My fifteen minutes of fame… shared with… LEON!

With all of the previous rant being said, and completely out of my system, these are exciting times… “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and this week I have enjoyed the haunting and unique honor… or random celebrity, of receiving two books, in which the authors wrote a little about me and my art… with illustrations! One is an autobiography by one of my major art patrons, who celebrates a major sculpture commission I did for her (and the City of Bryan) as a milestone in her life, and a step in her recovery from the lifelong abuse from “the man that I was married to,” as she calls him. In Muggs - Finding Myself, Muggs Gardner, in true Baroquean one-upmanship, shares private thoughts and actions that will keep Bryan social circles swooning and shaking it off for years. Her story is so brutal yet glib, it would surely be a great screenplay. I am grateful that my sculpture in Bryan’s Heritage Park brought her closure and fulfillment, but sickened at what she had to go through, including the humiliation of her deceased “man that she was married to,” to get there. But nothing less would entertain the readers of today… Off with his head!

The other book, Navasota - Images of America, just recently published, in fact to be released officially at the Horlock History Center soon, is a project of the Texas Center for Regional Studies, headed by Dr. Robin Montgomery and tailed by his equally talented daughter, Joy. In this book full of historic photos (many of which I provided), sandwiched between a tribute to the eminent artist Kathleen Blackshear and the prolific Brooklyn pitcher Virgil Garvin, are back to back, full page tributes to me… and Leon Collins. If I doubted that I was history… literally, here the Montgomerys have erased any doubt. It is interesting… humbling… humorous that Leon and I will share the same page … at least in this volume… for posterity.

I’m sure there are those that will find some kind of justice in this. I am working on it.

Like two sides of a coin, the yen and the yang, the two opposite poles of art, neighbors on mainstreet where, like we used to say about Little League, “anything can happen and probably will.” The one good thing about this B-roke age of hyper-communication, besides all the geniuses at every street corner, and the hilarious You Tube videos, is the guarantee that every day will bring a surprise, if not a revelation.