Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: Palm Springs


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Ivy and Vera.

It wasn’t just a scarf, it was a Time Machine.

We went into the colorful gallery. Scarves everywhere. Paintings on the wall in the same images. I recognized immediately the signature on the scarves. Vera. The same name I had pulled out of my mother’s bottom dresser drawer for years.

I wasn’t allowed to “play” with them. But I could touch. Admire. She even showed me how to tie around my chubby, youthful neck — a neck that would one day grow into its own curiousity and self-esteem. It felt smooth and empowering. She tied the loop and the name Vera hung proudly. “Who is Vera?” I asked. “She’s one of us,” she said. That’s all I needed to know.

I had no idea of money at the time. It wasn’t about that. Yesterday in the gallery, the curator explained that Vera wanted all women to feel beautiful, to have the chance to accessorize themselves into something more, and so she created her line to be sold from Bergdorf’s to Herberger’s. Scarved and strong, my mother, in my eyes, surpassed both.

I wear them all the time. In different names. Different colors. Purchased in France, or at Goodwill, it doesn’t really matter. Because to be grouped with the grace (which means for me, not ease, but beauty and strength amidst all of life’s adversity) — to be called by grace itself, her gently saying, “She’s one of us.”

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Closer.

We went to see the new David Hockney exhibit in Palm Springs. In his late eighties he has created all new works, using mostly his iPad. He is also exploring something he calls reverse perspective.

I could spend a lot of time talking about the vibrant colors. The scale. But it is the perspective that interests me the most. (Or the least, perhaps).

I was in my first year of college, in my first formal art class. The professor gave us an assignment on perspective. I went home for the weekend to see my mother. I sat at the end of her small apartment hallway. I drew what I saw. 

Maybe it was because my world was just opening. A new city. A new life with books and people and wonder. Everything was changing. As I feared, as I wanted. I held up my small drawing. The boy in the back shouted, “It’s completely backwards.” Others shook their heads. Agreed. One even laughed. I was a bit shocked. It hadn’t even occurred to me. I held my breath. The teacher shushed the class. She asked me simply, quietly, in a way that sounded curious, not accusatory, “Why did you draw it that way?” I whispered, “That’s what I saw.” She smiled, and hung it on the wall.

David Hockney is quoted as saying, “To hell with the idea of a single vanishing point.” How exciting! Thrilling even! To paint without rules, simply to get closer and closer to the things I care about. I suppose that’s not just the way I want to paint, but the way I want to live. 

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The gathering phase.

I never thought of myself as shy. I think I just wasn’t ready.

She got the first note from my Kindergarten teacher, concerned that I didn’t say much. “She’s so shy,” it read. My mother replied with a “She’s fine.” It happened again in first and second grade. Maybe third. My mother, knowing me, said “When she has something to say she’ll say it. I smiled in nonverbal agreement. Her belief was mine, and since the fifth grade at Washington Elementary my heart (which is really our only voice) has always been at the ready. I sing it loud through words and art and voice.

I don’t know how my mother knew about the gathering phase. Maybe it’s because she would have loved the same opportunity. I’m grateful that she offered it to me. She never forced what was growing, greening, becoming, inside of me. She gave it the time it needed — the time I needed — and that has made all the difference.

I think we’re often in such a hurry to get people “healed”, or to whatever we consider “normal.” And that’s mostly all for us. I know the furious speed at which we want to get over. But we all have to go through. In our time and in our way.

My friend was surprised yesterday, at the gallery in Palm Springs, how easily I walked up to the owner to promote myself. I wasn’t afraid. I smiled to the sky. I had the confidence, the voice, I can only imagine, because I had been given the time. 

May we all allow each other our moments in the gathering phase.

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