Category Archives: Retirement

Retired friends were talking about things they left at their previous homes and wished they had kept. After the conversation, I began to take a mental tour of the house I left in Maryland when I moved to Arizona. As my imagination took me from room to room, I recalled the fun adventures Charles and I had as we shopped for and selected everything.

Reminiscing as I visualized each room and space, I have no regrets about leaving almost everything we owned behind. We enjoyed them for years and I am grateful for that. There are, however, two exceptions to my laissez-faire attitude about what I left behind.   

While I could not have kept these two items because of my current space, I would like to be able to look at them every now and then.

Both of these prized items were in a room seldom entered unless there was a special occasion. We made what had been a game room into our living room, despite its being in the very back of the house. 

In place of the game room’s pool table, our living room featured a large, square, black lacquer coffee table with fat rounded legs making it appear as if crouching low to the floor. That table owned the space it covered. It could not be dismissed.

A particular photo comes to mind of a friend sitting on the floor next to the table while celebrating Christmas with us. Despite a riot of wrapping paper strewn across the table and the loveliness of the smiling friend, that table still took center stage, quiet and magisterial.  

In that same room was what I considered the most beautiful object in the house. I don’t recall how our search started, but we were on the hunt for Quezal iridescent glass in the art nouveau style for our central light fixture to replace the previous track lighting.

We searched antique shops and contemporary shops for just the right lighting for this special room. We recognized it instantly. it was like looking at our newborn among a nursery of beautiful babies. Everything else paled in comparison.

As it turned out, it was not what we thought we were searching for. I’m unable to give a fair description of this chandelier that looked like nothing we had ever seen. There was no sparkling glass. There was no lightness about it. It was as heavy as it looked. We feared that the beautiful antique brass base needed to attach it to the sloping ceiling would not be able to support it.

Not to everyone’s taste, it had a huge bowl shape with golden brass fittings. The color of the bowl was the peach of an early Arizona evening sunset with subtle granite-like veins sparsely trailing throughout.  It was gorgeous without the light being on and awestriking when lit. When we first got it, we would walk into the room together, look up at it, and then look at each other and smile with great satisfaction.

Guest post by Dee Jenkins

I think drawing and painting demand a certain kind of faith, a willingness to believe that bearing with the processes involved will eventually lead to a worthwhile outcome. If I didn’t hold that view, I don’t think I could tolerate the inevitable frustrations and disappointments that occur along the way.

When I work, I repeat a sequence of actions over and over again on the same surface. There are two phases in the sequence; one is analytical and intellectual, and the other is driven by interior sensations and needs. I used to think the phases were in conflict with each other in a negative way, but I have come to see the conflict as positive and critical even, because the tension it creates can eventually lead to a surprising and gratifying resolution well worth the time and effort involved.

Such a process, however, demands an endless evaluation and re-evaluation of pictorial elements, including the elements of a picture’s dimensions and edges. It was Giacometti who gave me permission to think of them this way, despite the fact that in most of my art classes I had been instructed to take the dimensions one starts out with as a given. Watching a dog “make its bed” also gave me permission, since before deciding on the right space in which to settle in and settle down, a dog will thoroughly investigate an area; go here, go there, circle around, dig things up, pat things down, etc., just as I like to do (sort of) before I can settle in and settle down within a pictorial space that feels comfortable.

Jazz, Latin, and Tango have all enriched my visual education, as have art and artists from both past and present. Best case scenario: there is music in what I do, and a rhythmic connection between the parts and the whole of every picture. It is frequently the “mistakes” I make as I work that lead me in the most unexpected and exciting directions, and any idea I start out with has by the end, been transformed into something very different from my initial intention. The process of creating an image is ultimately a mystery, and it may be one that is better left unsolved.

Dee Jenkins is a painter, and retired professor, County College of Morris, New Jersey.