I wanted to add a bit of comment to the poem below, obviously inspired by Moses.
“You’re not Grandma Moses,” an artist friend said recently, meaning I wasn’t going to turn into a visual artist in my sixth decade. This was in relation to my text installation off-the-page work. I had to agree–I was going to continue to need collaborators or a very well thought out design to continue to make these pieces.
Or maybe not. Maybe I can actually teach myself enough to function as an outsider artist.
“I’m not Grandma Moses,” I told an assembled group at Salem Art Works this summer, giving a process talk. But then a young man reminded me that we were indeed in Moses’s neighborhood of upstate New York. And I remembered how I’d loved her work as a child. How she is a great American woman painter. A folk artist, or outsider, or maybe not. And she started with needlework and textile.
So the poem was an exploration of how she was “self taught.” And that is something I can indeed aspire to.
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond
Santa Fe Literary Scene, Poetry, Land Art, New Mexico
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 
Lovely, Miriam–do it! Be our New Mexico Grandma Moses!
PS–I don’t know if I’ve ever said hello to you–I’m Katherine Koch, and I went to SAAC. I’m a little younger than you, but I’m friends with Peter Frank, who recommended your blog. My husband and I dream of leaving Brooklyn and moving to NM. I’m a painter who’s writing a memoir, so I know a little what you’re talking about, leaping over to a new art form in middle age. (Are we still middle-aged?)
I love getting your posts–thanks!
Katherine
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Hi Katherine–I do remember you! Your father the esteemed Kenneth? Thanks so much for posting–and your understanding. Let me know if you ever want work of yours on the blog.