The Beauty of Crazy Ideas and Experiments

Larry White is curator of the New River Fine Art Gallery in Ft Lauderdale. He came to Punta Gorda with his colleague, Tom Rosetti, to be my featured speaker at a private art show we held tonight for my clients and guests. Featured artists included Picasso, Miro, Royo, Jamali, and Dali. The pieces displayed ranged in price from $4000 to $200,000. A number of my clients were interested in buying some of the pieces displayed, so the show was a success for New River Gallery as well. I am shown here doing some last minute negotiating with Larry...for my Miro (Pygmies are in the background), which we took home and hung tonight.

Yoko and I both thought the event was a success. We had about 70 - 80 guests, most of whom were either clients or potential clients. This event was planned as a "thank you" to the clients who followed me to Morgan Stanley. It had been planned well before I found out about my cancer. We were nervous that I would not be physically able to hold the event (because of the effects of treatment) but as things turned out, I felt fine. In fact, we took Larry and Tom out to dinner at the Turtle Club afterward and had a very enjoyable evening. I am feeling none the worse despite having left the house this morning at 8:30 AM and not returning until 10:00 PM. If I am suppose to be run down and fatigued, I sure don't feel it! I had a full meal -- Caesar salad, fillet mignon, spinach and risotto, followed by cheesecake and a cappuccino. I don't think anyone would guess I am going on my 3rd week of chemo and radiation. Larry, Tom and I are now going to plan an even "bigger"show for next year -- God willing.

Of course, none of our guests knows anything about my diagnosis. Cancer, nevertheless, comes up frequently in conversation. One couple, clients of mine, have both been diagnosed with cancer in the last few weeks. He has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and she has breast cancer. Another guest had a "family emergency" and had to leave the event early because his brother-in-law took a turn for the worse. (His bother-in-law, who lives in Texas, discovered he had colon cancer six months ago. ) Someone else I was talking to today just had surgery to remove a tumor and could not attend the event. And, of course, there is another client of mine who could not make tonight's event because he has been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and is undergoing intensive chemo treatment. How I would love to tell these people that I know what they are going through!

A few people -- Andy Dulay and Chris Mahr -- thought I was crazy for buying the abstract; but most people - after they heard Larry's presentation, explaining how Miro created the piece - a "color wash and aquatint etching" -- and the amount of time it took (one year) could understand. My "Pygmees" was created toward the end of Miro's life in 1972 - 1973, when he was experimenting with aquatint. If you are interested, I have added a short blog about the aquatint technique.

And what's the moral of today's story? I guess there is a certain inspiration we can take from someone like Miro, who kept experiementing with new things, even at the age of 90. I want to keep trying new things too. It was experimenting that came up with some of these (seemingly) crazy treatments for cancer -- injecting platinum into patients; radiating them with photons. Great ideas sometime start with seemingly crazy notions. Maybe that's why Miro makes sense to me.