2:15 a.m. - 2003-04-24
Easter Eggs
This was the scene on my studio table this past Saturday night:
For quite a few years now (eight? nine? ten?) I've batiked Easter eggs to hide in public parks on Easter Sunday. It's a combination art project/pagan ritual/attempt to make small children aged three to ninety happy. They are crudely batiked - I have never gotten the hang of those beautiful Russian batiked eggs, and besides, my hands shake. But they do come complete with a yellow chenille chick inside.
You never saw a chenille chick in one of those fancy Russian eggs, did you?
When we lived in Boston I hid them in the Arnold Arboretum. Bruce and I and sometimes a friend or two would go over there at an insanely early hour and sneak around hiding eggs. Then we'd hang around for a little while and giggle as we'd watch people find them.
The first year we did it I only made two dozen. I was convinced people wouldn't "get it" and the eggs would just sit around rotting. Then, on our way out of the Arboretum, I saw a little kid running across the field at the entrance. She was screaming in mad excitement, and holding something very carefully in her hands.
It was an egg. A very crudely batiked egg, with a yellow chenille chick inside.
This is going to take the prize for corniness, but I got very choked up over that. I've had a lot of happy moments as an artist, but this was a sort of zenith. I never became an artist to get rich or famous or have my work in big museums, thought that would, of course, be nice. I wanted to be an artist because somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that I could make the world a better place with art. I just wanted to make people happy.
I had a funny little image of that little girl at age eighty, in a nursing home somewhere, telling her nurse about a good memory of an Easter egg she found in the Arnold Arboretum. It was a lovely little image, and as I watched her showing the egg to her happy parents, I started noticing other people walking around with eggs and smiling. It was quite an addictive experience.
I've been putting out eggs every year since.
Except last year. We were in the throws of our insane housing negotiations and nothing got done. This year was almost a dud, too. I just got wrapped up in other things and realised Saturday night that I had never done the eggs. At ten o'clock at night, I was sitting at the studio table feeling very mad at myself, when I had the realisation that it would only take a few hours. I pulled all nighters in art school on a regular basis, right? I could do this!! I could dye those eggs!! Yeah! Once more into the breech!!
Five hours and three dozen eggs later, I went to bed. It was worth it though. This years happy egg finders included two twelve year old girls who looked a little morose when I first saw them, but looked a whole lot happier after a couple of eggs.
This is what the eggs look like in situ:
*************************************************
And I was especially glad that I did the eggs, because on Easter morning I got a call from Randal and Erik and their dog, Springer (aka: the Cheesegirl) who said they had been thinking of me because they missed my Arboretum eggs!!
I was thrilled to talk to them because we had lost touch a little bit. Partly because we bought a house and got distracted and partly because they bought a house and got distracted. And weirdly, the house they bought is a beautiful one in Jamaica Plain that I used to regularly drool over when I walked by it!!
So I may actually get to see the inside of this house someday!! How exciting!!
0 comments
