For "Yulli" Grandpa Jules 1922-2007

That's Jules with my mom and the kids, this is one of my favorite pictures we took last year in the keys. We had just finished eating our collected catch of yummy fish, that all of us had caught during our vacation. On Sunday February 4th at exactly 6:09 am, Jules Olitski passed away holding my mother's hand.
Ok so people die every single day, that's what happens-why was this man's death so devastating?
I'll do my best to explain why we will miss him so very much.

Well, I only began to realize how special he was sometime in the last five years, I'm not saying that I didn't like him for the first 25 or so years...I suppose awareness and appreciation come after we experience a personal loss of such magnitude, that it leaves us raw and open. My loss happened long before Jules passed, but it was because of that-we became great friends and I grew to love and adore him.

Jules was a funny and incredibly smart guy in a very unassuming and humble way. For a guy that was honored and loved by so many people in this world, he always maintained his balnce and poise. I used to be amazed by his reaction to any kind of honor that was awarded to him like for instance when The Academy of Arts and Letters inducted him into their "club", I don't know what else to call it..lol, he was so surprised and honored that they would think he was worthy of such acclaim. I can't even articulate into words what he looked like.

He had this odd effect on people, as I've observed-they would fall in love with him -even if they never met him personally.

I don't really know "art" , even though I've grown up in that world...it was never anything more than some paint or colors on a canvas. I do know what is beautiful though and that's when I would want to eat whatever it was. I remember telling Jules that I wanted to just eat one of his paintings once and he just giggled and then 6 months later, he gave me that little painting for Christmas.

Back to the fun fish fry (my mom makes the best-est fried fish in the world)
We're sitting there and Chloe shows Jules her new Juicy Couture bag she snagged at some yard sale (I have this on Video, by the way and it is so funnY) anyway..he looks and says with his head cocked, eyebrows making a crooked grin...."Juicy coooter?, Honey (to my mother) what's a Juicy coooter bag" and looks at my mother, we all start cracking up. He had a funny way of saying things, that would just make anyone laugh in delight.
Chloe, Daphne and Ian adored their grandfather...seriously they would just get all gooey and mushy around him..he was a perfect grandpa. I know he beg to differ, but in truth...he was.

Last summer we all had the honor of being able to help with the printmaking, it was the best summer ever.
This is a typical sunset on Bear, Ian is so handsome, but still very naughty.

I have to take Ian to school ...brb




Feb, 9 2007

Printmaking summer:

Now you need to understand, no one was ever allowed in his studio while he was working-except my mom and maybe a selected few important art people (and they had to be super important). Jules was a very private person, only God, my mother and the selected art people had the privilege of watching him work.
So this past summer, Jules had allowed us (Chloe, Daphne and I) to help.
Oh yeah, there is one other person that Jules allowed into the studio and that was KIm.

Note: Kim has worked for Jules on Bear Island since she was 12 and I will say this, he adored KIm-he thought she was just perfect. In fact I think he tolerated Kim more than anyone (including us kids) else in the world, except my mother of course. Kim is Kimmy aka appalachian Ky-im and who in the world doesn't love Kim?

So all summer Kim and I would plan the weekends when we would all go up, like a gang to make prints with Jules.
Daphne and Chloe would wash the slates and make Jules his very special tea.
Kim would be using the press with almost perfect precision, creating the most beautiful prints and sometimes if we were lucky we would get a ghost.

A ghost is like a second print off the same slate.

brb (ya know it's Ian time)...7:50 am

Feb 10, 2007

So everybody would plan on being at the island at the same time and it was always the same: Jeff would build a gin-ormous bonfire in his firepit Ian would ask about marshmallows (like 300 times) and we would start cooking up whatever fish the kids caught-sometimes it would be a nice haul of bass and perch. Fred would bring over his daily catch of Trout or whatever, Floranne would bring over her homemade Risotto-OMG it was YUM city. Of course there was always non-fishy items for Ian and Haddie to eat. Occasionally if Jules was up to it, he would make the trek over to Treetops (that's the name of our house) to join us for dinner and coversation. After that, Jules would head off to the studio to get to work.

