Art Instructs Memory — UNLV pg61

Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic

Rape of the Daughters of Lucipus by Rubens 1976

University of Nevada, Las Vegas 1974

About the twentieth toilet scrub in Walnut Creek’s unhappiest motel I suddenly remembered. I was already registered for my sophomore year. I called the Clock Shop at the MGM Grand and got my job back. The boss said he would pick me up at the airport and put me up for a few nights until I found a student apartment. Mom advanced some money from a small college trust fund I had forfeited by getting kicked out of the family. Off I few back to Las Vegas the next day. — From Chapter 3

Part of the process of remembering those tumultuous, long ago years was to sit in a comfy chair on my porch in the woods with drawing and writing tools. I altered back and forth between pen-and-notebook longhand and colored pencil drawings before transcribing and editing on my desktop. Navigating through memories of long-suppressed dread with words and pictures took me to where the humor and the lessons showed themselves.

This image is a rare, surviving student assignment from a college art class. We were instructed to recreate an old master painting using a single line. That the Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece I chose showed two women (me and Stella?) not entirely unhappy to be scooped up by a couple of random…