The time I invited a delightfully curious woman to our home for dinner
When I first saw Josie, I knew she was someone I just had to get to know. She was sitting under the most fanciful umbrella I had ever seen, happily surrounded by her unusual art, and animated as all get-out. It was the summer of 1986, and she was selling her “dancing druids” and other assorted concrete sculptures, mostly mushrooms, at the Naperville Art League Fine Arts Fair.
I was curious about art show vendors, having discovered that most of the ones I talked with were well-educated people who had simply had enough of traditional life. I asked Josie how in the world she got involved in working with concrete.
What she said was interesting enough, but it was how she said it that was so captivating. She was intelligent, articulate, obviously well-educated, and cultured with just enough of a Southern drawl to be delightfully engaging.
“Josie, where did you go to college?” I asked, there being absolutely no doubt in my mind that she had a degree in something.
“Sweet Briar,” she answered.
“Wow!” I gasped. That explained it. I knew about Sweet Briar—a very small and super-elite women’s college in Virginia.
“You’ve heard of it?” she asked, with a slightly disbelieving tone.
“Yes! I lived in Lynchburg, Virginia in the ’60s, a few blocks from Randolph-Macon Women’s College.” [Another elite women’s college that she would most certainly have heard of.] “My father was a guest lecturer there for a semester. After that, he was invited to lecture at Sweet Briar. He told me all about the college, its incredible grounds, and their equestrian program with horses!”
Josie’s degree was in fine arts. She was a sculptress, a songwriter, and a playwright. She was about fifteen years older than I was, had her own brand of art, and was the first writer I’d ever met. I had to know more about her!
“Josie, where are you staying?” I asked.
“The Starlight Inn, on Ogden,” she said.
“That’s right around the corner from my house!” I said. “Do you have plans for dinner?”
“No…” she answered tentatively.
“Then you must come to our house for dinner tonight! Do you like shrimp? Polish sausage? Corn on the cob? If you do, we have a favorite dish—it’s really fun, but messy, so we’ll have to eat out on the patio, but I’d love to serve it to you!”
“Well, if you aren’t just the sweetest thing! If you aren’t just the sweetest thing!! If you aren’t just the sweetest thing!!!” she kept exclaiming. “I’ve been doing these shows for ye-ahs, and no one has evah asked me to dinnah!!”
“You’ll come, then?”
Josie accepted my invitation and arrived at our home in her (still heavily loaded) cargo van shortly after the show closed for the day.
After we’d talked about all sorts of unusual art typically found at art shows, I decided Josie had to see the truly unique, artistic home I’d discovered a few years earlier. The roof appeared to be covered with moss and rolled at the eaves like something from The Hobbit—a stunning illusion accomplished with the shingles, according to the owner. [I’d called and asked!] But it was the giant mushroom sculptures on each side of the driveway marking the entrance with soft, orange lighting shining down from under the mushroom caps that Josie simply had to see. Concrete mushrooms were her specialty. She’d even branded her artwork “Ballycoreagh” – the same kind of mushroom as those driveway markers.
Unfortunately, that home was about thirty minutes from ours. We’d talked so long after dinner, it was dark by the time we got there. We could only see the general shape of the incredible mushrooms, and their lights weren’t on. This did not deter Josie. She had driven us in her van, so she just parked it to the side and jumped out to “see” them with her hands.
“What is the marvelous texture?” she exclaimed as she ran her hands delicately over the mushroom cap. “What IS this marvelous texture?” She was astonished at its uniqueness… had never felt anything like it before… She examined the entire surface of the cap with her hands, but still had no idea how its marvelous texture had been achieved. The underside felt different, but there wasn’t any reason to finish that with an exquisite topping; no one would ever see it!
Although we’d seen those mushrooms in the daylight, we’d never examined them up close, so we also felt them with our hands to try to discern the composition. It seemed totally unique. We also had no idea what it was, but Josie was intent on reproducing it.
After that, she drove us home and thanked us profusely for the evening.
The next morning, Gary and I drove back over to that house to see in the daylight what that incredible texture was. We planned to go back to the show and tell Josie, since she had been so captivated by it. It didn’t take us two seconds to determine the composition of that marvelous texture. We didn’t even have to feel it; its appearance in the daylight told us all we needed to know to identify it as… piles of bird shit!
Although we could hardly wait to get back to the show to tell Josie what we’d learned about that marvelous texture, we didn’t think it likely she’d apply it to her artwork.