Yes, I know that it is not really kosher for a journalist to become part of the story she is covering. . . but, well, as you will see below from the beginnings of my memoir, I never went to "j-school," as those in the know like to call journalism school, so I trust readers will cut me some slack. . .
I think it was just great that I could attend The Miami Writers Institute, the creative writing conference in early May at The Center @ Miami Dade College. See www.flcenterlitarts.com for more info or google The Center @ Miami Dade College at www.google.com . For the second year in a row, I have attended a workshop in memoir writing. It has been really helpful and encouraging. This year, the workshop was taught by Da Chen, author of the memoir Sounds of the River. He really helped me plot a "roadmap" for finding a way to tell my story.
What I have posted below is most--but not all--of the writing sample I submitted for discussion at the workshop. Since then, I have slightly revised it, but I know I am a long, long way from writing a book-length memoir. Maybe as a book it will never see the light of day. . . but I would just like to do it anyway.
This memoir is probably one of the last big ideas I have had since my post-Miami Herald life began several years ago. And believe me, some of those big ideas have been doozies, lemme tell ya. Some of you reading this may remember at least one of them. . . But they all came to naught. So now, I am going to start on this one.
Before I begin more of this blog post, I want to say THANK YOU THANK YOU!! to my way-beyond-fab daughter Margaret Smith. She designed this blog for me because, as many of you know, I am indeed a self-confessed "digital dinosaur." There is just NO WAY NO HOW I could have set this up myself. She learned so much at the private Ringling College of Art + Design in Sarasota, Florida, where she graduated with honors and now has a job in her field of interior design. Ringling has terrific computer resources for designers. I am very grateful and proud that I was able to contribute over the years to her college fund thanks to all those years of working so hard for the Knight Ridder-owned Miami Herald.
Monday on CNN I just heard about this horrific story re an American citizen. See www.freejacobnow.com
First Things First: More Visual Arts News Connected to Miami
LegalArt, at 1035 North Miami Ave, is offering this ONE NIGHT ONLY chance to see video-based works by national and international artists. It is 8 to 11 pm, Friday, May 25, 2012 on the second and fourth floors of LegalArt building, also at Corner Bar, on northwest corner of LegalArt building. This exhibition is organized by curatorial collective Southernmost Situations and will include video-based sculptures and installations, also looped reel of short videos. Among the artists: Clifton Childree, Alice Raymond, Magnus Sigurdson, TM Sisters, Antonia Wright. For more info, contact Dominique Breard, email info@legalartmiami.org or ph. 786-347-2360. www.legalartmiami.org
Norton Museum of Art announces the establishment of an award for emerging photographers. It is called the Rudin Prize and will be awarded annually. It will be coordinated by curator Tim B. Wride. Winner receives $20,000 and a solo exhibition. Panelists selecting the award nominees: John Baldessari, Graciela Iturbide, Susan Meiselas, Michal Rovner, Yinka Shonibare. Prize named for late New York City real estate developer Lewis Rudin. Inaugural prize awarded December 2012. Norton Museum of Art is located at 1451 S. Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach FL. More info: see www.norton.org
An Annual Winner for Art and Education: The Education Fund's Charity Auction of Art made by 5-to-18 year old public school students is set for May 24, with 100 percent of proceeds from art sales donated back to their classrooms to help teachers purchase supplies for next year's lessons. Auction will be held in the historic Moore Building in Miami's Design District. Purchase tkts in advance through May 18 online at www.educationfund.org/programs/silentartauction or purchase tkts at the door. For more info call 305-892-5099. Tkts start at $100. This is really an exceptional event--I remember both covering and attending this during my time with The Miami Herald. On view this year will be over 150 artworks created by Miami-Dade County Public School students and teachers representing nearly 50 schools. This event has raised more than $722,000 since it began. It allows students and teachers to have access to donated and recycled materials for art making, courtesy of Ocean Bank Center for Educational Materials. Visionary event sponsors of this visionary event: Ocean Bank, The Children's Trust, Whole Foods, DACRA, and Bacardi.
