Energy and Perspective by Elizabeth Machmeier

July’s First Thursday event was unbearably warm, and Anita and I were worried about the flow of traffic for the evening. Anita, Patrick, and myself called the air conditioner our home base from 5-9pm. We even managed to blow a fuse, no doubt due to the number of fans and the air being set on full blast at 60 degrees. Our neighbors, Eric, Jim, and Michelle blew a fuse every twenty minutes or so: it was a constant battle with the dog days of summer. Us Minnesotans get credit for braving the insane cold, but are also survivors of the intolerable summer heat. However, the number of dedicated First Thursday visitors made the evening very much worth enduring.

A moment of the evening that made me truly appreciate the connections made in a gallery took place about halfway through the night. A woman, her daughter, and a family friend stopped by the Anita Sue Kolman Gallery. The three ladies did the usual lap around the perimeter of the space, stopping to discuss the various pieces as they made their way around the room. They ended their loop by Josephine’s stained glass pieces, and the pedestals that hold Dan Mather’s snow globes. The woman picked up the pyramid, shook it with vigor, stated it was a “beautiful half polyhedron,” and that she would take it, just like that. When we tried to give her one from the back room that hadn’t been handled as much as the display pyramid, she had her daughter decide which one had a better energy. After holding both pyramids, the daughter declared the first pyramid had the better energy, and that was the one they bought. It fascinated me to see a decision based on the energy of an object, because I personally have never bought something based on its energy.

While the transaction was taking place, I was standing in front of the stained glass with the family friend. She started to explain to me that these glass pieces were especially beautiful to her, because she used to see landscapes in a similar way before she had corrective eye surgery. She said that although 20/20 vision was a gift, the way the lights played on objects, (such as the strands of Christmas lights on a tree), was 100x more beautiful when her eyesight was poor. She stood in front of the stained glass pieces, and smiled, clearly recalling another time in her life when her vision created works of art right in front of her. It intrigues me that art can make you see a landscape or an image in an entirely different way, based on the manipulation and morphing of shapes and color. My conversation with this woman about the stained glass, and the energy that a piece of art work can hold and emanate, reminds me how each viewer brings their own memory and past to the artwork they encounter.