Did I mention…

My friend Margi passed away.

I loved Margi. She was a talented artist with the right amount of confidence. She knew where she stood on every issue and she easily stood her ground if you didn’t agree. I met her years ago when we had studio spaces next to each other. The spaces were part of a building that had a little theatre. The theater company owned the building, and rented to us. We became the intermission entertainment. Eight or ten of us bonded. We were like family for years. For some of us it was our first art friend circle outside of college.

Margi, Crystal, Trish, Bill, Michael, Phylis, Laura, and Marsha. That was our core group, artists came and left, but our group was golden. Or so we thought. Slowly, over time, we all mostly drifted off and were replaced. Recently, the theatre was renovated, Margi was one of the last of the originals. The new building did not include spaces for artists studios, sadly.

Seeing all the artists from that time and later was sweet. Everyone associated with art hung out in one spot whether they knew each other or not A few strangler musicians joined as well. It made me think about artists hanging out on their mother ship, which artists don’t always do, but we should. A group of artists is funny. Used to being the one weird one in the crowd, it’s good to mingle and have someone genuinely interested in whatever unusual brush stroke or drawing technique you care about. It’s nice and only a little weird.

Margi wanted her ashes spread where wild horses run free. Hence my latest obsession with where wild horses are. I love this one detail so much

That was Margi, but it could be me or Crystal or any of us. We were all wild when we were turned loose inside our studio space.and maybe not so much during the other hours of the day. We sure did have some good laughs!

I woke up in the night after the memorial with the song by The Rolling Stones in my head. Just the one lyric over and over.

I thought about Margi and the little girl in first grade who wouldn’t stop coloring and myself and all the artists who I know and knew and love. All very different, but the one thing that we had in common was that. Wild horses couldn’t drag us away. Art for some of us is simply that big.

Margi is and will be missed. She was a force in the art world, truly in all of our worlds. She knew exactly how to be an artist. Among many other things, I always loved that about her.