![]() Dedicated to Helen Zimmerle, My Friend with Delightful Imagination I am currently putting the finishing touches on an installation of my art at the Camp Verde library. In the main lobby, “To Preserve Their Dreams" , my display of seven women and children remind people of the horrors of human trafficking. Upstairs we have hung over thirty masks and other pieces representing my current work. I walk in, look around, and am in awe. Where did this come from? How did I get into from writing memoir and poetry into this space with these ceramic sculptures? Many times as I cross the threshold into some totally new venture, I dig into my memory to pull out a mentor who led me here. How appropriate that this time, the mentor who started me on this part of my journey once lived across the street from this library! Helen Zimmerle. The magic times we spent behind electrified fences, the times we wiled away the hottest summer afternoons, those times started me on the path to here! I dedicate this exhibit to you. Here is your story: I walked into the marshal’s office in Camp Verde. The library was being rebuilt, so they used a large meeting room in the front of the Marshal’s office for library classes. I was scheduled to teach “writing memoir there.” I saw Helen sprawled across several seats in the front row. Although not large a physically large person, her assorted papers, flying out of books and bags, the beautiful stone she had picked up in the parking lot and books from her childhood she had been reading and wanted to share, meant Helen occupied a substantial piece of space in any room where she sat. I inwardly groaned. Although delightful, Helen was not the ideal student in any memoir class. “Keep your writing to only three paragraphs,” I admonished. I wanted to be sure I fit in time for everyone who had written to share. Keeping Helen on topic, and within the stated time limits presented a challenge for my teaching. “I wrote my three paragraphs, “ she announced. When I called on her, she explained her intention to write succinctly. But this paragraph here was continued on another paper, and when mentioned the tree house in the maple tree in New Jersey, she needed just this one article in the Verde Bugle about tree houses to illustrate her inspiration.. I have never met anyone else more creative than Helen. She turned rocks into princess dwellings. She gathered up a bit of moss, found a few smooth pebbles, grabbed a shell she had found at the shore in New Jersey, and with a twist of wire she produced an enchanting miniature palace. Her garden was lined with these fantastical creations. That garden, sitting smack in the center of the hottest spot in the entire Verde Valley, was unforgettable. She set up stepping stones in such a way I felt transported to a shady pond. Shade-loving flowers in deep purple imbued the shade with gentle breezes, although they actually crouched under the slim, weak shade of a mesquite tree. In the back corner her husband, carrying fantasy even further, was constructing model train tracks through an old English countryside. And her pool! Bob had set up an above-ground three-foot deep pool for her. Steps up and into it draped over one side. It was awkward to climb in. She placed red, green and blue floating inner tubes in and they clustered into one area of the pool. And, should you have forgotten your swimsuit, she had three or four suits waiting for you, all over-sized and stretched out of shape. I never took my swimsuit down to her place, but always ended up in the holey purple one. I went down and floated in her pool the day my brother died. The coolness of the water, and Helen’s genuine interest in my favorite stories of Jim’s puns pushed my tears of grief back for a few hours. Helen was the person who shepherded me from being a creative writer to moving into visual arts. She and I picked up all kinds of wood around her property. We marveled over the termited section of wood that had killed the cottonwood tree in her goat pen. The pieces of wood we collected were filled with small, blackened tiny holes. Such promise! We mounted them on pieces of tree stumps, using papier mache. She took out her dremel and showed me how to use it to smooth and shape the wood. No matter what I saw in a piece of wood I was playing with, Helen saw it too, and encouraged me to move further with my creation. Helen passed two years ago. Since then I have moved beyond the papier mache and wood assemblages she helped construct into these ceramics. I know Helen has sat in my passenger seat frequently as I have driven out to my ceramic studio in Sycamore Canyon. And as I hung the 15 different abstract faces across the mantle of the Camp Verde Library’s fireplace, I heard Helen’s stage whisper reminding me to give each of them a bit of extra space to “talk.”
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Ann Metlay"With all the beauty surrounding me here above the Verde Valley, how could I not create more beauty?" Archives
October 2020
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