Ann Metlay Artist and Writer

This is September, a time I find myself yielding to circles.

I am returning from a trip to visit my grandsons at the beach. I marveled at the circles I found there. My son, once a tiny baby, now has children of his own. Max, my grandson, and I went to see Lion King, and its circle of life. Tides, caused by the cycle of the moon, rose and fell. Sunrises and sunsets, different over the ocean than in my own desert, created a daily circle.

September, for most of my life, marked the beginning of a new school year. This was the time to buy new clothes, to meet new students, to set up a new class, to enter into the rat-race of lessons, preparations and meetings. After almost ten years of retirement, I still feel a pull to jump into this circle.

Circles play a prominent role in Judaism at this time of year. The final month of the Hebrew year, Elul begins now. This is the month for reflection. Every year I reserve daily time during this month to look at my interactions with friends and family, with the greater humanity, the world around me, and my spiritual center. What can I do in the year to come to improve all these relationships?

Think about circles and their sizes: Small ones, sometimes so tightly formed they become knots; the huge ones, where their arcs appear to be straight lines, leading off into some oblivion. I learn to loosen the knots, to find the bends in those seemingly endless straight lines and return to their circle-ness.

Circles, when I am not paying attention, can become mazes. Wrong turns force me into dead-ends. I must double-back, find my main route again. My goal is to turn mazes into labyrinths. Labyrinths are my favorite circles. They swing around and around, sometimes heading away from the center, the goal of the endeavor. With trust, I get to those goals, the purpose for the journey. Then, I go on to the other labyrinths in my life.

And what, you ask, do circles have to do with Ann Metlay Art? Yearly cycles become a prominent on with my artistic endeavors. I move into the month of September, summer heat dissipates. Now tourists plan their return. How can I attract them to my gallery? After a fertile period of displaying my art in local libraries and creating more art at the Reitz Ranch, I am am ready to display this creativity at my studio on 6th Street in Cottonwood. The harvest awaits!

As I look ahead to the month of September, I set goals for myself: I will have a true art gallery featuring true art. I will honor predictable weekend hours (9 to 4 Fridays, 11 to 4 Saturday and Sundays). I must make it easier for my customers to find me! I will use of social media to better sell my product. This website, three or four months in the making, will debut. At the end of September I will hold a grand opening for this stage in my evolution as an artist.

Stay tuned! Let’s do circles together! Join me as I form arcs in the circles leading through September, into the coming year.

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Early morning. The sunrise casts an orange-pink glow across my room. Time to get up and walk my dogs. As I roll over and prepare to sit up, Baruch, my mini-wire-haired doxy, a cloud of long, soft black/gray hair, rolls over to nuzzle me.

I rescued Baruch as a puppy, six years ago. Then he was afraid of everything, and had difficulties with fear-biting. Walking him has always been sketchy, as he was ready to nip every person who approached us. From Baruch’s perspective, these looming human figures, five feet above his head, could be ready to attack him. He had to defend himself (and me, too).

And other dogs we passed, also on walks? Baruch’s macho nature was triggered. He lurched, pulling his leash, growling and barking. He did not see himself as a mere fraction of the size of dogs we passed. To protect us, I learned, early on, to stoop down and pick him up whenever we approached anyone else. Although awkward, he never barked from my arms.

My concerns for dogs and their walkers, and my concern for my shoulder which was sharply pulled when he barked, led me to resolve to train him. Remembering back to my days in special education with severely impaired students, I turned to the strategy of positive reinforcement. This means ignoring the negative behaviors, instead, praising profusely for the behavior you want.

Wanting to eliminate his barking, I selected the label, “Quiet mouth.” I began by praising Baruch over and over when he was not barking. “Good quiet mouth.” I crooned over and over. At first I praised him in the house as he was sleeping. He probably did not even know exactly what I meant by “Quiet mouth”, but loved any praise I meted out.

Once we established quiet mouth, I brought the words outside with us. We walked along with no dogs or people in sight. I stopped regularly to praise him for his quiet mouth. A dog appeared, and he barked. I continued, at the beginning, to pick him up, then, but said nothing about his barking. As soon as the dog, or person passed, and he was not barking, I put him back on the ground again and reinforced, “Good quiet mouth.”

I also began my chant, as we approached other dogs, before he barked, “Good quiet mouth.” It took months for Baruch to begin to change his barking patterns. Eventually I felt I had enough control, and I could stop picking him up. Maybe by my chanting “Good dog, quiet mouth also helped passers-by to understand this was not a dog to interact with.
We first mastered the non-barking when we passed dogs on the other sides of fences. Somehow, Baruch saw how silly he looked lunging at dogs he could not even see.