Kim would get the printpaper ready and then go put Haddie to bed. The girls and I would clean up the print studio..Ian and Jeff would still be out roasting marshmallows and feeding the already huge bonfire while my mother would be nervously eyeing the blaze-no doubt thinking that the whole forest would catch fire my mother-while quietly sitting doing one of the 10 million crossword or Sudoku puzzles laying around. Occasionally her and I might be in the sewing room finishing a quilt.

We would all await the horn signal (Jules' foghorn to let us know a slate was ready). Then it would start-one print right after another, sometimes we could not keep up with the slates-even with all of us working. As each print came off the press, the chorus' of oohs and ahhs would start. The "creatures" as they were called-were my favorites, The "sailboats" were Daphne's favorites-I think Chloe liked the "naked ladies"-there were only a few of those, though. This would go on for hours and hours-foghorn blaring every 3 minutes-it was incredible.
Jules was the conductor-and the world was his instrument.

At Christmas, he gave each of us-including Kimmy and Jeff a print from this summer...and we got to choose ourselves.
I already knew which one I wanted, it was a creature titled "Towards The Stone Age".
Chloe picked "Cassandra" a beautiful nude.
Ian picked "The Hungarian Forest"
Daphne picked an outrageous sailboat, landscape..I forget the name-I'll get to you on that.

I was always told never to go into the studio while Jules was working, that was the way it was and I accepted it. Besides that I really had no interest in what he was doing anyway. I had been surounded by artists and art, my entire life and it was all the same to me. The whole art thing was always so predictable,boring and pretentious. Again, it was only in the last few years that I started to understand what everybody was always raving about. There was certainly something-that's for sure, but for so long it had eluded me-until about 2 years ago...when my eyes finally opened.


GTG...Karate class, will continue later-N

February 11, 2007

NOTE: Mom left for NY yesterday Am with Lauren.
In spite of losing her father, Lauren has been incrediblely loving to my mother. Lauren is also an interesting person, she is Jules daughter. I will write something about her later, I think I have too and I can't explain why right now.

Printmaking:
One day last summer, my mother said it was ok if I brought the prints back to studio after Kim had made them. It all happened so quickly, but this is what I saw and felt:
I was walking over from treetops to the studio with my mother-prints in hand and making sure that nothing touched them, because they were still wet.

(Then again I was afraid of familial annihilation, should I have ruined the print)

Before we got to the door, I was starting to feel like I was intruding ,as though I was invading his private haven. Anyway my mom opened the door and pushed me inside, before I could say anything...she's so bossy!!!!
All I can say is that it was like walking into another world.

There he was unaware, in a moment of creation-I swear he was glowing, it was surreal. I mean seriously, I was awestruck!!!

This man was sitting his comfy chair with one of my mothers funny aprons on-surrounded by these incredible globs of paint (the most amazing colors) - Jules was curled over the slate and his eyes were clear and in some other place. Have you ever looked into a child's eyes-you can see all the way to heaven. That's really what his eyes looked like and in that moment, my respect and admiration for this man grew tenfold.

Every time I saw him in NY or in NH, I made it a point to sit down and talk to him...even if it was for only a moment.
This past fall became very interesting as our conversations started to take a bit of twist. We talked about everything from my shoe collection (which he thought was "lovely") to physics. My mother, Jules and I were like yentas when the news or Judge Judy would come. It didn't matter how ridiculous the topic was, he was always interested and the best part is...he was an active participant.

Jules was very wise.
Character and authenticity were extremely important to him. .
You could be the smartest, funniest, most talented person in the world, but if you were fake and lacked good character-he wanted nothing to do with you.

My mother and Jules: "The most romantic fairytale of them all"

I'll get to that another day....