Helen Frankenthaler, artist

Aleathia says:

I have been lucky enough in my travels to find an art museum to wander around and continue to be fascinated by the colors and movements swirling around in an artist's head.  I appreciate the depth and time it takes to create some of the master works in all of their glory and reality, but abstract art has always gripped me the most.  It is often the least understood and the hardest to explain. Most people like what is familiar and gravitate towards pieces that have a recognizable imagery. The wonderful thing about abstract art is each person gets to create their own interpreted story.  They can see what they want to see before understanding what the artist intended.

Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York City in 1928.  She was a notable American Abstract painter and helped to develop color field painting.  She exhibited work around the world starting in the 1950's until her death in 2011.  She continued to produce viable work her entire career.

Her main influences were Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock, and Clement Greenberg.  Frankenthaler's work is often identified "with the use of fluid shapes, abstract masses and lyrical gestures".  She has said "A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once."

The follow works of Helen Frankethaler are from the time span of 1952-1988. Her growth and color composition are most notable.

"It is an order familiar and new at the same time."--Helen Frankenthaler

1952 Mountains and Sea

This noted a big breakthrough in the style of painting with oils that looked like pastels and was then known as "stain painting".  Her work through the 1950's were similar in form containing evenly weighted compositions and stain painting.


1959 Mother Goose Melody

In this work the color palette is much darker and she invites the idea of a heavily, densely weighted side and an airy constructed side in the painting together.


1960-1962 Seascape with Dunes

This is a very centralized piece with a lot of raw canvas showing the stains of oil paints like ghost shadows.


1963-1968 Mauve District and Flood

These pieces were a large move towards acrylic paint which lent her to have a deeper sense of color within her chosen palette.  This move to acrylics saw less raw canvas and the paintings begin to feel more full and more abstract.


1970-1971  Sesame and Chairman of the Board

Frankenthaler continues the use of acrylics, but starts looking at her work with new formal consideration.

"Frankenthaler 'points to the four different compositional placements of the painting:its overall flatness, the play of the left side versus the right side, the interior of the white crossing passage--what she refers to as a cable or crevice'--and drawn lines, about whose space making she observes, 'I was very conscious of threading line through the cable/crevice'"


1972-1975 Hint from Bassano and Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Her work in this time is filled with wide swathes of color with the combination of levels both symmetrical and asymmetrical in context along with horizontal line movement.


1976-1977 Natural Answer and M.

After a trip to the Southwest, Frankenthaler came home with a new color palette which were mostly terra cotta shades. In this time period, the paintings were actually painted instead of stained.  With this there is a definite sense of structure and horizontal brush movement.


1978-1981  for E.M.

Paintings are becoming more rigid with themes and lines have a more interlocking look.  White starts to be a significant accent through them.


1981-1985 Reflections on a Blue Pool

Frankenthaler moves into a new period where the paint appears stained again with the addition of raised paint which adds texture and depth to the work.

1986-1988 Morpheus

She begins to move into implied grid like structures lending the work to have a more vertical movement and feeling.



I hope you enjoy these few selections from Helen Frankenthaler's collection.  Feel free to look her up as there is a vast amount of her work on the internet.

It's Ok to Be Weak

Aleathia says:

It has been a long time since I have posted.  There have been too many recent deaths, too many sicknesses in this house, and only so much energy for life to go around.  I have been pushing through and most everyone around me has not seen the deep and uncentered pain that runs my daily activity. Hanging around the theater department as a teenager afforded me great abilities at hiding behind a created character.

My father has been gone three months and I miss our phone calls every week.  I miss the sound of his impatience to get off the phone after 15 minutes which I always knew was an effort despite his love for me.  I miss his laugh.  Grieving his loss has been easier than my mother's.  He had a funeral and I got to spend some time with family who missed him just as much as me and who would remember all the wonderful things he taught them over their lives.  I got to say goodbye.  I was able to start that healing process in a positive way.

I woke up one day last month and realized that I had not allowed myself to grieve my mother's death. For two years I have been dragging my heart through the mud.  I have pretended to hate her and to be "relieved" she was gone.  I had such a hard time understanding her sudden death without a coroner's report or being able to say goodbye. There was so much about the ending that was disconnected, so much more I wanted to say to her.  Mostly, I wanted to tell her I loved her one more time.

