Pursuits : Elizabeth Thomsen

Archive for the ‘RIP’ Category

In 1976, I went to the Brockton Art Center. I don’t remember what the specific occasion was, but my then-husband, a musician, was playing there that evening, and I remember being excited to go with him. We had a baby and I didn’t get out much at the time.

I wandered around alone looking at the exhibit, Michael Mazur, Visions of a Draughtsman and remember being struck by the dark, powerful prints and studies from his Closed Ward series. And when I say struck, I don’t mean I thought “oh, how interesting.” I mean I was dumbfounded, shocked, dismayed, fascinated. These prints and drawings were based on Mazur’s observations of patients when he volunteered at a state mental institution, as I had done at Worcester State Hospital when I was in high school. His works brought back the emotions I had felt there: fear, sorrow, helplessness and just a little pride for forcing myself to come back week after week and act like it didn’t bother me. Looking at the patients in Mazur’s prints, I experienced the same surprising sense of tenderness toward these fragile, vulnerable men and women, and felt myself torn between not wanting to look at them, but being unable to look away. I bought the exhibition catalogue that night, and and have looked through it many times through the years. I still see the sorrow but also the humanity in the patients whose images he captured.

Since that night, I have followed Michael Mazur’s career through books, articles and exhibits, feeling connected to him by what I rather illogically think of as our shared experience. Michael Mazur died on August 18, and though I never met him, he touched my life, and I’ll miss him.

• Michael Mazur; artist reinvigorated monotype; 73 — Obituary by Bryan Marquard from the Boston Globe
• The Art of Michael Mazur — Sideshow from the Boston Globe
• Michael Mazur, 1935-2009 — Obituary by Lloyd Schwartz from the Boston Phoenix
• Artwork from the Late Michael Mazur — Slideshow from the Boston Phoenix
• Michael Mazur — Official website

Gale Storm, best-remembered from her 1950’s program “My Little Margie,” died on June 27 at the age of 87.

Born Josephine Cottle, her career began in 1940 when she won a national talent contest called Gateway to Hollywood. The official prize was a movie contract RKO contract under the name Gale Storm. She fell in love with contest’s male winner, Lee Bonnell, who she married in 1941.

In the 1940s, Gale Storm appeared in many B movies but her big break came in 1952, when “My Little Margie” premiered as a summer replacement for “I Love Lucy.” Both shows were set in Manhattan and revolved around madcap women and their crazy schemes which often involved dress-up and deception, always backfired and both amused and exasperated the men in their lives.
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Hard to know what to say, what to remember, what’s better forgotten. But I do like this performance of the song “Ben” from the Sonny and Cher show. Here Jackson has outgrown the his role as the talented little kid with the Jackson 5, and not yet become the King of Pop…and all that came later.

Just remembering my mother with this movie clip of Judy Garland singing “You Made Me Love You” to a photograph of Clark Gable. My mother loved this song and sang it often, and described this scene to me many times. She was around 13 when she saw this, and thought it was wonderfully romantic. I never saw the movie, Broadway Melody of 1938, so I was happy to find this clip on YouTube.