Me: "Mind if I take a picture of the artists at work?"
Ardys: "No, I don't mind."
Missy: "I don't mind, either."
Ardys: "I guess that makes you an artist at work, too!"
Me: "Why, yes it does."
Camera: "Click."
Lawrence is bursting with artists. Painters, poets, musicians, sculptors, double-decker bicycle engineers - you name it, we got it.
Fortunately Lawrence is also brimming with places to display all of these various forms of art. Coffeehouse patrons can enjoy walls spotted with local artists' paintings while they read books of local poets' works and listen to local acoustic groups play music in adjacent rooms.
Sculptures of all different shapes and sizes are spattered across city parks. Murals cover the walls of buildings and ballparks throughout the town.
A music-minded friend of mine once said to me, "if you're a musician and you can't find a place to play live in Lawrence, then you're just not trying."
And if the desire for art ever dwindles, the city simply generates more demand. Take, for instance, the Jayhawks on Parade.
Or in this case, take local artists Missy McCoy and Ardys Ramberg, who were commissioned by Cottin's Hardware to liven up the dull-gray exterior wall of the store by painting a 12-foot-high replica of one of their original paintings.
It was quite something to see these artists at work, expanding their canvas scenery to more than eight times its original size.In talking with Ardys (who was working on the lower half of the painting at the time), we found that we have a few things in common:
1) we both enjoy working with pictures;
2) we both enjoy playing music; and
3) we both realize that none of these things will earn us enough money to put food on the table.
But these are the things that we love, and we - unlike many starving artists in Lawrence - are fortunate enough to have jobs that we enjoy that do put food on the table, while affording us the time to pursue the other things that we love.
It doesn't get much better than that.
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