One small bonus of cleaning out my attic before renovating it into my study………I like that word, was discovering that I had a water color print by Cheng-Khee Chee. I can’t recall when and where we acquired it. We’ve owned two others through the years but this one had the clock tower of Old Central on it which reminded me of my School Board work.
And there were more good memories. The year 2001 was a hot one on the Duluth School Board. It began with a story that we were considering closing five elementary schools which led to massive public protests that exceeded even the Red Plan protests except in duration. Not once did my school board consider calling in the police to keep the public in check.
I set up a webpage through the year, which included 9-11, and called up the famed artist to ask him if a story I had heard was true. Mr. Chee is Chinese and I’d heard that the Chinese sign for Crisis showed both the characters for danger and opportunity. Mr. Chee told me that it was true and when I asked him if he would paint it for me he was glad to oblige which led to my visiting his home and studio which was just a few blocks away. I uploaded his Crisis to my web page on the ongoing crisis.
We introduced my Mother to Mr. Chee’s work and she was smitten. She too had begun her artistic experiences with water color and was very intrigued with the way he achieved his affects. She had her own art studio in downtown Minneapolis at the time and was enjoying her last few years of an active painter’s life.
Tonight I decided to swim another 1000 yards and afterward had a sauna chat with the man in charge of UMD’s Tweed Museum which is planning a Chee exhibition in a week. Claudia once was a member of the Tweed’s Board of Directors. When I got home I thought I’d call the frame shop to see if my Chee print had been framed yet, a few days earlier than planned, and was told it had been completed minutes earlier. So here it is on my wall just a glance to my right. My study is almost complete. I just want to get a glass case from Ikea for the few things that remain in my old office. Claudia will be taking that over tomorrow when she returns from a visit with her Dad.
Oh, and I can’t wait to show my grandsons that the beach of Park Point in the Chee print is the edge of Lake Superior in my wall map of good old Gitchi Gummi directly opposite it. You can take the geographer out of the world but you can’t take the world out of the geographer.
