LETTERS FROM HOME: NOSEDIVES AND BARBECUE AMONG THE BODHISATTVAS

Jan. 25, 2001

Dear Carolyn,

In California, I knew an artist named Duane Flatmo who had a kind of cubist style that made his paintings and murals distinctive. But that's not what I remember him for. I remember him for creating art people wanted to destroy.

Many artists had erected wooden sculptures of whales and dinosaurs and the like on the mudflats around Humboldt Bay. Maybe you remember seeing them when you visited. In honor of the airfield nearby, Dwayne sculpted an airplane nose down in the mud. Some local pilots who didn't think this was funny, or art, demolished the sculpture of the plane with a chainsaw.

Art is not always loved.

In Jefferson City last weekend for a meeting, DC and I returned to the Capitol to see again the Thomas Hart Benton mural that surrounds visitors to the House Lounge. This art is loved, though perhaps not as much by artists as by those of us who appreciate the beauty and ugliness he saw in everyday lives.

There on the wall was a cartoonish Frankie shooting Johnny. He done her wrong.

In Kansas City, we sought out our niece Danica. How many college freshmen really want to spend their Saturday afternoon and evening going to art galleries and stores and restaurants with their middle-aged aunt and uncle? I wondered.

She was yawning when we arrived. Seems there was a party at a fraternity house the night before.

Danica and her roommate live in a dormitory room the size of a long-bed truck. The periodic table on the wall was a hopeful sign that serious studying took place here until an inspection revealed that the element abbreviations represent different kinds of cocktails. Oh yes, college life.

Her hair tinted unusually red, her fingernails a more unusual shade of blue, Danica assured us the chart is her roommate's.

I wonder if a function of age is that you are less drawn to new things and more attracted to things you already know you like. These things become like visits with old friends. We had some old friends to see.

We took Danica to a side of the city I doubt she'd seen yet. Way out 18th Street is Arthur Bryant's, a down-home barbecue restaurant where photos of all the famous people who have eaten the barbecue are on the walls. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter are up there. The barbecue sandwiches are as thick as a dictionary, and extra napkins are essential. This is culinary art. Danica tried a few bites.

We like the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, too. DC goes to the Impressionists galleries. Both of us love "The Water and Moon," a mammoth wooden sculpture of a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is a potential Buddha who rejects nirvana to help mankind become enlightened. Danica thought the place smelled funny.

Years after leaving California I was watching the David Letterman show when none other than Duane Flatmo walked onstage to present a Stupid Human Trick. He played a familiar flamenco tune on the classical guitar, but instead of picking the strings with the fingers of his right hand he let the beaters of an electric mixer do the work.

We did see something new: "Color and Fire," an exhibit of ceramics at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. I am always amazed by the creations that can be fashioned from clay. God must be, too.

Love, Sam