I woke up knowing that I had to tell myself that I hated her to save my own life.  I could not let my heart feel that unsurmountable pain of loss.  I lost my mother at 40.  We had so much more history to make and wounds to heal and laughter to put out into the universe.  I can see now that I was protecting myself from her death.  It was the longest, darkest denial I have ever put myself through and I thank the heavens that I made it to the other side.

I am pulling down this wall brick by brick.  I wrote her the yearly letter I promised I would write.  I let myself cry for the loss of her when it comes over me without hatred or guilt.  I am not weak, but losing my mother nearly broke me.  No one really noticed I was dying inside, that I hated myself and life, that I didn't care too much if I woke up or not.  I'm glad that darkness is lifted.  I let myself be tired now.  I let my heart ache.  I let myself feel the love from my family and friends.

It has been a lonely two years and I did it to myself.  I am my toughest critic and have always been.

I am writing this post today for people who are going through a loss and a heavy grief.  Reach out to those people that love you.  They will love you through this ugly time; they will wipe your tears; they will hold your hand without judgment.  Don't go through it alone. Ask for help. No one is truly alone in the world.

Thank you to my love, Michael, for quietly waiting until I was ready to deal with life.  To my dear Chloe for being sensitive and for hugs when you just knew I needed them.  To my friends who listen and let me work things out at my own pace.  You are all dear to me.  This blog is going to be on an upswing from now on.  It has been hard to write them knowing my father wouldn't be reading them, but it is time to let that go too.

Stay tuned for a new blog on Helen Frankenthaler.  It is gonna be pretty.

Aleathia

Space, No Time

Aleathia says:

The other morning, after a long shift at work, I had a great conversation with my friend Tim as we waited for our time at work to be over.  I can't remember how we managed to slide onto the subject of concepts of time, but we did.

Tim talked about how on a daily basis, for just about all his life, he has had no concept of time.  He understands time counted, but its regimentation is lost to him.  He is one of those people that lives in space, not in time.  Further into the conversation he talked about how this made him feel like an outsider and how it challenged him to see things the way others see them.  Tim said he needed solid relationships to ground him to time.

My interjection to this conversation came from a Buddhist perspective.  In Buddhism, there is a base function of "form is emptiness; emptiness is form".  This is a simple sentence, but a drastically hard concept to swallow on a daily basis.  It requires one to let go of time and even sometimes space to live in a place that is built on the fluid idea that everything is connected, there is no beginning and no end.  Everything exists and does not exist simultaneously.

It seemed to me that those of us who try to live in some amount of awareness have a goal to live in a way that comes naturally to Tim.  He lives in the present with little worry of the past or the future.  I am one of those, for most of my life, who has been grounded too much in what was and what will be. When you live in such a place you have little time to be present with the life happening before you. You can miss the simplicity of clouds moving across the sky, bird song, laughter, small beauties and sorrows, and what other people are trying to tell or show you.

The American culture is one of having more....all the time.  We must go faster, get more, live harder. It is not difficult to get caught up in this or with people telling what you should achieve in your life. How many of us get bullied into living someone else's dream or expectation of us?

This idea of living in the present has been an achievement of mine. It has been an expectation that I want to live up to. Today I sat down to meditate and flipped to a page in the Dalai Lama's "The Art of Happiness" and came to this passage, aptly:

"Dealing with expectations is really a tricky issue. If you have excessive expectations without a proper foundation, then that usually leads to problems.  On the other hand, without expectation and hope, without aspiration, there can be no progress. Some hope is essential. So finding the proper balance is not easy. One needs to judge each situation on the spot."--Dalai Lama

To me, being able to have enough balance in which to achieve expectations comes from the balance and awareness of time and space.  Too much time leads to not being able to live in the present.  Too much space leads to lack of awareness.

This idea of time and space that Tim brought up has really struck a cord in me.  I was glad I was present in that moment and soaked in what he had to say. We all need more moments like that where we share the higher, spiritual knowledge that we house in our bodies.  It gives perspective and openness.

Aleathia

Recovering What Was Lost (Hello books!)

