Friday, July 09, 2010

Art and Age



I've had a little time in the studio the last few days. I thought I'd share some snippets of various pieces. One of these days I will get things posted on etsy, but so far I haven't had time to do that. But, one day. Really. One day.



This weekend I'm finishing up a magazine article and writing my column for Kansas Country Living. Those things must be done before Monday rolls around. I have a very long list of other things that should be done but I guess we'll see how the weekend goes.



I'm so glad it's the weekend. I really needed some quiet time at home, which I've had tonight. When I don't get enough quiet time I get really grouchy. I just need time to be still and quiet and think.

Something that's on my mind these days that I'm not sure what to do with is age, and how for some people it's such a dividing topic. Virginia and I had lunch today and were talking about this and she made some good points that it's hard to communicate sometimes with people when you don't have a lot of shared experiences in common. Well, I should be more specific and say communicate deeply.

I've always had friends of multiple age groups, and I'm very comfortable with that. Yesterday at lunch with the Ellsworth ladies I enjoyed meeting Rosemary, a lovely woman, who is 93. Last night I had a nice conversation with a twenty-something man who was at the movie at the Wichita library, and continued on Facebook. I'm comfortable with both ends of that spectrum. I probably have more in common with the 20 something, but certainly don't want to miss out on the 90 something, 80 something, 70 something, etc.

I've really been puzzling over this for a while. I live in a community where the focus is on getting young people to move here. "Young" in this case is defined as those under 40, although under 30 would be preferrable. I'm in my 40s and feel very much like I'm not wanted here anymore. I feel like I've "aged out." I'm just not sure what to do about that yet. Obviously, I've been thinking about it for a long time and haven't done anything except think. Maybe by the time I get around to making a decision the focus will have changed yet again and people my age will be welcome again.

2 comments:

sigerson said...

Hutch wants the 20- and 30-somethings to come back and breed more Hutch residents.

It says a lot good about you that you have friends across a wide age spectrum. It says you are flexible in your outlook and open to new experiences that others might not seek (remember this for the "life" workshop you plan to do).

At the risk of depressing you further, TV, fashion and marketing don't care what you and I think. They're all aimed at the Holy Grail of consumers: the 18-35 year olds with plenty of disposable income.

That's fine with me. I ignore most of them, too.

Patsy Terrell said...

Seems ironic since the largest amount of disposable income rests with people older than us. Hutch has just become so totally focused on young people that it does make me wonder if I need to move on. Surely some community would like to have me as a resident. Maybe I flatter myself in this regard!