the townships from school with other black

students, who was working ‘for the anti-aparthied cause,’ was stoned and then stabbed by four men who saw a white person and wanted revenge.They were prosecuted, but her Parents exonerated them because they, too, were ‘for the cause,’ and it is for the murderers to live with what they had done and teach others. This is a better solution than Suddan Hussein’s recent execution, leaving no room for evolution and just making perpertrators all the angrier.

The townships are separated by highways, barbed fences and/or concrete walls, to separate the races of blacks, coloreds, and Indians. Originally the townships housed black labor workers for Cape Town, but after apartheid ended in 1991, families who had been forced to live there remained, to be together as a community, and the towns are so vibrant!

The driver took me to a medicine man for the joint in my right hand which is immovable from what I call ‘stretching canvas arthritis.’ For whatever it is worth, I have to drink white onion juice laced with herbs, and breathe in a really wonderful smelling incense from a root, as well as chew on another type of root, first thing in the morning as I pray. An hour later, my hand still hurts. Very bright outside, when I walked inside to this ‘den,’ it was completely dark, with herbs, roots, bones, skins and amulets hanging everywhere. Only when my eyes adjusted did I realize there were about 10-12 men sitting against the wall. Utterly quiet, they watched me interact with the doctor, who later charged me 40 rand.

I was taken into the home of a woman aged 75, whose 6-yr. old child had been murdered. When I entered, she was sitting visiting with family. There were a lot of children around, but shoo’d away. By the time I left, everyone was smiling. Just outside the door were miles and miles of township poverty, imminent violence, (rape, thievery and stabbings), s ell as the finest break dancing I had ever seen. One dancer told me, “I used to be a bad person when I joined a gang but now I am in the dancing gang and realize.” That is all that he told me, and all I needed to hear from him.

This country makes the indigenous Indians’ plight look like a mere spat. The Slavery Museum upset me terribly; I had chilling emotion run through me and I could not take in any more. Back out in the street, the sun was so hot, so bright, as though I exited a cave and was caught in a time warp. There was not a person who walked by whose face I did not see. Most people broke into smiles as we passed. This place also makes NYC’s multi-culture look bland. It’s just ‘all out’ in the open here, whatever people are…..elderly Muslim women in long scarves covering heads and bodies in long wrapped cloths to the ground as they walk…

While in town, I went to a museum regarding the San people, the original inhabitants in South Africa.

Clouds sit on the mountains and hold them. The ocean rushes, it’s sound and layers of waves moving, moving… Each night I fall asleep my Congolese neighbors having an all-too-good time in the form of loud voices, loud music, but in the early morning I was awakened by one single man’s song, a prayer, so beautiful, as he shoveled cement, coupled with the ocean waves. Within minutes, there was the sound of laughter, the rhythm of the language, the night noises that had been so fearsome, (as the party always ended in violence), gone.

There are shark warnings but people from the townships who celebrate holidays by the ocean have a lot to drink and then test the seductive waters; they go way far out with diving boards. The distant ocean on the horizon is purple-blue, the closer ocean a deep, dark green-blue, with 100 layers of waves I memorized before I ever went inland.

The train was so clean, (not like NYC’s subways), the architecture so ‘old Dutch,’ the vegetation abundantly tropical. This is a beautiful place. I reminded myself that I was in Africa when the the ocean told me so, the rhythm of the language told me so, when the clouds sat heavily on the mountains the way that they did….like a tablecloth coating them.

On the way to yet another museum, in the middle of noisy Cape Town on a 105 degree hot and humid day, I received a call from my brother. What he said was, “It is the family consensus that you come home right away.” My most important University appointments were to come up the next week, but I heard myself say, “Im on it.” All the computers were down in Cape Town, so I went right to the airport the very next day and got myself a seat on a plane headed to New England, a 27 hour flight, (the longest nonstop flight in the world, I was told). . My Father was dying. I wove between tears and acceptance, back-and-forth, all the flight long, not able to push the plane to forward faster, praying that I would get to my Father on time, that he would wait for me. I did not even wait for my bags at the airport; I drove 2 hours north right to my Father’s bedside. As I walked into his room, he greeted me with, “You came home.” His voice was raspy, his body transforming fast right before my eyes. I laid down next to him and held him. He was still being my Father, telling me what he expected of me, but I could not decipher all the words. I told him it was time for him to fly out of his body, and he said, “That is good talk,’ and that is what he did.