Aleathia says:

Those of you that know me or have followed me here at The Forked Road, know it has been a challenging couple of years with the loss of both my parents.  I never thought they would go so suddenly and so early, but if I look at it now maybe it was a blessing.  The both of them had multiple illnesses that in the end would have made them suffer terribly.  I am not sure I would have enjoyed watching them dwindle and cling to life.  I am not sure I would have been any more ready to let them go if they were older.  It is hard to say.

My mother's death was one of those devastating moments in life.  Our relationship was always tentative.  I believe she loved me in her own way, but her personality and my personality were on two different plans of the universe.  She did show me a certain amount of strength and perseverance that I will always hold dear, but in the end, I feel like her mental illness and drug abuse weighed more heavily on me than I liked.  Sadly and to many people's disbelief, I was relieved she was gone.  That was my struggle for the last two years....dealing with that relief plied with grief.  I should have seen a counselor, but I didn't.  I suffered alone.  I kept everyone out of my life and carried the burden on my rapidly aging back.

With her departure, she somehow took from me some of the things I loved most.  I had always been an avid reader, a lover of adventures in books, and someone with a great imagination.  I have struggled with these things over the last 2 years.  I read a total of 4 books last year.  4 books.  I could not concentrate long enough to gulp down the words to be interested in a story.  My last book of 2015 took me 6 months to finish.  It was barely 200 pages.

When I went home for my father's funeral I was able to spend a lot of time with my 82 year old grandmother.  Through all of life, she has been the rock firmly planted in my life.  She has always been a safe place to land, a lighthouse to a ship on dark seas.  As a child, I remember her apartment was always filled stem to stern with books.  At the age of 10, she introduced me to a fantasy series by Piers Anthony and my life was never the same.  I did not go on to be a fantasy book lover, but somehow it egged me into reading everything I could find.  My high school years were spent in library stacks discovering the world through someone else's eyes.  I feel I owe my love of reading to her.  I have surrounded myself with books my whole life, even when I didn't have money for food, because at least I would have some other adventure to go on in the face of hunger and dark times.

We talked about our shared loss and our shared depression over the last few years.  We counseled each other into a better place because we knew my mother differently than any other people in the world.  We knew the truth.  In these conversations, my grandmother shared that she did not know how to read until she was 10 and that her father was beside himself over it.  He used to yell at her and shame her for it.  She says that the words always looked mixed up and made no sense, so I think she had dyslexia.  She said one day, the words just straightened out and she has been devouring books ever since.

I feel like my grandmother at 10 years old.  I feel like I woke up from some deep and terrible sleep to find my love of reading again.  I feel like everyday is Christmas; every word a present.  I am concurrently reading three books at a time: fiction, non-fiction, and religion.  I finished my first book today and there is a glee in my heart that I am not sure I will ever be able to describe.  I feel like I am finding my way home.

Thank you all for sticking with me through these dreary two years.  It means the world to me that you keep coming back.  I only hope that my struggles have helped a few people over their own.  I hope to get back to sharing more art and food and books in the future.  My love to you all.

Aleathia

Part of Me, poem

"It is our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top"--Virginia Woolf

Photo courtesy of Chloe Drehmer

Part of Me

The house is dark and quiet,
my bedroom feels like a tomb
and for a few seconds
       I am not sure if I am awake or dreaming.

Everything is at once familiar
 but strange as if I'm seeing
 with new eyes.

I reach over
to the empty side of the bed,
remember you are working,
and feel alone.

I say morning prayers
and try to clear my mind.
I read a passage that says
there is no birth and no death.

Part of me says it's a lie
for I have felt both rip
at the sides of my heart.

Part of me understands
the meaning...
We are returned to the beginning
over and over.

How can you give birth
to something that always exists?
How can you grieve
what never dies?

I turn the Christmas tree on
and make the bed.
I need something to remind me
there will be presents and smiles.

The coffee brews and I sit alone
at the table
waiting.

Aleathia Drehmer 2015

RIP Jimmy Roger Joseph LeBlond

My father was born in the remote tip of Maine...just over the border was the river of his youth.  He was a man of nature and history and loyalty to the end.  He hated liars and people that weren't thankful for the life and land they lived in.  He was a soldier, a husband, a brother, a father, and a friend to many.  He told you the truth, always.  He loved baseball and wrestling and dogs.  He was a man of the world, but more so a man of this country.

