Garage Art

Between the ages of 80 and 101, Grandma Moses painted over 600 significant works of art, and Ms. Rachow wonders if there are undiscovered masterpieces lying within us all.

Sunflowers, colored pencil by Grace Rachow

If you’ve been anywhere but under a rock, you must’ve heard about the Van Gogh recently verified as genuine. Sunset at Montmajour went from being a fake hidden away in an attic to the most significant art discovery of the century. The newly verified painting could fetch enough to put the United States in the black, if only the anonymous owner would donate auction proceeds to our national treasury.

This stunning Van Gogh news got me wondering whether I had any such treasures in my own collection.

I have plenty of worthless junk stored in my garage, and much of it is nicely framed. Some of these art items were abandoned by long ago roommates, or I picked them up at garage sales. I could’ve accidently acquired something of value.

The first candidate was a watercolor painting of my mother’s green bud vase. Yes, it’s true I painted this masterpiece as a child, and the watercolors I used were from an 8-color paint set for kids. From the looks of the crude strokes, the brush I used came from the paste jar at school. But my mother liked the piece well enough to preserve it in a charming midcentury dime-store frame. And as a bonus, I have that original green bud vase.

So the artist was still living, and she was in possession of the original objet d’inspiration. That was better provenance than the newly revealed Van Gogh had.

How much would this watercolor be worth? A bucket full of bupkis with a chaser of nostalgia.

I continued searching through my treasures. There was a charming collection of family snapshots framed with a multiple-peephole mat. This was put together 30ish years ago, and some of the romantic hairstyles and shoulder pad fashions were definitely representative of the period. But was it worth anything?

This was my family, and I had relegated them to the garage for the past 20 years, so it is a safe assumption this junky piece would not rise to the level of anyone’s treasure. However, the frame itself might fetch a dollar at a garage sale, and I could toss the photos into the big box of them I plan to sort through and put in albums some day.

Then, I hit pay dirt…and when I say dirt, you better believe that framed pieces can collect a whole lot of it after decades in storage. A quick swipe with my sleeve and, voila, it was The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Vermeer. She was framed by Mohr Art Galleries in Toledo, Ohio, and from the look of it, the framing was at least a hundred years ago.

Yes…yes…I know the so-called real painting is much older than that and is held by the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague. But artists often do studies preliminary to the real painting. Maybe that is what I had. Luckily the seal on the back of the frame was already broken by the relentless march of organic decay. So I easily slipped the girl from her frame to check if there was any evidence of Vermeer on the back.

Alas, I discovered that this was not a painting at all but a photo repro of the girl. It was lovely presentation, though, and at the garage sale it might fetch two dollars for the frame alone!

I similarly investigated the Portrait of Robert Cheseman by Hans Holbein the Younger and The Man Wearing a Ridiculous Hat by Rembrandt. Repros all.

Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso…I had a garage full of fakes! The Picasso I’d painted myself via a class assignment in college. Three Musicians had looked simple, but it was challenging to get it just right. Still my effort had earned an A.

Hmmm…obviously, my art collection was not going to reveal any long lost masterpieces. However, the longer I stared at the fake Picasso, the more I wondered if I still might have what it takes.

I dug deep into another corner of the garage and found the box of art supplies I’d saved from college. The paints were petrified after decades in storage, but I still had colored pencils. And they don’t dry out.

The silverfish had made lace of my ancient art paper, but I had a new ream of cardstock from Office Max. That would suffice for a little experimental scribbling.

I was ready to go, but what to draw?

In honor of Van Gogh, I pulled out the yellows and browns and went to work making sunflowers.

Quintessential Cork

Cork Millner 1931-2013

I met Cork Millner in his writing class over 30 years ago, but our first encounter might just as well have been at a wine tasting, on a tennis court, or at a polo match. This was a man who lived everyman’s dream of retiring early and having a long second career living his many passions and writing about them all.

My hope back then was to make a career of writing and selling magazine articles, and lo and behold, there was an adult education course taught by Cork on just that. The classroom was packed. I sat in the back where I wouldn’t have to do anything but listen.

Cork looked as if he’d just come from a fashion shoot for GQ. And he could skewer us all with his repartee and sophistication.

I was fresh off the farm and was lucky to make it to class in something spiffier than overalls. I wasn’t sure this class was a good fit for me, but I figured if I stayed, I’d learn something.

Every week Cork brought examples of magazine articles he’d written and sold -- celebrity interviews, reviews of wineries, tales of being on TV game shows, to name a few. The official bio on his website states that he wrote and sold over 400 articles during his lifetime, but I think that number must be modest, because he showed us at least that many that first term.

Cork was a fine teacher, and I learned much about freelancing. Writing is tough work. Marketing is tougher. And if you don’t have a repertoire of passions and creative ideas, you have nothing to write about.

When the term was over, after the final class, I put away my typewriter (because that’s just how long ago it was) and decided to get a real job where I was paid money for doing something odious. And meanwhile all the things I’d learned in Cork’s writing class brewed in my mind.

Over the months of his teaching, I’d heard much about the life and times of Cork Millner. He’d been a navy aircraft carrier pilot. I could only imagine the nerve it took to take off and land on a vessel even once, much less 850 times.

