Strange Monday

It was a strange day today, a holiday Monday without people, in a place usually full of people. 

I love standing at the edge of things, we all seem to. Unlike places that let us wander, edges make us stop, think about where we are in space. So today we stopped. Everybody else seemed to have stopped somewhere else.

So we had the riverfront to ourselves, pretty much. (an occasional jogger, lizards, dragonflies, and some leaping silver fish)

And it was wonderful.

Circus Thursday

Last night, in downtown Delray Beach, Atlantic Avenue seemed very much like Atlantic Avenue, except for certain things:

Like girls spinning on rings,

and twirling on sashes,

strong men balancing on one hand,

gentlemen who play with fire, 

and, sometimes, swallow it.

But, best, I think, little kids, (and a few adults) got to fly,

and just that, in itself, was enough.

Rockport

Rockport, Massachusetts was never a real place for me or my family, though we went there every year. My father drove up from New York for long weekends before he met my mother, they drove up there together from New Jersey the day after their wedding, I wore out my first shoes learning to walk on one of its beaches. By the time I was a teenager I had decided I would move there as soon as I could, that I would have an apartment in one of the old houses and my studio would have a wall of windows looking out to sea. But it wasn't a real place, complicated by every day life, knotted up with disappointment and peer pressure and cramming for the SATs - it was a place to be away from all of that. It was a measure, a way to gauge the changes between one summer to the next one. And it was heightened not just by its beauty and light but by the fact that it was not at all like the every day, it was a place that made my head spin with my need to be there, sitting on the rocks at the edge of the ocean, and not back in the near past or the anxious future.

But Rockport, Massachusetts is a real town, though devoted to tourism - you must have seen, at some point, a postcard or a dish towel with the red fishing shack printed on it - it's a real place for everyone who isn't a day tripper or a long weekender. I didn't go to live there and have a complicated routined life anywhere near it, it never became a normal place for me. And when I went back last week after the longest stretch of time between, the first time without my Dad there, setting up his easel on Bass Rocks, it remained a place that I compared my past to, measured my progress, acknowledged glaring changes, though even more so. Much more so.

Three Graces, at last

At last I went to Three Graces Gallery, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and saw my work in a space that I had always suspected was perfect for it, that I knew was intimate and lovely. Kim Ferreira's gallery is like a treasure box with magic things in every corner. I walked in on opening night of The Nature of Things and I knew that it was right.

Molly Bosley

Thank you Kim, for making everything happen, to Bob for his wonderful cooking, for both of you opening your beautiful home to us, and thank you to Jody and Kirsten and Evan and Julie and Eli for traveling to be there with me, thank you forever to Mom, thank you Tiffany and Robin, and thank you so so much Betsy, who drove across a state so we could finally meet, face to face and heart to heart.

The Nature of Things: Amy Gross and Molly Bosley

May 4 - May 28

Three Graces Gallery

105 Market Street

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

603-436-1988

Art from the show is also for sale online here