Bridge Red Studios / Project Space located at 12425 NE 13th Ave #5, North Miami FL is now showing the work of Zaydee Martinez, Joe Nicastri, Laura Tan. Really try not to miss this. Closing brunch is Sunday, July 8, 2012, from noon to 4 pm. Also you can see this by appt; call 786-390-8915. www.bridgeredstudios.com This is an exhibition of 3 painters who, as the press release says, "explore representation with all the complexity that the word re-presentaion connotes." Also in the same building, in the downstairs space of Lou Anne Colodny known as Under the Bridge is another not-to-be-missed be show: "smoke signals: portals y paisajes." This show aims to focus on the "concept of a lens as a portal, frame, window, an entry point that one can further look through to unlock narratives beyond the limits of a two-dimensional frame . . ." It is curated by William Cordova. Among the artists: Leslie Hewitt, Robert Thiele, Glexis Novoa, Lourdes Correa-Carlo, Onajide Shabaka [for more info on Onajide, see my first post on this blog], Luis Gispert. Closing brunch is also July 8, 2012, from noon to 4 pm. Very cool Miami artcentric synergy in this space!
New World School of the Arts continues to celebrate its 25th anniversary year with further examples of how it makes many pioneering marks on Miami's cultural development. This year it is ranked among America's Top High Schools by U.S. News and World Report, earning the prestigious Gold Medal Award. NWSA is ranked 17th place in the state of Florida and 186th among all high schools in the nation this year. NWSA is home this year to two Presidential Scholars in the Arts, out of 20 scholars recognized nationally. Scholars are Kelley Kessell, in music-theater, and Jessica Suhr, in visual arts.
Here's another don't-miss opportunity for those of us lucky enough to both "summer" and "winter" in Miami: The fabulous Community Arts Program Summer Concert Series is now starting its 27th season! Concerts are 8 pm every other Thursday evening June 7 to August 16. Concerts held at my totally terrific church: Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ at 3010 DeSoto Blvd, Coral Gables (directly opposite the Biltmore Hotel.) First concert is June 7: Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Tkts are $30 each in advance, $35 at the door if available. Order by calling 305-448-7421, ext 153. See www.CommunityArtsProgram.org
WHERE IS THE GIRL I USED TO KNOW? A MEMOIR by Elisa Turner....or....FROM THE MIDWEST TO MIAMI: MY STAR-CROSSED AFFAIR WITH THE JOURNALISM (working titles) by Elisa Turner
I never wanted to move to Miami in the first place.
When I used to visit the city in the 1970s and early 1980s, I thought Miami was flat and flashy, a shallow substitute for the street-smart glamour of Boston, New York or London. These were the cities that had truly captivated someone like me, longing for far-flung adventures while she grew up in the small town of Shelbyville, Illinois.
When people in Miami raved about the brazenly orange blooms of Poinciana trees, I groaned inside. I saw visions of tulips and daffodils, missing the way their charming hues announced the long-awaited arrival of spring "up North." Yet, like the girlish and dreamy-eyed waitress in the popular 1980s TV sitcom "Cheers" who dramatically proclaimed that she was leaving her job at the bar to find herself and perhaps become a writer, I had simply run out of things that I was not good at when I moved to Miami with my husband in the scorching hot summer of 1984.
All the summers thereafter I discovered would be insufferably sticky scorchers in Miami, especially when I was pregnant. When I would gripe about how weird I thought Christmas lights looked on palm trees, family and friends would roll their eyes. "There are no seasons here," I complained. "Yes, there are. They are just more subtle," people would say. "Well, yes, there are two," I would snap. "Hot and REALLY hot."
But, after all this time, I have made my peace with Miami. My terrific husband of over 30 years and I have raised two wonderful adult children. They grew up with the opportunity to spend every day of their young lives outside. They never experienced chilly "snow days" that kept them stuck in their home, away from friends from school. They learned Spanish in public elementary school in Miami. When learning how to drive, they never had to confront icy roads.
And professionally, I grew into a life I would never have thought possible back when I grumpily relocated here from New York. Miami opened up countless adventures in a new world for me then. It is still doing that.
The city has always been a place where people come to re-invent themselves, to start anew. Somehow, without ever taking a course in journalism or art criticism, I became the last Miami Herald art critic when the Herald was the flagship newspaper of Knight Ridder, which sadly no longer exists.