Dogs walking down the street were harder. Sometimes they wanted to bark at us. Baruch certainly felt threatened. I began to stop several hundred feet before we passed another dog, pulled Baruch closer on his leash and chanted “Good dog. Good quiet mouth!” as they approached and passed. By now I was not picking him up. He growled sometimes, but this was under his breath.

Walkers we passed regularly recognized us. They pulled their dogs closer and walked by on the other side of the road. As Baruch’s responses to these dogs lessened. the owners smiled, and Baruch’s barks grew more muffled.

This process has taken a year. Maybe Baruch will always bark at one dog, the husky behind the fence across the street who starts howling as soon as we approach his house. He howls as we pass, and Baruch cannot seem to resist.

Otherwise, we have progressed! This morning we passed five “regular” dogs, ones we knew. Baruch did not bark at any of them. We did not even have to stop for them to pass. One owner gave me a thumbs-up sign. But the real victory was the dog we had never seen before. He began barking at us half a block before we passed. Baruch noticed him, did a semi-lunge in his direction, but did not bark. The other dog’s owner shushed him, and we passed by, Baruch walking proudly, tail dancing.

Maybe Baruch is almost ready for a foray to Dead Horse where the dogs are not familiar? Can I plan on buying a pass for that park in September?

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Who Are We

We are all one……My eyes the stars……Your mouth the song of birds.….. My ears the rush of rivers…..Your legs the trunks of trees ….. My arms the stalks of corn……Your skin the fertile soil…My hair the waving grasses…..Your spine the sturdy mountain…In me the singing birds, the cautious foxes, the shy skunk..…In you the mighty whales, the sparkling fish, the swirling octopus..…My veins hold the rivers…..Your arteries are filled with the mighty ocean..…I walk into sunrise…..you retreat into sunset….I sigh with the sun…..You moan with the moon…..You, me, my mother, your grandfather, my friend, your enemy…..we are all faces of the One…..One God…..one plan…..one reason…..One life…..One death…..We are all one.

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Patriotism. Ever since I saw the topic for Memory Writing in Clarkdale, I have been thinking about the meaning of this.

I was raised in a Liberal-Berkeley home during the McCarthy era. I was told over and over it was my responsibility to criticize my government. Names like McCarthy, and Nixon and even Bobby Kennedy were tossed around as those “out of control’” Singling out people for being “Communist” limited their free speech. I lost a wonderful social studies teacher to the House UnAmerican Committee. I had learned so much from him about how our government worked. I got to be a Senator and helped to shepherd my “bill”through our government to allow ice cream in the cafeteria if students paid for it.

“Yes.” Our government was wrong. The threat of stifling so-called Communists was potentially more damaging to our government than anything he filmmakers and artists threatened to do.

I learned it was never “My government right or wrong.” It was, “If the government makes mistakes you are to get out there, vote and fix things.”

Then came Viet Nam. In my world, clearly our government was wrong. We had no business fighting France’s war over a distant land which meant nothing to us. And, my male colleagues faced the draft. Not yet old enough to vote, these men had to find hiding places so they would not get swept up, sent off to kill and be killed in an “illegal” war. I marched and marched. I went down to the train station where new recruits were being put into the trains to take them off to Viet Nam. I screamed to them, cried, prayed, begged them not to leave.

But I did not lose hope in our government completely. I still saw this country as my home. I still felt it was incumbent on me to get out there and change it. The travesty of the 1968 elections. My first time to vote. I dearly loved Bobby Kennedy (the enemy of the 50s). I campaigned for him in the Primary. Sat down to watch his victory party in Los Angeles. Toasts in hand, we watched him walk through the fateful kitchen. Not another shooting!!!! And then Democratic party was in shambles.

The circus of Chicago. I watched that with disgust, from a summer camp. The whole Democratic Convention was co-opted, and my fold would not take this sitting down. By then I knew I was on my way to Nigeria, and the Peace Corps for two years so my boyfriend could escape the draft I could get away for two years and maybe things would die down.

The choice for me and my friends was to vote for Hubert Humphrey who had once been “good”, but was now owned by “them” or to vote for Eldridge Cleaver and the Peace and Freedom Party, throw my vote away, and face the responsibility I helped to elect Tricky Dick. Not until years later have I admitted I did vote, my first vote for president, for Hubert Humphrey.And my major thought as we flew across the night to Nigeria on the night after the election was, “I need to get away.”

While I was gone our country did fall apart. My dear friend had his hand shot off by police, newly returned from fighting in Viet Nam. With shotguns loaded with birdshot they killed one “Hippie”, blinded another, seriously wounded several more, and injured more than 50 peaceful protestors. A year later in Kent State this got the headlines.

