How I escaped an artless world. Of course no one escapes this artless world completely myself included.
1st jpg/pic pony saved from destructive impulse.
2nd Portrait of Kristen 1999 through frame glass.
I remember a David Bowie song that had a lyric about learning to live with somebody else's depression. Given the epidemic scale of depression in the world these days one supposes that you are either depressed or have people in your life who struggle with depression. My father treated his depression with alcohol long before anti-depressants or working people seeing psychiatrists. The most vivid symptom of his depression was anger. And that anger reeked havoc on my mother's body and soul. Of course I was a little kid I didn't know what was going on save that this anger dominated my childhood. It was like the wallpaper always there but hardly noticed until of course the wallpaper was on fire and my mother and I were on fire. My sister and I would take my mom to the state hospital when she had her spells ( her schizophrenia was treated with electro-shock therapy and soon she'd be home) , my father claimed the shock treatments were the only way mom could get well. As time passed her condition never improved nor did my father's behavior. They seperated when I was a teen for a long while I never saw my mom though once after almost a year I saw her outside the window of a bus I was in she didn't see me. My dad arranged for my sister and I to eat at a greasy spoon near where we lived, for more than a year I ate nothing but hamburgers and fries. I wasn't depressed but I wasn't happy either, my mom had always been my best support for my artistic dreams and I missed her steady encouragement. My father was not encouraging indeed he worried I would pursue my artist dream into poverty and woe.
My father was a simple hard working union painter. He was born in Western Norway and he began working as a child in the sardine factories in Stavanger. Children's small fingers were perfect for putting the slippery little fish into cans for the folks who could afford the them. My father came to Amerika after his mom moved to Chicago and bought an old Victorian rooming house near Humboldt Park in the Scandinavian enclave where immigrants felt comfotable speaking their native tongue. Grandma had answered an advt. in a Swedish newspaper looking for a Norwegian woman to marry a widower in Minnesota when he kicked grandma sold the farm and began bringing the younger children she had left behind to Chicago. Of course it was no picnic! My dad worked the dredges that were scooping up a century of muck and crap under the lake near the shore and in the entrance to the Chicago River. It was literally the shittest job one could have. This is around the time I was born (1944) and dredgeworker was the occupation listed for my dad on the birth certificate. I was an Amerikan my father was naturalised Amerikan having attained 3rd grade reading and math skills in classes for immigrants. Depression in my experience seems always related to work, jobs and the unfairness of selling our time to the "the man".
My mother was born in the upper penisula of Michigan in a Finnish enclave north of Hancock/Houghton area. Her dad was a miner as were her brothers. They lived on a small farm with a small herd of dairy cows. Six children and when the mom died my mom was stuck being the mother to her younger brothers whilst the older sisters went off to high school. Eventually my mom moved to Chicago where her sisters were living, the story of how she hooked up with my father I don't know but he had some charm and a job! Also eligible men were in short supply during the war years. My mom's dad didn't like my dad old Finns are not friendly towards much of anything that ain't Finn. The story I heard was my mom had a post-partum psychosis. She ran after her husband to Elgin IL. with baby Franky in her arms in a state of unhingedness. How working people with little education dealt with madness was rather harsh. Over the years the beatings took a toll, by her mid 40's my mom was showing symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and by her early 50's the disease killed her. But she had managed to create an enormous amount of love in her life. More than anyone she created me an artist. And I remember her vividly 35 years later. My youngest son Max told me that when someone dies that you love they live in your heart and that is the case with my mother. She was not perfect but she made the most of what she had. And she didn't have much but she gave her love as if she would never run out of it. We learn by example. And my father's hard ass view of life also contributed to my survival and my depressions.