South Africa has a most perfect balance of beauty and danger, (to the extremes of both), coupled with an imbalance between wealth and poverty, where anti-apartheid is still new, so society continues to act it out in subtle ways. For example, late this afternoon I convinced my driver, a black South African, to take the 30-mile shorter route along the ocean route rather than the way he chose to drive, through traffic, and mall drag-strip USA-type roads. He was afraid, telling me how every so often the gangs stop motorists, and ‘I won’t tell you what they do to them.’ I asked him to look at the map and decide for himself, (which was the way I convinced him), so we went along the ocean route. All along the way I heard more stories of terrible things that happened on this beautiful road. The Police do not help people. Even the Police have security guards because Police stations are robbed of ammunition by gangs. The signs along the way had

bullet holes in them. I was coming from the Township along the ocean route was all I knew.

I had visited the driver’s family the day before, which is how I got ‘my driver’ in the first place. The house was like a prison, with two heavy metal doors and an electrical fence on the outside; it took my driver 15 minutes to enter his own house. His wife scolded him when he left and forgot to set the alarm. His neighbor has all the same precautions, but one night when he went home and opened his garage door, he was kidnapped for ransom by someone waiting in the bushes for his arrival to pounce on him, and he was never seen again.

Being January, none of my contacts at the University came through, as school was on vacation. How was I going to get inside the townships? I was there to meet artists, sent by my University where I teach. The townships are the only real Africa here. My driver refused to enter the township, so I went by myself. I was instantly converged upon, suddenly so white a person, with, “What are you doing here?” I looked at the person resolutely and said, “I am a painter. I am here to meet artists.” A long silence hung heavily, until I was told to wait, so there I stood just inside the entrance, (but alas, I was ‘in’ the the township), aware that people were gathering, staring. I waited 15 minutes, with wonder inside my body instead of fear, whereupon no less than 20 people came over to me and again I was asked by the same person, with the same intonation, “What are you doing here?” to which I said, “I am a painter. I am here to meet artists, to see the work being done, to exchange ideas. I want to meet painters.” His response: “You showed up. Come with us.” I was taken to studio after studio, as the crowd behind me grew proportionately. I was cooked for and treated with as much respect as I had for everyone I met. All I kept thinking about was color: everyone wore bright colors, the cardboard houses were painted brightly, as though color was spirit instead of money, the mosaic work was intensely colored, paintings were lavishly layered with thick paint, and I, having made a life of passionately loving color, was acutely aware of how color moves here unlike anywhere I have ever seen it move elsewhere.

The District Six Museum, an exhibit regarding the forced removal of all kinds of people, (blacks, “coloreds,’ mixed races, Jews, Muslims), exhibited how the people lived peacefully together just outside of Cape Town. Apartheid forced everybody out with bulldozers, and today the area is a mere field with only the Muslim Chuch left standing. The Museum sold me a book on the town before the government destroyed it, and I met the man who founded the Museum, as his family was removed as well. As well, I went to the Castle, which is now a Military Museum. The guard closed the door to the dungeon so we could experience the darkness, dampness, isolation and fear that prisoners endured for years, cramped together, for all of 10 seconds that I will never forget. On the second floor of the castle are studios for artists, a residency program. In a little room were four women from the townships sitting together making paintings out of beads. From the corridor I heard their exchanges in the form of laughter and song. When I entered, (taken by a social worker), they fell silent, but from then on we made friends and soon enough we were all exchanging laughter together. One of the women has a pure spirit and heart, like a child; a really calm, happy, proud, curious and humble spirit. Everything that came out of her felt like a deep dark ruby-red velvet cloak on my shoulders. . Her name, Neliswa, (from Guteletha), means ‘calm.’ (Not being a calm person myself, I got to study close-up what it must be like to be so). On a small counter was a black beaded necklace, and before I even knew it was her work, or if it was even for sale, I loved it, inquired about who made it, so she picked it up and gave it to me as she said, “I did, and it’s yours.” I insisted on paying her for it so she asked for $7. That money goes back into the township where she lives and can feed her family. I gave her $25. And she

