THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME TO DREAM

I am posting a copy of the last of my 2013 Studio/Gallery 5 e-newsletters which I sent two days ago, followed by a few comments inspired by my daughter Sara's response.

DREAMS OF A YOUNG ARTIST

Oh to be young and fearless again.  Actually just being young again would do, but for the sake of this letter fearless has to be part of the mix. Encouraged by commercial success during my early years as an artist, I harbored ambitious dreams for myself.  One of them was to see my art on the cover of the New Yorker magazine.  I was convinced I could make that happen.  In fact I was so confident that I created a series of paintings, composed to fit the cover of the magazine and accommodate the text.   Eventually reality intervened and I never queried the magazine with my cover art.  (I learned that they do not accept un-solicited artwork.)  I later sold several of the paintings, but a few remain, resting quietly in a file drawer in the gallery.

    

       

        I am not haunted by the dreams that never made it, because so many did.  (I still think they would have made great covers.)  If you don’t allow yourself a dream, you can be sure it will never happen.  If you allow yourself a dream, there is always the chance it may happen.  The choice is ours, and I choose to dream, even as an old artist.

THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME TO DREAM

Responding to my newsletter, Sara wrote this simple line:  “I love these dad.  Thank you for teaching me to dream.

The sentiment expressed in those 7 words – “Thank your for teaching me to dream” - fills me with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment  beyond my ability to describe.  Teaching my children to trust and to nurture their dreams was very important to me.  (It is probably more accurate to describe my role as allowing and encouraging them to dream rather than teaching them.)  The message is a simple one; not everyone can be whatever they want to be, or do whatever they want to do.  But everyone can try.  And dreams are both the foundation and the force that sustain these efforts.  These are not mindless, pie in the sky dreams detached from reality.  These are the dreams that determine who we are, and how we choose to live our lives, dreams that call on us to use all of our facilities to achieve our goals, dreams that take us from within ourselves into the world around us.

There are no guarantees or promises of success and happiness, and the satisfaction of knowing we made the effort may be the only reward. 

 

MY GRANDFATHER'S GRAPES

I've been told my grandfather had the first legal winery in southern New Jersey. He produced wine in the early 20th century from his small family vineyard until prohibition put him out of business. The vineyards were still there during my early years and I remember them well. He and my father continued to make wine every year, a tradition my father continued for the rest of his life. As a young boy I remember the 5-6 barrels of wine in our cellar where I would take an occasional drink from a mason jar lid. It bothers me that I cannot remember when the vineyard was "removed"

What follow is a dream I had several years ago:

"I am walking through the flat south Jersey fields of my childhood, heading east into the land that once was the Renzulli farm. To the south I can see the Goffredi homestead and the fields where we played so many baseball games. To the north, beyond Siciliano’s farm is the silhouette of the cannery; I could still see the trucks, overflowing with ripe tomatoes, lined up during the glorious late summer days, the air smelling heavy from the tomatoes being processed for canning.

I am explaining all of these images to whoever might be with me on this dreamy journey, as we enter the overgrown field where our vineyard once so proudly thrived. ( t was a small vineyard, perhaps 15-20 rows of grapes about 500 ft long. But to me it was a magical playground, where the large leafy plants offered many intimate hiding places, nurturing so many fantasies and dreams of a young boy playing his games. And the best part? At any time you could pick a handful of large grapes, white, blue,or red, and squeeze the skin and pop the pulpy, juicy grape directly into your mouth.) Once I am in the field, I am alone, and my only thought is to look for signs of the long gone grapes, hoping there might be one or more small shoots that have survived after all these years. I begin to dig and scrape away some of the surface soil, and to my amazement, and delight, find old, thick, gnarled roots, one of which has a small green shoot trying to extend upward. I continue digging and looking and am rewarded with several more roots with signs of tender life.

Before attempting to remove them I know I must do two things, first, get permission from the current owners to do so, and second, do some research on how to safely remove and transplant the roots.

I want to restore-resurrect the grapes of my grandfather and father. I want to see the Renzulli vineyard, producers of Father & Son Claret, thrive, one more time."