Monday, June 15, 2015

MARK OLSHANKSY

The other night in The Berkshires at my reading I met Mark Olshansky, an 85-year-old needlepoint artist who glowed with the aura of an artist at his peak. Least that's the way I received his energy. Plus he was a pleasant conversationalist and seemingly sweet guy.

His story is interesting because he picked up needlepoint late in life and then gave it up for two decades and picked it back up right where he had left off and now has been at it for a while working, as I understand it, pretty much every day, as most of my creative friends and me do.

I usually love creative people, simply because we are compelled by forces beyond, again usually, what may be the "normal" human impulse to create. It doesn't seem to be a choice for most of us, we just don't feel right with our world on any given day without working on whatever it is we create.

And I love most of all the obscure creators who don't have worldwide audiences or big reputations or access to huge audiences or don't get noticed by the big collectors or producers or publishers or etc. but still continue to do the work, appreciated by those who know them or who stumble onto the work or who discover it by meeting them at a poetry reading and then googling them and finding a site, like this one, where you can get some kind of take on what they're doing until you can experience their work in person.

Mark Olshansky's work has been in art shows and begun to get some attention but he's still a rare treasure to be discovered for most of us, and I'm glad I have.

[PS: I believe the above work is called "Mona Lisa" and yes I know the end of the second paragraph should grammatically be "I do" not "me do" but I like the way the latter sounds better...etc.]

[PPS: Mark has informed me the picture if of "Mona Lisa's Kid"!]

1 comment:

-K- said...

Yes, I really encourage people to enlarge this to better see the quality.