Because I was never a full-time employee at the paper, I worked in my book-lined study at home, so that I could handle the busy demands of raising children and running a household. I started working especially hard for the paper in 1995 when Helen L. Kohen, the previous art critic, left. I recall reading her good-bye column and going to a farewell dinner for her with newspaper colleagues. My children were in grade school then. But even after Helen left, I never had my own computer in the newsroom. It made sense for me to drive to museums, galleries and art events from my home without going to the newspaper office. I would often rush back to pick up my kids and cook dinner and then work late or early in the morning.
Through the wonders of telecommuting (and a reliable modem), I usually filed my stories on time. It was a hectic, harried and enthralling life. I had always loved words and images, had studied so much literature and art history, so what could be a better career for a working mom? And then there were the fabulous international assignments for the Herald: the paper sent me once to the Havana Bienal in Cuba, twice to the Venice Biennale in Italy, once to Art Basel in Switzerland, and once to Haiti.
That trip to Cuba was my first overseas gig. When I came back to write my story in Miami, I was astonished to see it printed with the dateline Havana under my byline. It looked as if I had written it in Havana and filed it from there--how remarkable that newspapers could do something like this, I thought, which just shows was a journalistic neophyte I really was. Nevertheless, the experience was so thrilling that I wanted to do it again, and I dreamed up more angles to persuade the paper to let me travel again.
When my half-Cuban husband Eric Smith traveled with me to Havana while I covered the art scene for the paper, we found time to visit some of his relatives who still live in Havana. We brought them medicine from Miami in a carry-on suitcase. It was a warm, friendly encounter even though we wrongly assumed we had never met. We spoke for about an hour in an apartment with modest decor recalling the 1950s. Actually, they did most of the talking, with Eric occasionally translating for me since I don't speak Spanish. Elenita, who was the first cousin of Eric's late mom, remembered that she had first met Eric in Miami when she came to help her cousin take care of him soon after he was born.
At my urging, Eric asked Elenita why she still lived in Cuba though so much of her family has moved to Miami. She sighed. Then she said, "Some of us have to stay in Cuba."
This is perhaps the brightest memory I have of those fabulous trips, and one I often recall as I see how the city today is frequently defined by its evolving relationship with Cuba.
In spite of those opportunities to travel, my professional relationship with the Herald ended with a thundering bang.
My family and I were nearly killed in a horrific car accident in 2004. Suffering a traumatic brain injury, I was plunged into the black nothingness of a coma. Afterwards I struggled through hours and days of therapy to learn once again how to eat and drink, to talk and walk. My fingers stumbled on the keyboard until I taught myself how to type again.
Cards, telegrams and orchids from family, friends, co-workers, also from so many people in the art world, kept arriving at my various hospital rooms (there were about four) and home. It was an astonishing deluge of concern for a free-lance art critic who never thought she was good enough because she did not have a degree in journalism or art history and was not full-time at the Herald.
Still more shocking surprises: journalism was changing dramatically, especially in Miami. In 2006 The Miami Herald was sold to The McClatchy Company and the venerable Knight Ridder newspaper chain dissolved. As a free-lancer I lost access to 21 years' worth of work in the Herald archives. While I was still learning how to live with the post-traumatic stress disorder that accompanies a brain injury, the doors slammed shut on my life as art critic for The Miami Herald.
The nasty truth piercing the heart of an exceptionally productive newspaper career is that no one from The Miami Herald has ever told me that I am no longer an art critic for that paper. I still have my photo I.D. to gain entry to the Herald building at One Herald Plaza in Miami. This building may soon be demolished as its valuable bayfront location has been sold, and the Herald will eventually have to move to another location. To me, all this is, as Aunt Velva from Fayette County, Illinois, might have said, as ugly as home-made sin.
TO BE CONTINUED . . . (not sure when)
[Blogger's Note: I may not post another blog entry until Thursday, June 21, 2012. In the meantime, readers can read my previous blog posts here, also see my blog at www.artcircuits.com or to see my original ArtCentric blog, google Elisa Turner at www.google.com . Be sure to sign up to receive email notices when I post another entry on this blog. Also you can become a follower of this blog by clicking on my bio info; then see info about doing that on lower left-hand side of screen.]
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