Sounds of Silence

You know when you know and you ignore what you know? It was like that. I just wanted my pals to be inside doing what they always did, making jokes, music, fabulous food, and amazing art. There's so much to catch up on, that big old kitchen table is just waiting to gather our laughter and news.


No bikes, no cars...oh well, I certainly can't turn around and go back across town, besides, the back door is always open. I'll just hop the stairs onto the porch and walk in.


Someone is sure to be there soon.


Sumo graphic of the back porch.

There's Something Happening Here...

As I drive across town I imagine I am quite 'out of my body'. It's been less than 6 weeks since I gave birth and relinquished my baby to Catholic Charities Adoption. Then I came back to my parent's house and hear that a boyfriend had died alone in his apartment from a drug and alcohol overdose. After that shock I am informed that I will be living with strangers next door to my family home.

So having permission to borrow mother's car for this sunny Sunday afternoon gives me the freedom to begin to reconnect to the lives of friends. I'm going to visit a raucous group who are pursuing dreams as artists, musicians and poets. This group shares a big old dorm house on the campus of Case Western Reserve. Even being so oddly out of my body I feel happy that I will see them all, hear the music and have the chance to simply hang out.

An hour earlier the guy on the phone had told me that everyone was across the street in the park playing touch football. When I arrive there's no sign of them. Pulling into the driveway feels odd. There are no bikes leaning against the porch railing. There is no music floating out of the open windows into the small back yard.

This quick graphic done in Sumo shows the back of the house as I pull in.

The Morning Garden

Walking in the garden this morning I came upon Ruby Slippers of Wren House waiting for the sweet peppers to ripen. She'd lie there and stare at them all day long!

She pulls them, and tomatoes and zuccini right off their stems... if we don't watch her like a hawk.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

click on image to enlarge

Note: The entries with the funky computer graphics are reflections upon the early influences of my life as an artist.

After perhaps two weeks of living in my parent's neighbor's upstairs I worked up enough nerve to walk across the driveway and ask mother if I could borrow her car. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in late June and I wanted to go across town to visit my friends. It would be my first taste of freedom.

I'd been in hiding for 7 months.

When I discovered I was pregnant I went to see my boss. She called my mother and we had a meeting to discern what was to become of me. Mrs. McQuaide offered to send me to Mexico for a weekend. She suggested that when I came home I could resume my life "as if nothing had happened". In 1968 abortions were rumored to be performed by unscrupulous doctors in back alleys using clothes hangers.

I said, "No. I didn't do anything wrong and I don't deserve to be punished."

With this one option rejected it came to be my mother's turn to figure out what to do with me.

I was driven downtown to Catholic Charities to be admitted to their home for unwed mothers. A case worker gave us a tour of the dingy and guilt ridden rooms. Back in her office she slid the necessary paperwork across her desk and handed me a pen. I said, "No. I didn't do anything wrong and I don't deserve to be punished. "

She went to a higher authority. A Catholic Charity supervisor brought me into her office and gave me a talking to. She made a series of tense phone calls. Clearly she didn't want to chance my walking away and having them lose a young white girl's baby.

Eventually she arranged for me to go and live with an elderly couple prominent in the Catholic community. They lived in a mansion that contained three full kitchens, 10 bedrooms/baths and an octagonal ballroom. The fulltime painter did touch-ups room to room. The Arch Bishop was a frequent dinner guest.

I moved into the beautiful upper floor (attic) and became part of the household staff albeit the only live-in at that time. Each day I was required to change uniform three times as I carried out a list of duties beginning at 7 am. and ending at 7 pm. I was allowed 12 hours off per week and was given $12.oo. I was not allowed outdoors. It was an exceptional prison.

Sometime into the pregnancy I was hospitalized and the doctor said that I needed two weeks of complete bed rest at which point I called Mrs. Carlin and was told that I couldn't return. She said "Who will take care of us?"

Mother, intent on keeping my situation a secret, spoke to the produce manager at the grocery store where she shopped and soon I relocated to a tiny bungalow just three miles away from my parents home and several doors down from Millie, a former co-worker at the dress shop, making it necessary for me to remain indoors at all times. I began caring for Mary's three children ages 2-7 and her mother who had been through a double mastectomy. Mary, at 33, had just been widowed. We were a sad but determined little troop.

I was eager for what I percieved to be a normal life. So I was very relieved that mother consented when I begged her to let me borrow her car.

