This page is designed to serve as an introduction to the small series of paintings I put together for my Art Critique Group from Gallery 825. As my students all know, I'm having difficulty understanding the term "retirement." So I have six theses, 72 students, and clamoring for office time, when technically I'm retired. But I think this may be an illocutionary dialogue about the meaning of retirement in 2003.

Here's my version. We're having a dialogue that needs to go on. Pat and I are enjoying the dialogue, and Dean Williams has provided a forum for the dialogue. But meanwhile, my art has been neglected in all this, and so I took five days of freedom out to get my paintings together and do some new ones that reflect what I'm trying to do as an artist. I know, I know. I already do this on the site. But my husband swears it's not art until I put it on canvas or pour it in metal. He may be right.

South Africa: Fanon, Soweto, and the Blue Train is the result. And, yes, we'll bring the series to school. It all started with Fanon and postcolonialism. It continued with a driver who agreed to take us to Soweto. And it culminated with our trip on the Blue Train. By the time I finish this series, I hope to have made sense of what South Africa said to me, and to have captured some of the feeling of trying to understand postcolonialism from the insulated world of the Hollywood Hills.

. . .
"View of Mandelaville shantytown showing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Orphanage in Mandelaville.
the newly installed porta-toilets" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Many of these children were born HIV positive."

Two of Bruce Damer's photos of Mandelaville, a shantydown district of Soweto.
Notice the porta toilets installed everywhere.
Source Copyright.