My life with him has been tentative for so many reasons.  I don't remember the very early years as he was gone by the time I was 4 years old.  My mother was hard to live with and I would learn this throughout my life.  I would eventually understand the distance between us was more because of her.

We came together again when I was 10.  He was a stranger that I wanted to know.  I had looked for him out my window for 6 years.  I waited by the mailbox on birthdays and Christmases to see if he remembered who I was.  I never got letters or cards, but I still sat there hoping.  When I was 10 he gave me a garbage bag full of letters and cards he had carefully filled out and labeled with his own return address...all with my name on them and no address to send them too.  I cannot remember this moment, ever, without crying.  I was validated as a person and a daughter.

In those years, he taught me about history, Native Americans, architecture, woodworking, painting, hard labor, games, respect, honesty, truth, how to read maps, how to laugh, fishing, hiking, fiddle head picking, and how to make an apple pie.  I learned that I was only as good as my word and behind all words there must be actions to back them up.  He told me then that he named me  Aleathia because it meant truth.  This is a name that I have done my best in life to live up to though I have not always had a voice to speak it.

In all the years that we have been speaking to each other, but especially when I was 10-12, he always used to tell me "Improvise, Adapt. Overcome.  Semper Fi".  As a child, I am not sure I really understood what that meant.  I knew he was a Marine and in Viet Nam.  I also knew that this war and everything that happened to him there would always keep some sort of steel band around his heart.  For a long time I hated the military, because I felt it stole him from me.  These were childish thoughts for a hurt child.

The toughest decision I ever had to make was when I moved away from him at age 12.  I was not sure what a future with him would mean and my mom had always been there for me despite it all.  Before I left I remember my grandmother Regina sobbing and telling me that I was going to break his heart.  I know that I did.  It was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt.  It may be the one decision in my life that I ever regret.

We stayed in touch over my years in high school and I was so thrilled when he came up to New York to watch me graduate high school with honors.  Sadly, we drifted apart after that.  I wandered around the country trying to "find myself".  I had many journeys and pitfalls, but I always got back up.  I remember reconnecting with him when he lived in Florida and I took a trip down there.  It was a great time and also when I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter Chloe.

Connections between us were hit or miss and part of me was so angry that he didn't make an effort.  I even went to counseling over the subject.  My project was to write him a heart felt letter.  I did this.  6 pages front and back and I sent it.  I never heard back from him so I expected that was my answer...that I didn't mean anything to him.  Years later I found out that he never got the letter and I had spent those years in anger for nothing.

I have to say that my renewed relationship with my father would have never emerged if it weren't for Michael.  We were at my Aunt's funeral and Michael suggested I reach out to him.  We stood outside the funeral home as he smoked and he asked me if I was happy.  I told him I was.  And he said that is very good.  We didn't talk much more and I returned back to New York.  Once home, I comiserated over how it didn't go well.  Michael told me that he felt my father loved me and just because he couldn't show me that love the way I envision it doesn't mean he doesn't love me.

From that point forward, we started writing each other letters.  We shared our lives and what we had missed.  Sometimes we just talked about the weather, but it was fulfilling.  I was again waiting by the mailbox and this time, there were letters.  In the last year or so we had moved to phone conversations and anyone that knew Pop knew he hated the phone.  I took it as a direct sign of love that he called me every week to talk.  I am going to miss that the most.

This summer, Chloe and I went home for some time with Pop that didn't involve a damn funeral.  We stayed there for 5 days and I feel like that might be the biggest present I could have ever given my daughter...the chance to meet him and know him for the great man he was.  I am happy to have shared meals with him, walked the dog with him, and watered his tomatoes.  I am happy to have good memories as my last memories.

During this trip, when no one else was around he told me that he thought I would have been a great Marine.  I had to hold back the tears because this is the highest honor he could give a person.  It meant that through the years I had Improvised, Adapted, and Overcome.  I had lived my life in some semblance of truth and honor.  That I had fought the good fight and lived to tell about it.

Pop...I am going to miss you.  I am thankful for everything you taught me.  For your quiet love, for your service to this country, for never giving up on me.

If you hear ringing...answer the phone.  I'm calling you every week.  I love you.