In 72, ever the optimist, I worked devilishly for McGovern. I had not lost faith in my country, just in the current government, and I wanted to change it. Two years later Nixon got dragged down by his own hand.

We are now in a third critical period, within my life, of governmental crisis. We are divided as we were before. but this time it feels different. I believe we are saddled with an entire half of the country that does not respect our government. I see them as being out to better their own lot, without any concern about the broader picture, about this country, and the principals for which it stands. How can my government run those “detention camps”? Am I, as an American citizen, party to the neglect, the abuse piled on people only wanting the freedoms my ancestors got here? How can I, in any way, be a citizen in a country where I feel my opinion has no stance in how things are decided?

Patriotism in 2019 is hard for me to swallow. You cannot line tanks across the National Mall, a place where I have always sought reconciliation, and say you are celebrating any country. I can claim. A liar for a president? Not in MY country.

I will hold onto my memories of past patriotic celebrations. And I will pray for more in the years to come. This year I chose to sit out the Patriotic.

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Our fathers, remote,
their art from heaven
“Hallow their names,” we were taught,
but to me they were hollow.

My father carried his baggage
in his hand. I watched it,
ducked when necessary

His pain unsharable
his aspirations unreachable
his pride contained
in a crystallized heart,
stuffed into a chamber,
alarmed against intruders
by fighting fists
and nervous flicking thumbs.

“God loves you like a father,”
I was taught, but I wanted
nothing to do with that father,
my father, the memories, the pain.

So we remained remote.
His dreams for me fading
into last year’s classroom art project,
my love for him aloof, almost hostile.

Today, though, I stand ready to offer my father,
our fathers, a new plan.
Come down from heaven, I offer,
past those ferocious thunder storms,
the raging winds, our pain-soaked tears.
I await you.

Let me love you now for the man
you tried to be, the father hidden
behind the clouds passed down
from your father’s father.
Come into my grateful heart.
Let our tears mix, become rainbows.

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New Expressions

5/26/2019

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Changes are adrift. My old gallery, Adrift Assemblages, will change its name to Expressions Artist Gallery. A new website is almost ready to launch. As my art matures, my vision for art gets more focussed, and my skills with ceramics more honed, I find it is time to move up.

Open Studios, last month, was relatively slow for me. Not as many visitors as I would have liked. But, as is generally the case, one visitor, Russell Colton, did come, saw my potential as an artist, and has, since then, jumped in to help me in so many ways.

He raved at one of my pieces after another. And, he asked a big question: “Why do you display driftwood outside? I have driven by here hundreds of times, going to the library, the rec center, the post office, and never realized you had art in here.”

Over the next hour he offered suggestion after suggestion for changing my image. “Where outside does it say, ‘Art’ Why do you have none of your art in the window? How do you plan to market this? I thought you only sold driftwood in here!”

This started an ongoing consultation and collaboration. Russell has jumped in to help me upgrade my gallery. Working with his suggestions, I have moved all the driftwood to the back of my studio. I have decided to rename my gallery. We are working together to design my new look—a website, a business card, a new sign outside.

And, as these changes have begun to take shape, my art has begun to find new forums for exposure. Down in Camp Verde my exhibit “To Restore their Dreams”, expressing my anger and pain over human trafficking, is on display. Joining “my ladies”, I have 30 pieces of my art upstairs. As of June 1 I will be in the Muse Gallery in Old Town Cottonwood. Also in June, I will have three pieces, Hebrew words, with poems, in the Old Town Center for the Arts. In July I will have art in the Clark Memorial Library. And more ideas are bubbling!

I have always been a poet. My art, as it has developed, has carried my poetic voice. Poetry always flowed through me. One of my goals, as my art continues to develop, is to find more ways to incorporate poetry with my pieces of art. I have made a dozen wall hangings with Hebrew words. These come with an interpretive poem.

Also, the blog on my website continues to be important to me. I strive to write at least two blogs a month, one of them being poetry, memoir, short story or some other form of literary expression. As I continue to develop my art, this I will hold this focus.

As I have worked with Russell I have come to see I create more than ceramic sculptures and assemblages. My art, is sculpture, with words, with creating and re-creating myself over and over, I am Expressions.

In September I will do a grand opening and ribbon cutting for my studio. In the meantime, join me on my continuing adventure as I re-invent my art, as I find many new Expressions.

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my journal

Circling On

Cooling Down a Hot Dog

We Are One

Patriotism

For Father's Day

New Expressions

Ann Metlay

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