Images: “Mona Lisa/Kintsugi", by Beverly Rippel
“Face to Face”
by
Beverly Rippel
Mona,
Shall we have tea now, a visit perhaps? 1:45 a.m. and you have come by in my night thoughts. Step through the trees and sit for a while. Show your face one more time… your beautiful face and smile. Oh wait. You are fading… breaking up. Can’t hear your full sentences. What are you saying? Are you quoting Shakespeare? “To thine own self be true… and it shall follow- something something, as the day into the night… can you hear me? I’m talking to you.
I first really saw you fifty years ago. I was pregnant with my first son… waiting… walking slowly… to really see you at that Museum in Baltimore until finally we are face to face. You are so so small behind a red velvet guard/rail or whatever you call it. I couldn’t stay long because others… others were waiting, waiting to see your beauty. But you did look at me. Saw me. Smiled at me. Was your paint beginning to crack yet?
I hadn’t seen you for such a very long time until you appeared on the wall in the women’s bathroom at the Train Station Art Studio. Oh my. You are coming apart. Undone. Oh, but still beautiful… your essence shines through the lost chips of paint. Beautiful white spaces that removed the trees, your sleeve, and even your eyes a bit. But you still you still see me.
Between the branches. Your hands have come to touch me, but they don’t feel me. You are reaching for your Mother. Looking for her. She died when you were just 13.
Now you are going. Fading. Sit a while… while I repair your wounds with gold wax. Kintsugi. Golden Repair it’s called. I can save you. Mona… can I save you? Me. Mona?
I went to the studio today. It has been a while. Too long since I was with you last. The Pandemic has been raging for so very long, but who’s counting days? Years? Millennia? You say, “Time doesn’t care. It just keeps coming.” Can you count anymore?
So I will make a promise… now… 2:13 a.m. to take some precious time to fix you. More gold wax and glue to preserve what is left of you. Golden Memory. What will become of you... when I go?
Mona… shall we have tea?
About the Author: Multi-disciplinary Boston Artist, Beverly Rippel exhibits her work in museums and galleries nationally with series works in the collections of Nokia, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, MIT, and in private collections internationally.
A career highlight was to be included in the 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial with a Review by Pulitzer Art Critic, Sebastian Smee of her painting “Pink Cap Gun I”. Beverly’s paintings were selected for the Poets and Artists Magazine’s 50 Memorable Painters, and featured in Artscope Magazine’s “10 Artists for the 10th Anniversary” Edition. She has received Awards of Recognition from Curators from MOMA and The Guggenheim in NYC; Carl Belz, Director Emeritus @ The Rose Art Museum @ Brandeis, and Malcolm Rogers, Director Emeritus of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Beverly Rippel’s CV can be found at her website: www.beverlyrippel.com
