I was going to write about Purvis Young today, but he'll have to wait for another day. I think I should start as close to the beginning as possible - the era when art entered my orbit and made me hungry and dizzy and yearning with a passion more powerful than I thought possible.

I haven't collected art as long as people think. Maybe 25+ years or so, which I guess actually is a good amount of time. There's so much I want to include in this post. Advance apologies for the rambling about to commence.

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When David was about 8 years old and I was a struggling single parent, I worked in local museums as often as possible. It was temporary work with installations. We installers were considered bottom feeders in the art world. I was in my 40s, the eldest of the team I usually worked with. It was very hard work with lots of lifting and painting of walls, and uncrating and toting, and using scraps of paper to create precise mathematical calculations and measurements. The days were long. The work very physical, a labor of love.

The director and curatorial staff were insufferably full of themselves. They strutted about - all loopy with their self-importance. A crazy-crazy Frenchman was our installation boss. He always smelled of stale cigarettes and drunken night-before red wine, and sloppy night-before sex, turpentine, and pigment, and other odors of the body and beyond. He was every bit as nauseating as I describe... but the crazy-crazy Frenchman was brilliant. He had a silly crush on me for years - one I never honored. Mon Dieu!

I tolerated all this minimum wage nonsense because it gave me the opportunity to develop an up close relationship with art. I'll never forget the first time my gloved hands lifted a canvas, my eyes landing inches from swirls of colors and brushstrokes. It was love at first sight.

It was during this time in my life that I also picked up odd jobs through my art connections. I once helped install a gallery auction and was then asked to work the floor, plying patrons with cheap champagne and even cheaper white wine.

That evening, I slipped into my little black dress purchased at a local thrift shop and drifted around the cavernous auction room - making sure patrons' glasses were filled.

Midway through the evening, as I stood at the back of the room, a beautiful vase came on the block. I was mesmerized. In the middle of swirly swirls of color, was a big red heart. I swooned. And then I swooned some more. I knew better. I was living paycheck to paycheck... yet I let my hand rise to join in the bidding. My hand continued to rise until the vase with the big fat red heart in all the swirly swirl of color was mine, mine, mine!

At the end of the evening I retrieved my first significant piece of art. I had won the vase with a bid of $450.00. The year was circa 1992. The bid was comparable to my rent. I didn't care. I had won a beautiful piece of art.

When I approached my win that evening, a fear emerged, a concern, a trick-of-the-eye pounced, an illusion perhaps? As I slowly began to realize that a dagger was thrust through the big fat red heart, my own heart sank. How could it be! *sigh*

The thing is, many of you don't know, some of you do know... I'm a trouper, a pro. I smiled and welcomed the vase with the big fat red heart with the dagger. I embraced it as kismet. I was in the process of ending a marriage. The vase was perfect.











I lifted the following information from his website. If you want to know more about John, he's easy to find on the Internet.

John Barber

I celebrated my 40th year blowing glass in 2012. In Europe, where my training in art glass began, there is a twenty year apprenticeship before one sits at the Masters workbench -- there are no exceptions. I have made my living and maintained a glass studio solely on the income I have generated from selling my original works of glass at shows and exhibits.

Over these many years, I have continually researched the lost techniques of the glass masters of antiquity and developed techniques unique to my glasswork. As a Master Glassblower, I feel the work I create today is comparable to that made anywhere in the world.

For more than 40 years, I have produced 10 to 14 tons of art glass a year, translating into millions of one-of-a-kind signed pieces in collections worldwide with a large local following.