As I toiled away at my day job, I tried to imagine something equivalent in my short, boring life. Well, once on a dare from a fellow 7-year-old, I hopped on the back of a pig and rode it for two or three feet before it dumped me into the mud. Funny, yes, but that stunt required more stupidity than nerves of steel.

No, I was convinced I had nothing at all to write about, and I should leave the writing of clever magazine articles to the likes of Cork Millner. He had the lifestyle and the moxie to make a freelance career work.

It turns out the desire to write doesn’t just go away. It took me 10 years to work myself back toward being a writer. To learn more about the craft, I signed up for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I was still nervous and shy, but I was happy to see Cork Millner’s familiar face. He was a right hand man to founders Barnaby and Mary Conrad, as well as teaching nonfiction writing at the conference.

In that workshop Cork mentioned that when he lived in Spain, he’d become an aficionado of bullfighting, a bent he had in common with the one-time matador, Barnaby Conrad.

I learned that at times, under the stress of keeping the conference running smoothly, Cork could be a bit irascible and bull-like. But, in the end, it was his sense of humor that always won out. He was a man of relentless wit as well as being a damn good teacher of writing.

After a week of writing workshops, we all unwound at the SBWC talent show. I was surprised when Cork got up and performed a word-perfect Shelley Berman routine, complete with Berman’s exquisite timing.

I can only guess at the number nonfiction writers who got good starts in a workshop taught by Cork Millner. After 30-some years of teaching, this number has to be huge, and we all owe him for his help.

I like to imagine Cork at the Pearly Gates. He’s dressed in a white Armani suit. The brim of his hat’s at a dapper angle. He pours St. Peter a glass of fine vintage wine, and the gates open wide.

Let’s drink to that.

Super Plumber

An unexpected $1000 dollars appeared in our hands right before my husband’s winter vacation. Our friends would’ve taken that as sign to head off to Mammoth to go skiing, but we decided to spend it on a home fixit project.

We talked it over and decided to use the money to replace all the 60-year old faucets in our house. Off we went to the plumbing store. By some miracle, we were so much in agreement as to which faucets we liked, a stranger might’ve thought we were young and in love.

Now we needed a great plumber. My friend Linda had recently hired a genius named Albert Trejo to solve her gnarly problem with a stubborn reverse osmosis system. I called him, and he was available to install our faucets that Wednesday.

Not only did he do a fine job, he hummed on tune while he worked. A cheerful plumber is a rare and beautiful thing. When a pipe broke off in the wall, Albert said, “Son of a beehive,” but he soon solved every challenge, and we had new faucets.

I’ve been on the planet long enough to know plumbing projects typically cost twice as much as predicted. When Albert turned in his bill it was reasonable. We were only a few hundred over budget.

Water whooshed out of the new faucets in a lovely stream. We brushed our teeth several times just for the excuse to use these gorgeous fixtures. This was much better than freezing with our friends in the snow.

Then, when we walked the dogs before bedtime, we noticed a river in the gutter in front of our house. We had a leak, and, apparently, it was not a small one.

This was not going to be cheap, but I knew Albert would come to our rescue.

I left a message, and he called first thing the next morning with a jaunty, “What’s up?”

When he arrived to assess the situation, his best guess on the massive leak was when we’d turned water off to install the faucets, it’d put extra pressure on rusty underground pipes, and that’d caused one or more blowouts. We wouldn’t know the answer as to which pipes until we’d dug them out. He offered a crew at a cost matching the national budget…or we could dig ourselves.

We were already over budget, so we opted for putting our own shovels to work. Albert would come back Saturday to cap off any leaking pipes we’d found.

Meanwhile we were without running water in the house. Carrying buckets is not as much fun as they make it out to be in Zen literature.

Those new faucets seemed to mock us. Not only are plumbing jobs fraught with potential problems, they have a sense of irony.

On Saturday morning, Albert called. “My wife’s working all day, and I’ve got kid duty till she’s back.” Nevertheless, he showed up near sunset and capped the leaking sprinkler lines my husband and I’d dug out. I figured we’d solved the problem.

When we turned the water on, the soil in the middle of the yard began burbling. The leak was still alive, and now it was mad.

Our main water supply line appeared to be leaking. Albert warned us replacing it could be expensive. He showed us where to continue digging. “Call me when you find the leak.”

The soil near the new spout was supersaturated, sticky clay. We dug like maniacs until we uncovered another leaking irrigation pipe tied into the supply line, at the meter. Oh the things they did back in the good old days.

It was already past sunset, and Albert had worked long hours Monday through Saturday. Nevertheless he showed up in his church clothes on Sunday to look at what we’d dug up.

He couldn’t cap off that third leak until late the next day, because he already had several emergency jobs on his Monday schedule. My husband and I were tired of carrying buckets, but others were even worse off.

True to his word, our plumber showed up Monday afternoon. The leaky pipe was stubborn, but a giant wrench and Albert’s massive finesse budged it. When the water was restored, there was no leaking…a real woo-hoo moment.

Living without running water for 116 hours offered us new perspective on the miracle of plumbing. As a result, we’re so grateful for guys like Albert who fix our plumbing catastrophes. They are true heroes.

Let us sing their praises.