Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

84. TRAVEL TIME:

She wanted to know if I wanted to go to Tempe Arizona with her and then to Taos New Mexico and I said "good God let's not forget the Alamo too" but she laughed and then I declined and she said she was going and she did and came back a few weeks later and said it had been all to the good and she'd also visited Taliesen and Georgia O'Keefe's place too and she was all fired up for a time over that - her name was Judy Tenenbaum and usually all she ever did was go to Skowhegan Maine where there was an artist colony of some sort allied with the Studio School we were both enrolled in and though I'd never gone there either she was always pushing it as an opportunity or a choice - and especially in the Summer months when she'd spend weeks there at an outdoor camp that was held for isolated art study and production time with guest artists on site and it was always 'Showhegan this' or 'Skowhegan that' with her but that was OK it never bothered me really even though I often wondered about it as a distant and intriquing destination for 'art' - plus the idea of going to an 'art-camp' secluded deeply in nature like that seemed weirdly out of kilter to me deep as I was in the mixings of everything urban and everything of urban heritage as it all related to the artworld and all its history (only later did I find out I was really quite wrong on that count too since most of the 'artists' of the periods I was interested in - basically all NYC since the 1920's - had each had hideaways or seclusions and places of their own to which to retreat and go or paint).