Mom’s kind of town

Sherwood Kiraly

Summer is arts festival time, when we’re reminded that Laguna Beach,

even more than a beach town, and even more than a TV series now out

in DVD, has been an arts colony for as long as anyone can remember.

It’s the time of year when I particularly wish my mother were here.

For many years she was the secretary to the head of the department

of pathology at Billings Hospital at the University of Chicago. She

got that job in the ‘40s and held it until retirement, because that

was what children of the Depression tended to do. But at heart she

was a painter.

When she was young she studied at the Art Institute in Chicago,

and when I was young she’d take me there, where I’d goggle at

Seurat’s pointilliste masterpiece, moving up to peer at the dots. She

oversaw the fourth-grade report I confidently entitled “All About

Art.” I glued an El Greco postcard to the cover and a bunch of other

Art Institute postcards inside, and wrote about the French

Impressionists with simulated understanding.

Mom soon discovered that her son had few painterly gifts; to this

day the only thing I can draw is a cartoon rabbit standing in

profile. Any show of my complete works would consist of “Rabbit 1,”

“Rabbit 2” and so on through the color chart. She wisely refrained

from encouraging me in this area.

She continued her own painting until I was a teenager, including

an impressive, unfinished landscape that covered most of our dining

room wall in Hinsdale, Illinois. This landscape remained unfinished,

though; she had little time to

paint when she was working and refused to resume in retirement.

She said she wasn’t any good anymore.

Her attitude was consistent, really. The image of artists I got

from Mom was that they set themselves a personal standard at which

technique meets vision on the canvas, and their work is a struggle to

reach that level. If they do it once, they try to do it again. If

they do it often, they raise the bar. If

they can’t do it, you don’t see it.

But I do think she gave up too soon, and that the right impetus

might have started her rolling again. Had I moved here before she

died, she would have visited me here instead of in Tustin or Irvine,

where I lived before. And had she spent a few days in Laguna, I

believe she’d have planted her easel over near Las Brisas and gotten

back to work.

Few towns have an artist’s heart, but this one does -- a heritage

perpetuated by its galleries and festivals, which would have suited

Mom down to her shoes. Although Cezanne was her hero, any town with a

street named for Rosa Bonheur would have struck her as on the right

track.

Laguna has always been receptive to artists of all kinds, with the

recent caveat that most of them can’t afford to live here. So this

summer, don’t forget to stop by a gallery or a festival and see what

they’re doing. I know Mom would if she could.