In this inaugural episode of new podcast series, Women at the Helm: Intersection of Women Artists and Writings, I explore Book Dedications.
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Writers highlighted in this episode:
Janet Fitch
Poet, Mary Oliver
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Image Credit: James Abbott MacNeill Whistler, “The Beach at Selsey Bill,” 1865
New Britain Museum of American Art
Script:
Welcome to my inaugural episode of Women at the Helm: Intersection of Women Artists and Writing. Thank you for being here! If you are new, you may notice archived episodes from my prior series, Beyond the Paint with Bernadine, a celebration of female artists and the female perspectives in art. Feel free to dive into episodes in which many include conversations with contemporary female artists……
This episode, this inaugural episode in this new series is about Book Dedications. Book Dedications as.defined by writer Daniel J. Tortora is “a short note of thanks meant to pay tribute/express gratitude to a person, people, a group or a cause that the author wishes to recognize. It appears on it own separate page in the front of the book.”
Even before I composed a sentence for a first draft for a memoir I am writing about the impact of the visual arts in my life, I wrote my Dedication. I solidified it to paper two years ago with one woman in mind; June Bogatz. She is one of many voices that steered my life through the wonders of the visual expression; but June, from Meriden, Connecticut, was an early mentor. I met June in my young thirties at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT. I enrolled as a volunteer in the museum’s docent program as an accompaniment to my studies in Art History. The museum docent program offered weekly classes in all aspects of art and training to lead tours of the permanent collection and special exhibitions with students, adults and families. The members of the docent program, comprised of mostly women over sixty, were unlike the women I was raised with. Their interests and curiosity for the visual arts manifested outside the domestic sphere where my Italian American, Roman Catholic family members relegated. The docents were teachers, artists, business people who embraced a zest for learning and being with other like-minded people.
June, a widow, mother to a Rabbi daughter and a son, retired librarian and long time docent at the museum became my docent mentor. She attended my first public art talk at the Museum, a twenty-minute presentation on James Abbott McNeill Whistler painting, “The Beach at Selsey Bill,” (1865, oil on canvas). June stood behind the small group of half a dozen visitors. I was so very shy back then and to be honest, not very engaging. Clasped in my hand were index cards with notes written in pencil. I recall skipping over a few bulleted highlights, causing me to stumble on my words. When my talk ended, the small gathering of attendees dispersed into adjacent gallery spaces .June handed me a small white bag with a cupcake in it. She gently advised me on some pointers for my next talk.
I am fortunate to have a chorus of supporters within my familial circle; my husband (I best describe us as comfortable as two old, worn shoes, my two adult children, my 5 grandchildren, all 6 and under who are my joy outside of the visual arts arena, my parents, especially my father who shaped my love of books, my brother Jim who inherited the same drive to pursue lofty goals from our mother, but June was the first person who helped me to boldly walk towards a life immersed in the perspectives or through the lens of women artists. Those women, their works and practices catapulted me, there are no words to express the impact women artists continue to have in my life. June with her decisive yet kind words nudged me to put myself out there, and over time as I pursued graduate work, honed my skills as a speaker and writer I am able to insert my deep love for women and art into the lives of my students, in my writings, this podcast, my art talks…my life has truly been enrichened by June. June died in 2005 several years after I left the docent program, though we continued to be friends. She encouraged me to write a book about female artists. Almost twenty years later—a memoir amplifying the voices of female artists will come to fruition. Gosh I miss her.
Recently I emailed her daughter, Dana, a Rabbi in New York. I sent her a draft of the dedication and my intentions of crafting and publishing my memoir. She replied in part, “Thank you! At my age there are fewer and fewer people who remember my mother, and even fewer who hold the love for you that you and I do.” She continued, how June loved “her time at the museum, and the strength of friendships she made there.”
At her funeral, June arranged for a passage of the poem “The Bride of Amazement,” composed by Mary Oliver, to be read during her memorial service. I will read it to you, emphasizing specific lines June requested to highlight. For my funeral, I will ask for Oliver’s poem to be read in its entirety.
When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
The following lines were read at June’s funeral service:
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement,
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Seared through my days are poem’s line “bride married to amazement, bridegroom taking the world into my arms,” and the spirit of my friend June Bogatz. The poem’s stanzas and imagery set the foundation for my life’s mission: “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.” My hope is that my readers will take the time to read this dedication; to feel endeared to a woman who pulsates through my memoir. Janet Fitch, author of the novel White Oleander wrote about Dedications: “It’s a private moment in what is otherwise a public object. Like a bit of graffiti, almost,” Fitch says. “It’s the only part of a book that’s going to be for one person.”
Thank you June for loving me. And to June’s daughter, Rabbi Dana who spread her good wishes to the writing of this book, “Carry on, Bernadine, and may the wind be always at your back!”