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HAPPY NEW YEAR

from Michael and Kathleen at Seilers’ Studio and Gallery!

I believe we can say in one way or the other 2020 was completely unique. And most of us are glad it’s behind us. We will have some of the same challenges and plenty of new ones to keep us on our toes. It is hard not to focus on the negative or difficult aspects of last year: watching friends and family suffer enormously with Covid, and seeing some die, some left with permanent lung damage; watching political drama and dysfunction as friends choose sides elevate dogma over relationships; watching our poor get poorer, as racial injustice continues to reek havoc with our friends’ lives. I could go on.

However, we are seeing good prevail. In our downtown, neighbors and community actively check in with each other. Providing love and care in practical ways have become the norm. We’ve seen families spending more quality time with each other — really talking and listening to each other, playing games, and having the time to just “be” a family. Some of us are beginning to master, or so I’d like to think, tools such as FaceTime and Zoom or any of the other group online meeting mechanisms. In each of these we are learning to slow down and listen and not react so quickly. Maybe we can learn to listen to understand — rather than listening to defend.

Since our move to the studio, we have had time to think, read, talk, write to friends, and plan for a new future. Besides making major changes to the studio/gallery, we are renovating a burned-out house, which will become our gallery annex. We are having visitors by appointment, with masks and social distancing. We are trying new ways of communicating with you, our friends this coming year. More will come with pictures.

As for this year, we leave you with one of Kathy’s poems, which speak as to how we look at what has happened to us in so many ways.

Again, Happy New Year!

The incredibly Awful, Awful

ate us —

then we died.

 We rotted and sloughed through the dreadful beast

to exit the other side —

Where the bones that survived grew new flesh

and the eyes that went blank saw new,

and the new was better than before the Awful,

Awful

that we went through.

Happy New Year 2021
The Awful Awful, poem for 
"Let Justice Roll Down" 2006
Let Justice Roll Down
Asphalt and Alkyd 2006