protested, but I won the argument. Whenever I wear it, I feel her spirit.

There was constant brazen muggings on the trains. I myself had a near mugging on the train, but only because I became a target when my acent was perceived at the ticket counter as ‘a foreigner.’ . Since I have eyes behind my head, when a young man asked me for a rand , I had already felt him breathing right onto my neck as his friends surrounded me, in Kauk, (two towns north from my stop in Muizenberg). The attendant chased them away, but I had seen their quick split seconds of heads peeking around the corner; they jumped onto the train as soon as the train doors opened, w/o tickets, (because the attendant was not watchful enough. The only reason I got out of trouble is by jumping off the train at the very last second just as the doors closed, as they rode away more stunned than furious. Then, I had to wait for the next train, while I talked to the attendant, and this time, he heard me, almost too late. I saw what they were up to in their eyes, close up. Maybe an ancestor helped me this time. The trains, if you travel third class, are safer, as in 1st class there are unexpected robberies at the hands of impoverished people, even in the middle of the day, at knife point. Terrorized by the storiesI hired a bodyguard who was Congolese and very kind and good to me. He was a refugee from the Congo who had not seen his family for ten years. His country was run by a dictator who was housed in Morrocco until he recently died. “Papy,” as he was called by his four younger sisters, (which is probably why he is so gentle), was learning about Cape Town and wanted to become a tour guide; I ended up teaching him things I discovered about which he did not even know about Cape Town. He learned to grab my hand when we crossed the street because I continually looking to the left instead of to the right when crossing. Even as a dancer, my body did not learn this rule, and I can safely say that Papy

saved my life at least a dozen times.

I took Papy to Robben Island where he had never been. It was an extremely painful experience, to actually be in the cells, to feel what that time of apartheid imprisonment had been for those people who were incarcerated. . Prisoners, (lawyers, doctors, professional men, were torture done had to ‘earn’ a blanket to sty warm, as most did not, sleeping on concrete floors. Prisoners were forced to mine the lime in the rock, but they were smart, and got educated by Mandela in the cave, over 18 year’s period of time, discreetly. One way prisoners communicated was by pretending to play tennis; they would miss a play, which went over to the other side, when a message was inserted into the ball and bounced back, thus enabling communication

I traveled to the townships and squatter camps of Langa, “(Sun),” and Gugulethu, “(Pride).”Also, Nyanga, “(Moon).” I hired a driver whom I knew would give me the full stories without censorship for tourists. He realized right away who I was and held nothing back, as he had once been involved in the movement and got blacklisted, even beaten up. I was taken to a very small office in one of the townships with a torn, old rug and two tiny windows, one computer, and old posters on the walls, run by three women who make the needs of the people with whom they are in direct contact known. They are the Real Parliment, these same three. Each one had hope, looked worn, but wise. I was taken to the very sites where people, (children and women just walking by), were killed, one site where seven young men were shot in the backs of their heads. One white student, Amy Biehl, who was driving through the townships from school with other black

students, who was working ‘for the anti-aparthied cause,’ was stoned and then stabbed by four men who saw a white person and wanted revenge.They were prosecuted, but her Parents exonerated them because they, too, were ‘for the cause,’ and it is for the murderers to live with what they had done and teach others. This is a better solution than Suddan Hussein’s recent execution, leaving no room for evolution and just making perpertrators all the angrier.

