This past weekend we left the fireworks behind and ventured north for the Montreal Jazz Festival. I also had the ulterior motive of checking out “Pompeii” and “Toulouse-Lautrec Illustrates the Belle Époque” at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.

Customs ©2016 Elizabeth Fram                                                                                               Heading into Canada, the line at the border was as long as I’ve ever seen it.

They are both wonderful exhibits. The artifacts from Pompeii were extremely moving, not just for their incredible preservation and accessibility to a daily life we can all relate to, but also for the sheer beauty and, in many respects, almost contemporary feel in much of their design. Across the hall, I was in total awe over Toulouse-Lautrec’s facility with line and mesmerizing compositional skills. And because various states of many of his prints are on view, there is an enhanced opportunity for  learning.  To tell the truth, after being surrounded by so many posters of Parisian life, I left his exhibit feeling a touch of Paris-envy. (And how better to scratch that itch from far-away Vermont than with Paris Breakfasts? Carol Gillott’s world of patisseries, watercolors, and ‘la joie de la vie à paris’ is a visual confection.)

Now that I’m back at work, there has been a lot to think about, especially after a weekend exposed to such artistic mastery – both visual and musical. I keep a folder on my laptop of various quotes and passages — thoughts that resonate and, depending on the circumstance, often provide the perfect reinforcement in the studio when needed. As I’ve been stitching this week, humbly plugging away, the following two ideas keep running through my mind:

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”    – Miles Davis

And this from M.C. Richards’ Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person:

“There are many marvelous stories of potters in ancient China. In one of them a noble is riding through a town and he passes a potter at work. He admires the pots the man is making: their grace and a kind of rude strength in them. He dismounts from his horse and speaks with the potter. ‘How are you able to form these vessels so that they possess such convincing beauty?’ ‘Oh,’ answers the potter, ‘you are looking at the mere outward shape. What I am forming lies within. I am interested only in what remains after the pot has been broken.’     It is not the pots we are forming, but ourselves.”

Wise words for keeping me on track. Can you relate?