The Art Crowd...

One of the things that Julie and I shared in common from the beginning was our love of art. In fact our second date, the day after our first date, was to the Celebration of the Arts festival in Midland. And by gosh, we were there again today.

This time as a married couple with child. Jack went a little begrudgingly, but we think he had a good time playing on the super sized blow-up amusements that seem to keep getting bigger and bigger. You know the ones. Put a kid in a velcroİ suit and throw him up against a velcroİ wall sticking him to said wall 7 feet up. Fun. But not having developed our apprecitation of the finer things in life, we were glad he had fun.

Our fun was browsing the art and seeing friends and artists again. We have made a habit of buying at least one painting from our good friend Helen Pogue each year and today we bought two. Helen is a true artiste, painting varied subjects and with several different styles but we love her stock in trade....landscapes and buildings of New Mexico. We have five now. They compliment our house very elegantly.

My big treat was visiting at length with Woody Gwyn [above] who over the last decade has gotten to be a friend. For Midland High grads, he is the artist who painted the mural over the stairs near the main entry hall. The mural was painted when he was youngster in high school and since he has gone on to great things. Today Woody relayed to me how he got started on the road to better things in the art world. It seems he conned noted artist Peter Hurd into granting him an interview at his home in New Mexico...thinking that Woody was an established artist. Mr. Hurd was astonished to see an 18 year old boy step out of the car, but being a gracious man talked with him anyway and advised him to skip college and instead attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. Which Woody did and after long years of work he is now nationally known, his works hanging in finer homes and museums including the Presidents home in Crawford where he did a commissioned work of the ranch for George and Laura Bush. I always enjoy talking with Woody, a very esoteric and funny guy, and we hope to be able to accept his invitation to visit him and his wife at their home in Galisteo, New Mexico this summer.

And no, we didn't buy an original Woody Gwyn. The one in the photo above is priced at $32,000. I didn't feel to humiliated though, as Woody told me, "Hey I can't afford my art either".