Monday, February 15, 2021

There is something comforting about looking back and remembering others who were instrumental in helping us become the people we are. As we age, many of us seem to spend a bit more time looking back at our lives and thinking about those who helped us become who we are.

Contributor friend, Bonnie M, sent me an email the other day:

My mom used to find art teachers for me when I was growing up in Cleveland, sometimes through the Cleveland Art Institute or Museum, other times just through word of mouth. Sandy Diamond was one of those teachers I worked with from the time I was about 12 until about age 18.

Yesterday I remembered a piece I wrote about my “childhood art teacher” when she died five years ago. I had been out to visit her in Port Townsend, Washington in 2011, but I had not seen her since 1971, although we corresponded occasionally over the years.

She was a special soul, gentle yet firm, and encouraged however I did art.

Here is Bonnie’s remembrance of her former art teacher, Sandy Diamond: following:

On hearing of Sandy Diamond’s Passing

The world has lost a vital yet gentle soul. Memories will have to suffice, but enriched by the letters and cards we exchanged in the year before a treasured visit in 2011.

She lived delicately and purposefully, wrote and painted and designed, and most of all, blessed me with her gentle admonitions, no–too strong a world–her gentle wisdom about life, about people, and about art.

She would not want me to write that now I “owe it to her” to paint in her memory. She would suggest otherwise–that I embrace life and embellish it with my art, that I think of it as a “healing bouquet” for others, she had written.

And I, after rediscovering her some 45 years after we first celebrated with art, after recapturing those memories, I wrote to her: ‘I feel as though in going back I can move forward.’

Perhaps that is a suitable tribute to her–moving forward. Not to let darkness prevail, but to let in light, lines, and color. In that way I can honor her memory and offer thanks for the gifts she bestowed upon me.

May her memory be a blessing.

February 15, 2016