I was looking forward to seeing my artist friend Sandy, plus the poet and musician friends who all shared a dorm house on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, within walking distance of the Cleveland Art Institute.

I hadn't seen Sandy and the many other occupants of the sprawling house (located across from the little park where they were playing touch football) in months.

I imagine I sang all the way across the river to the other side of town.

This image, quickly sketched in Sumo, shows me driving my mother's old 59' Dodge with the huge fins over the Cuyahoga River spanning the flats in Cleveland.

When I get to the bottom

It all seemed so innocent. I made a phone call. I asked for my friend Sandy. He said she's across the street in the park playing touch football BUT she was hoping that you'd call. Are you coming over? What time? Great I'll tell her.

These quick sketches are made in Sumo ... keep me from lingering.

All We Need is Love

Click on image to enlarge

In allowing the pendulum to swing back from this 60 year mark I am not attempting to control where it goes. Currently some dark shadows are coming forward. Not to feel bad about life but to make space for how miraculously events unfold even in the darkest hour...and we ain't there yet.

It's 1968. No one escaped the burdens of that time...much like our current events.
Riots, war, assassinations; Martin Luther King, Jr. in April, Bobby Kennedy in June (buried the day my child was born). Major national unrest within and without. And yet ...The Beatles.


Coming back to my parents from the hospital the heavy national mood was there to greet me inside the front door. No one knew or showed the slightest interest in 'the secret' of my 7 month absence. Mother knew, she had hidden me, and she was vigilant in keeping secrets.

One of my sisters had moved into my bedroom in the tiny family house so I was given a space in the next door neighbor's attic. An elderly couple. They'd moved in while I was away. I set my easel up next to a twin bed. My 4 sibling's could be heard carrying on in the kitchen at home... across the driveway.

I'm 18. Quite numb. Yet... I have a dream. The promise made to my unborn...'at birth you will go to your new life and I will dedicate mine to becoming the best artist I can be'.

What next...

Click graphic to enlarge


My baby goes to Catholic Charities to begin his new life. My artist adventure continues.

A taxi takes me from the hospital to my parents home. I've been in hiding for seven months.

My darling thirteen year old sister runs down the driveway greeting me.


News: Former boyfriend found dead in his apartment.


This little graphic done using Sumo

Early Influence: 14,975 Days Ago

"The process of living, for each of us, is pretty much similar. For every gain there is a setback. for every success a failure. For every moment of joy, a time of sadness. For every hope realized, one is dashed."

This ballpoint ink drawing on business envelope measures 2 by 2 inches and was drawn June 9, 1968

Of The Earth

The woman with the wagon served as a metaphor. She helped me to see how I felt. I studied her. I was drawn to her silent way of moving through the world. No fuss. No muss. Simply focused upon her task. She had a garden. She communed with the earth in a way that no one that I knew had demonstrated. She seemed to have no other life. She was in fact OF THE EARTH. As a young artist learning to calm down and listen to my inner voice I knew instinctively that I could benefit from this.

Back indoors at my work table I would insert bones giving the figure a necessary armature to be able to 'stand up' to the world. I would sometimes turn the drawings around in my mind's eye, looking in reverse, in order to train my eye to see from all directions.

The two drawings done in pencil...one from life on newsprint the other in the studio on vellum. 1973.

Speaking of Gardens

My maternal grandmother Julia Toth, my angel Alice Twitchell and my Street Raking Woman all inspired me to plant some seeds, learn to compost and start an artist's garden.


I loved reading about Monet and his inspiration. The idea of living, growing changing plants ever reflecting the light and the weather; an organized place to walk and observe, to live and breathe in the rich color and the eternal ongoing process of life and death...a great mirror for reflection.

This felt like a healing direction in which to travel.

This garden was created using a traditional Williamsburg design by the home's husband and wife team of artist/builders. They were the sole owners. After their deaths the house sat empty for two years. The gardens grew over completely and the House Wrens moved in sleeping on the high roofed porch posts. When my partner and I discovered the snoozing balls of feathers we knew who really 'owned' this magic garden! There were many surprises including my first ever sight of a mole cricket (!!) as the paths were cleared and the beauty of the garden's of Wren House revealed their 'bone structure' .

The painting 'Summer Home' is Acrylic on canvas, 18x18 inches shown with two views of this mornings garden at Wren House.