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I had Aida on my list as a very close friend. I remember she called me to say her prognosis. I was shopping in Whole Foods and the isles got wobbly. I know I grabbed my head as I made reassuring words form into the phone. Her time was long. Her family was very well disciplined and and lovingly surrounded her with care. I went to her funeral. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but in my mind it was gong to be intimate. The cathedral was tall and the room was packed. I had no idea how many people felt the same way I did, apparently everyone was a close friend of Aida’s.

 

The week before Petar died I saw him at a restaurant. He came over and gave me a big booming hug. Eyes present and happy. When he left my lunch mate slide her glasses down her nose and said wow with eyebrows up. I said, no not like that. Petar is like that with all his friends. The following week the air sucked out of me when he had a heart attack really with no warning or inclination. As it turns out his father pass in the same quick manner. His wife was concerned, but the rest of us had no idea. I signed up for the new computer thing called Facebook in order to learn what happened exactly. I knew to not register with my real birthday. Every year when people wish me a happy birthday on the not correct date, I think of him.

 

I was not close to Joyce Cutler Shaw, but knew her. She was more famous and I was just a young artist. She went to UCSD where I went to grad school. Before grad school I was working as a studio assistant to professor Harold Cohen. She would visit him on occasion. I usually made the coffee and simply listened from across the room where I was painting. When she joined PA, we all went to her home for a meeting and tour. All wonderful and warm, yet not the connection I had to my other fallen PA member friends.

 

We did the CCAE show, which now feels like our last adventure together. We had an offender area. The show was during the Day of the Dead celebration and Escondido was big about it.

We toasted Petar with a plum brandy and said words about the others.

We are all aging and I’m involved with another artist group where I’m interviewing them about aging and art making. Its a big topic for me as I’m seeking my direction. I acknowledged that public art has very much changed since our beginning. Many architects and landscape architects take over the roll of public artist. I have to say, it is not the same, respectfully. The organizations tend to hire groups and I think I know why, we artists can be flaky. No, not me, but I’ve seen it. I think they usually pull it off, but it must be scary for an administrator.

I no longer look the the hearty welder I once was and after many a meeting where I had to right there tend to a call from the caregiver of my Alzheimer’s afflicted parents who were living with me. Well lets just say that the male trades don’t typically tend to family and just never ‘got’ it.

I’m sure there are younger artists in place now. Then covid, then the total choke hold of dealing with elderly family members and here I am wondering if I should take up watercolors.

 

Time has passed and it is now 2025 and we have lost another member of Public Address, Robin Brailsford. I’m still missing her verve for life, art and friendships. I was the MC for her Celebration of Life in La Jolla near to the Canyon piece she and Wick Alexander (another PA member and her partner) made under the colaborhatorship of Walter Monk the oceanographer. Lithomosaic is her patented formula for mosaics. This project was huge and they have many others, but this was closer for us all to be a part of. Robin was a founding member of Public Address along with myself, Anne Mudge and Aida Mancillas in 1997.