Reading Into Art

An Honor

“You must feel good that your thoughts are translated onto the canvas” someone said.

Getting to stand around at an art opening, and see work on the wall representative of my book Cities on a Hill and all that jazz…it’s easy to float away on Me Me Me.

Well, for a second.

And then it all comes crashing down, as it should.

There I stood on a beautiful Friday evening, a year since Cities on a Hill-21 Isolated Months with the Elderly dropped, surrounded by art. The show was based on a few select books by local authors. (What a groovy idea, eh? Big thanks to Doloris at Book No Further, and Art on 1st!)

I get to be a fraction of the story of lives well lived.

Those old folks. They lived under the crushing isolation and maddening petty tyranny with such grace and fortitude.

I got to see that. I got to see that. I got to be changed by that.

“Well, I feel like their stories are there, and they’re perfect, the statue inside the block of marble. I’m praying I don’t knock it’s nose off” I told a mentor once, during the early stages of writing it.

Now strangers know about them.

Now people who have never met them take good care to create art to honor them, and remember.

Locked away, they still shone forth. That’s the title, from the Sermon on the Mount.

Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.

Every single person in the book is gone now. But the echoes of their light shine on.

There were two pieces that evening based on the book, and I loved them. I’d like to mention the one done by a friend in this post.

Would you look at the care and skill and time and thought and light that M. A. Ross put into this incredible tribute to them?

I almost cried when I saw it.

The hummingbird talks to the tortoise, upper left.

Note the DJ cart on one side of the door, and the rocking chair on the other? The hula dancer? Statler hotels? The text-accurate signs? And so much more?

What a stupendous effort, incredible skill and artistry, and gift to their memories.

“You must feel good that your thoughts are translated onto the canvas” someone said.

I sure am. But I’m so glad they’re on the wall, where they belong.

Oh my.

Thank you, M. A.

–Josh