The townships are separated by highways, barbed fences and/or concrete walls, to separate the races of blacks, coloreds, and Indians. Originally the townships housed black labor workers for Cape Town, but after apartheid ended in 1991, families who had been forced to live there remained, to be together as a community, and the towns are so vibrant!

The driver took me to a medicine man for the joint in my right hand which is immovable from what I call ‘stretching canvas arthritis.’ For whatever it is worth, I have to drink white onion juice laced with herbs, and breathe in a really wonderful smelling incense from a root, as well as chew on another type of root, first thing in the morning as I pray. An hour later, my hand still hurts. Very bright outside, when I walked inside to this ‘den,’ it was completely dark, with herbs, roots, bones, skins and amulets hanging everywhere. Only when my eyes adjusted did I realize there were about 10-12 men sitting against the wall. Utterly quiet, they watched me interact with the doctor, who later charged me 40 rand.

I was taken into the home of a woman aged 75, whose 6-yr. old child had been murdered. When I entered, she was sitting visiting with family. There were a lot of children around, but shoo’d away. By the time I left, everyone was smiling. Just outside the door were miles and miles of township poverty, imminent violence, (rape, thievery and stabbings), s ell as the finest break dancing I had ever seen. One dancer told me, “I used to be a bad person when I joined a gang but now I am in the dancing gang and realize.” That is all that he told me, and all I needed to hear from him.

This country makes the indigenous Indians’ plight look like a mere spat. The Slavery Museum upset me terribly; I had chilling emotion run through me and I could not take in any more. Back out in the street, the sun was so hot, so bright, as though I exited a cave and was caught in a time warp. There was not a person who walked by whose face I did not see. Most people broke into smiles as we passed. This place also makes NYC’s multi-culture look bland. It’s just ‘all out’ in the open here, whatever people are…..elderly Muslim women in long scarves covering heads and bodies in long wrapped cloths to the ground as they walk…

While in town, I went to a museum regarding the San people, the original inhabitants in South Africa.

Clouds sit on the mountains and hold them. The ocean rushes, it’s sound and layers of waves moving, moving… Each night I fall asleep my Congolese neighbors having an all-too-good time in the form of loud voices, loud music, but in the early morning I was awakened by one single man’s song, a prayer, so beautiful, as he shoveled cement, coupled with the ocean waves. Within minutes, there was the sound of laughter, the rhythm of the language, the night noises that had been so fearsome, (as the party always ended in violence), gone.

There are shark warnings but people from the townships who celebrate holidays by the ocean have a lot to drink and then test the seductive waters; they go way far out with diving boards. The distant ocean on the horizon is purple-blue, the closer ocean a deep, dark green-blue, with 100 layers of waves I memorized before I ever went inland.

The train was so clean, (not like NYC’s subways), the architecture so ‘old Dutch,’ the vegetation abundantly tropical. This is a beautiful place. I reminded myself that I was in Africa when the the ocean told me so, the rhythm of the language told me so, when the clouds sat heavily on the mountains the way that they did….like a tablecloth coating them.

On the way to yet another museum, in the middle of noisy Cape Town on a 105 degree hot and humid day, I received a call from my brother. What he said was, “It is the family consensus that you come home right away.” My most important University appointments were to come up the next week, but I heard myself say, “Im on it.” All the computers were down in Cape Town, so I went right to the airport the very next day and got myself a seat on a plane headed to New England, a 27 hour flight, (the longest nonstop flight in the world, I was told). . My Father was dying. I wove between tears and acceptance, back-and-forth, all the flight long, not able to push the plane to forward faster, praying that I would get to my Father on time, that he would wait for me. I did not even wait for my bags at the airport; I drove 2 hours north right to my Father’s bedside. As I walked into his room, he greeted me with, “You came home.” His voice was raspy, his body transforming fast right before my eyes. I laid down next to him and held him. He was still being my Father, telling me what he expected of me, but I could not decipher all the words. I told him it was time for him to fly out of his body, and he said, “That is good talk,’ and that is what he did.