Much More Than an Art Show

How a Surprise Invitation Led Me to Document My Life's Work

An email arrives on my laptop as I sit comfortably, feet up in my recliner in the living room. A friend is asking if I’d be interested in taking part in a two-person show with her at our college alma mater.

She says, “The challenge is that we only have a month before we hang the show.” I’m thinking how easy that will be for me since I’m a seasoned professional who has been doing art shows for decades. I have all my work prepped for hanging, documented, blurbs written, and photography prepared. This will be a piece of cake!

The next day, as I’m blissfully planning what I’m going to show, my friend mentions that since the gallery is located in our alma mater, we should be showing our artwork from when we attended classes there over forty years ago. Well, that really changed my plans! I didn’t even remember what I was creating all those decades ago.

So where is that work? I check all the nooks and crannies of my studio storage and then the basement. With no other options left, I climbed the wooden pull-down ladder leading to the stuffy attic in my home. As I’m in my late 70s, I avoid climbing ladders whenever possible, but at that point, I was driven.

And there they were, boxes and portfolios filled with drawings and paintings that hadn’t seen the light of day for too many decades. Drawings of my sons, now middle-aged, when they were little boys playing Matchbox cars on the living room floor, digging sand at the beach, and hitting baseballs in the Little League fields. Memories of those years were stirred up. Not just the happy ones either. I felt waves of conflicting emotions flood through me as I pulled each piece of artwork out. I remembered the tumult of feelings I had been experiencing when I originally created that art as a soon-to-be single parent.

The quality of the work surprised me in a good way. My drawing skills were much better than I’d remembered, and my brushwork and paint handling were already established and foreshadow the paintings I create now. With minor touchups and framing, enough of the work was exhibition-ready. It would add a few chapters to the story of the work I’m currently creating. These early works would enrich the story of my current work and add historical background and context to how the work and the artist have evolved over the years.

The show went up, people came to view the work and a month later the show came down. Now what? I wasn’t ready to banish them again to the attic, unknown and anonymous. Seeing and engaging with this newly found work, I knew it deserved the same level of documenting as all my current work has had over the last few decades. This labor of love took many more months than the actual exhibition had been hanging in the gallery.

The walls in my home are filled, as are the closets and basement storage spaces. This new old work deserves respect, so I had to think strategically about how to solve this dilemma taking into consideration my commitment to no longer climbing ladders.

Now I have a climate-controlled storage room in a facility near my home. No more dusty attics, no more climbing. All my art, new and old that can’t fit in my home, now resides in this safe space.

Some of the work in my storage unit.

This, after all, is my legacy.

Now, another decision. Who to entrust this legacy to? I wanted someone much younger than I am. My son would not be as focused since he is absorbed in his career and settling into what will be his snowbird existence as the seasons change.

Hubby agreed with me that the obvious person was our now-grown grandson, who had worked with me in the studio painting and creating assemblages when he was a child. He has sat with me at art festivals, has loaded my car with art, and also goes on ladders for me to remove and rehang art on my studio walls as it comes and goes for the many shows I’m still happily exhibiting in. I know he is deeply attached to my art and would also have an interest in preserving it.

Over the phone, I gently ask him a few questions, testing his interest in what I would be proposing. He seemed stunned but clearly pleased. At his favorite diner in town, he and I discussed the details of the legacy I would like to entrust to him. I told him about the legal copyrights of my work that would be his when I’m gone. He understands that my work replaces any headstone in a plot of grass somewhere. He knows what matters to me. He also knows that I don’t want this legacy to be a burden for him. That it’s his choice of what he does with the work, the website and the writings. We had an important, meaningful, and bittersweet conversation.

My Grandson CJ Ahern in my studio over the years

Months later, I am still working diligently to document the work that represents my visual biography. I’ve reviewed steps in my life’s journey that revealed forgotten passages of my experience. Plus, and most importantly, I’ve connected with my grandson in what might have otherwise been difficult conversations about life and life’s passing. He knows I was with him moments after he was born and he knows he’ll be there for me, moments after I’m gone. We are both aware and enriched by this reality.

Now, sitting in my recliner where I received the initial email from my friend inviting me to share in an exhibition that would come and go quickly, I appreciate how this invitation proved to be so much more than an art show.

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Originally published in Sanctuary Magazine. November 1, 2025