Above, Mission Concepcion de la Purisma by Mary Bonner (left) and by Mary Aubrey Keating (right)
‘I had always dabbled a little in artistic things in a sort of boarding school fashion, but I had certainly never taken anything I had done very seriously.’
Mary Bonner, well known etcher, in conjunction with her sister, Emma Jane, has a studio on Agarita Street. There, period furniture, rare objets d’art, first editions, and, of course best of all, etchings my be had. ‘Mary’ has won many medals and decorations from the French Government for her etchings. The Bonner place… is set in an ancient walled garden, hemmed in by giant cypress trees. In the garden there are many paths. One leads to Mary’s studio, another to an underground part of the Shop, known as the Caverns…. Beyond this, is the room for the gigantic etching press where the artist spends most of her time.
Mary Aubrey Keating (1894-1953) described her fellow artist in Keating’s 1935 guide, San Antonio: Interesting Places in San Antonio and Where to Find Them.
Several years ago, Colleen Sorenson fell under the spell of a colorful, compact neighborhood of homes, Colonia Guadalupe, increasingly attracting artists priced out of the center of San Miguel de Allende.
She loves it but began to be alarmed by some of what she saw surfacing on buildings all around her. Tagged walls and graffiti attacks on property without permission damage the fabric of a neighborhood.
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But Colleen had seen this before in San Antonio, and she knew there were remedies. She was determined to corral the talent behind some of those marred walls, redirecting taggers toward more positive forms of artistic expression.
The gringa transplant with little command of Spanish has made a huge impact on her adopted home in an extremely short time. And, whether working class or artist, everyone on every corner in Colonia Guadalupe seems to know her name.
Some of the results of her efforts, both grassroots and at city hall, will be seen in a series of forthcoming posts.
Wonder what the older girls think when the Mister introduces a new one into the harem, watching as he lovingly caresses the curves of the latest arrival.
Not one of them has been a part of his life for more than 20 years, except for one with such a wimpy, wispy voice he rarely touches her. No electric sparks fly through her veins.
The flaming red-haired Gibson girl always thought she was his favorite, even after he brought in the skinny, slender-hipped, bleached-blonde.
But then came the gaudy one from Austin with a gypsy-sounding name wearing all that turquoise.
The Gibson girl was confident she could triumph over the tackily clad Mother-of-Toilet-Seat one who likes to lazily lay across his lap, but that turquoise tart?
The gypsy thought she won his heart, but his love was fleeting.
The room is so crowded; yet he found a way to squeeze in one more.
This one, like the gypsy, is young. The child of guitar-maker Chuck Thornton belonged to Jay Wright, who broke her in, then struggled to part with her.
Wright loved her so much, he almost made her a cover girl before letting her go. When the Mister snapped her up on eBay, Wright wrote to him gushing about her attributes and telling him how lucky he was to have her.
Wright also sent the Mister the book he published about living with “G.A.S.,” or “Guitar Acquisition Syndrome,” an addictive affliction affecting many men who obsessively keep adding to their harems.
The book, featuring the Mister’s newest acquisition on the page just before its table of contents, is a manual. A tongue-in-cheek primer not for curing the addiction, but for justifying it. It’s filled with how-to hints for hiding the disease’s symptoms from your significant other. A litany of excuses and ruses, such as this one:
Display your guitars in different rooms. Spread them out – to a bedroom corner for one, beside a TV or piece of furniture in another room, in a closet, or under a bed. A herd never looks as large dispersed as it does clustered together in one room.
Wright’s former mistress now belongs to the Mister
The Mister needs no excuses. Someone married to a writer needs a major outlet of their own.
So how do I feel when the Mister’s in his lair and I overhear him making one of his girls sing, even scream, loudly?
Hey, I’m upstairs tapping away on my keyboard humming along.
I say keep playing those blues, bearing in my mind what he said before one of those significant birthdays:
Some men get new wives when they turn 40; all I want is an electric guitar.
Okay, that was an understatement. He wanted more than that first redhead.
But no need to hide or thin out the herd.
Surely the space in that music room is maxed out by now….
Holy Cards No. 2, “She said no man of hers was going to sell his soul to the devil: Santa Cecilia at the Crossroads?,” digital collage by Gayle Brennan Spencer, http://www.postcardssanantonio.com/holy-cards.html
And, if I did object?
I think I might hear a loud chorus of “I’m gonna sell the bitch’s car and buy myself a cool guitar.”
Postcards from Barton Springs 