Lunch with Georgette, part one

Connections, Lens, Witness

I only write this because I need to find within a broad feeling of profound reaction the focus, the crux, the answer. I need to know what this experience points me toward.

On Friday I had lunch with my old friend Georgette Sosin. I haven’t seen her since shortly before my son was born. She is a former mentor, an artist, age 74; her studio is located just a few blocks from the office where I’ve worked since May of last year. For nine months I’ve walked the blocks past her studio, on my way to the mailbox or the coffee shop; at times her car was in the drive, often not, and I was too shy to simply stand on her doorstep and ring the bell.

She took me in hand during a time of deep transition and transformation, when I was about 26 years old. She suggested the arrangement, though I don’t recall the dialogue leading up to the proposal. It was 1996 – I had just begun my work with the Minnesota Historical Society at St. Anthony Falls, and the array of seashore artifacts and found objects in Georgette’s studio echoed the geological and cultural layers found in the landscape of Minneapolis’ birthplace, by the Mississippi River.

Georgette was living in Chanhassan at the time with her husband, a retired physician. They shared a studio in one of the North Loop warehouse buildings in downtown Minneapolis. Henry worked then as now in clay. Georgette is a painter, and to some extent a sculptor; her works are often textural and incorporate relief elements or sculptural forms. Her imagery is often associated with the cosmos, and the patterns and shapes common to natural forms. Her studio contains a carefully arranged selection of fossils, shells, shark teeth, naked twisting tree branches, stones and bones.

I had no evident artistic voice when she took me on. I probably had some talent, but I genuinely can’t recall why she found me worth her time. She knew me as a curator and an organizer, through the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota. This means we would have first met some time in the late 1980s or early 90s. Her work then as now was deeply spiritual, though I don’t know whether that word would have resonated as much for her 12 years ago. The undercurrent of our dialogues in the studio must have skirted such territory; she had such a strong influence on me then. And even now we are still connected. Georgette’s artistic style is nothing like mine, and her work isn’t always the sort of thing I’m attracted to; but the philosophy and the intellect behind her work is fascinating and compelling.

There are maybe four people in the world known to me with whom I feel a connection much deeper than words can describe. There are others with whom I am closer in a daily way, who I love, who are different from these four. All of these people who share my life could be superficially sorted into types, I suppose; but there are no surface indications for why some are embedded within me mind and soul, while others know me through the normal ties with which we bind ourselves to one another. The mutuality of all these relationships varies by degrees over time. Some relationships are on the border between the two types. I wouldn’t want to say who is who, because I know everyone has their own ideas about what should be felt in certain relationships. I struggled myself with those preconceived notions for many years, and it only brought me heartache. I will say that of those with whom I feel most connected, two of them are men and two are women; and while the men tend to be surprised and distracted by the manifestations of connection, the women tend to take it for granted more. Each of them can truthfully say they know me well, and I’d like to say the same of them, and that has to be enough. Certainly I love them all. But Georgette is my superior in many ways, and I cannot guess what she says about me.

It’s interesting to note that at this moment I have more of these people in my life than I ever have. People I truly love, who love me.

Our lunch conversation spanned three hours, many more years, and dizzied me with its steep descent into deeply personal territory. It’s not that there are subjects off-limits to others which only Georgette could speak to – only that she speaks to these subjects in such a way as to manifest visibly for me aspects of my life I could only vaguely perceive before, merely by telling me about her own.

I prayed for guidance on Tuesday, again, and now I feel I should pray for the capability to comprehend the guidance I know I’m receiving.