Healing Anger (one minute at a time)

Aleathia says:

Today I had intentions of writing about the race, but something more important showed its face.  I was vacuuming the upstairs after bringing up the empty containers from Christmas decorating.  I vacuumed in front of my shrine and wondered why I haven't been sitting more.  The holidays are always hard.  They bring up so many good and bad memories.  They bring up anger when they shouldn't.

Michael told me the other day that he feels like sometimes I need to meditate more, that sometimes he notices things get away from me emotionally and I am all over the place.  These times shift the mood of the house.  I am well aware of my skill to diffuse the house with whatever problem I am holding inside.  It seeps through everything subversively.  At the time I might think I am doing a good job of hiding it, but in truth my family just steers clear of me.  Hell, sometimes, I want to steer clear of me.

So after I put the vacuum away, I stood there looking at the shrine again.  The house was empty and silent except for the noise I was making to keep myself distracted.  I pulled my cushion out and sat down.  I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to sit for long (hip is bad from running and attention span of a gnat).  I said my dedication prayer and one of my texts caught my eye...."Healing Anger" by The Dalai Lama.  There was one dog-eared page in the book so I flipped to it and started to read.

What I read smacked me in the face and made me tear up, because the truth often does that to you.  Here is what I read:

"Genuine peace of mind is rooted in affection and compassion.  There is a very high level of sensitivity and feeling involved.  So long as we lack inner discipline, an inner calmness of mind, then no matter what external facilities or conditions we may have, they will never give us the feeling of joy and happiness that we seek.  On the other hand, if we possess this inner quality, that is calmness of mind, a degree of stability within, then even if we lack various external facilities that are normally considered necessary for a happy and joyful life, it is still possible to live a happy and joyful life."--The Dalai Lama

Now this portion did not make me tear up.  This part was affirming to say the least.  Sometimes I forget the most basic principles of living a good life clouded by distractions, failed expectations, anger, and jealousy.  These are the things that make me human, but do not make me happy.  This next part is what slayed me:

"If we examine how anger or hateful thoughts arise in us, we will find that, generally speaking, they arise when we feel hurt, when we feel that we have been unfairly treated by someone against our expectations.  If in that instant we examine carefully the way anger arises, there is a sense that it comes as a protector, comes as a friend that would help our battle or in taking revenge against the person who has inflicted harm on us.  So the anger or hateful thought that arises appears to come as a shield or a protector.  But in reality that is an illusion.  It is a very delusory state of mind."--The Dalai Lama

I realized at that moment that I have been in a state of anger for several years.  It hasn't been harsh enough until recently for me to see it in myself, but it is there.  My mother died a few years ago and part of me is not sad that she is gone because she micro-managed me all the time.  She constantly made me feel like I wasn't doing good enough or being a good mom.  It was a horrible feeling and when she passed, I knew I would never have to feel like that again at her hand.  But I was angry too. She died suddenly, most likely of an accidental overdose combined with sleep apnea, and she had denied us all a funeral.  Mourning was solitary and painful and full of so many questions.  Sometimes I am angry at myself for not letting her come to visit that Christmas before she died when we first bought the house.  It would have been the last time I got to see her, instead the last time was at a funeral.

I have leaned very little on my faith over the last few years.  In part, I think I have wanted to punish myself...to not allow myself a way of understanding and healing for everything in my life.  I am not sure I can carry those burdens anymore.  My anger is evident to me.  My lack of compassion for the world is painful and unbecoming.

My anger has also come at work.  I have to say that I have felt betrayed in some way.  This could be real or imagined, but my state of mind at the time didn't help but to further the anger along.  Deep down I have been hurting and hiding.  This is something I learned long ago when no one was ever there for me when I had times of pain, sorrow, and disappointment.  I knew that I could count on myself...that I always had my own back.

But now I have people that love me.  Michael always has my back...and my heart in mind.  He is a strength that I rarely tap into, because I am afraid of how ugly my insides are sometimes.  It isn't fair to him or to my darling child to hide inside myself.  It isn't fair to my co-workers who have had to put up with my very disconnected attitude.  Healing always starts from within.  A person has to be willing to heal, willing to let people in, and decide to see the light in the world. I think this is my time.  I hope this is my time.

Thank you for listening.