My Heart for Art at the Casa de Cultura

               My Heart for Art at the Casa de Cultura

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Leo, our all-around Rancho helper, plunked down in the chair in front of me, early in the morning, before I’d had my first cup of coffee.

“Remember years ago, when you gave me all the paints and brushes and art stuff to give to an artist when you couldn’t use them any more?”

“Leo, that really was a long time ago. When I give something, it is gone from my head. But, yes, now that you say it, I do remember.”

A bit of back story here: When I moved to Mexico, I brought my best easel and boxes of all my art supplies. I kept myself so busy just settling in, first in Mazatlan and then in my forever home in Etzatlan, that all I did with art was shuffle it from bins to cupboards.

I had boxes of oils, watercolors, brushes, some old and others with price tags still attached, charcoals, oil pastels, drawing tablets, a French easel, canvases of every size. I was constitutionally incapable of passing an art supply store without going in and stocking up on what, after all, I might need, someday.

I dearly loved to paint. I enjoyed the feel of the brush on the canvas, the smell, the mixing of colors. I always ended up with paint on my face, my hands, my shirt. Didn’t matter.  I never was a good artist. Didn’t matter. I loved to paint.

Once I moved, most of my painting was practical, with larger brushes. I painted walls. I painted furniture. I painted concrete and wrought iron, doors and benches, but, sadly, neglected canvas. Until one day during the pandemic, I set up my easel and my oils and my favorite brushes and started a painting, scraped it off, started another. Set up watercolor paper and destroyed several sheets. Get the pictured?

My hands were no longer able to work the magic. The tremor I’ve had for years had gotten worse with time. I sat myself down and had a CTJ meeting.

I asked Leo to take all my art supplies to give to an artist in town who could and would use them. Leo said, “I know just the person.” The only thing Leo told me about him later was that the man’s father was ill, he was his father’s full-time caretaker, and it would be a while before he would be able to paint. That was that.

I poured a cup of coffee for Leo as he told me that Pepe, the artist to whom I’d given the art supplies, his father now passed, was using the materials to teach classes and the first showing opened tonight at the Casa de Cultura. Would I like to go to see their work?

“Would I go? You can’t keep me away.”  I’m so tickled that I can hardly hold my own self in my own skin.

That evening at the Casa de Cultura, oh, my, bursts of color, rows of oil paintings on easels, walls of pastels and charcoals, a wall of drawings, but most importantly, the artists, the young people and the older ones, their families and friends, all bursting with pride at the works they had created. And, rightly so.

Me, I’m bursting too, bursting with delight that something I could no longer use, is put to good use in creating joy in the lives of so many others.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

February 18, 2026

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Intimations of Mortality

 

Intimations of Mortality

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My friend of over thirty years died last week of an acute and vicious form of leukemia. Richard was 85 years old and had lived a full and vital life. We who knew him are happy/sad. He died surrounded by family, immersed in love, Kathy by his side every moment. He died with so much beauty that the nurses dubbed his room the “Love Bubble”.

Once we wiped out tears, our conversations this past week have been focused on our own ever-increasing signs of mortality, signs both numerous and galloping along at a racing speed, as if afraid of missing the final date. We see it in one another. We feel it in ourselves.

Most of my problems are mechanical. I feel good, amazingly healthy. My locomotion is derailing. In my next life I want to be born with zerts and a grease-gun.

For myself, I am only too aware of how many of my closest, longest-time friends have gone. Years ago, my Aunt Mary, who lived until a mere breath or two below 100, told me that the hardest thing was to no longer have contemporaries, people who knew and shared the same life experiences and histories.

If you wonder what I mean, you try to explain telephone party line to your great-grandchild. Tell them that we used the telephone only when absolutely necessary. We called long-distance for family deaths. You will not be believed. They will roll their eyes. “There she goes again, telling stories.”

Aunt Mary, the important things do continue. People still show us love. We still have opportunities to help a neighbor, to share food, to love one another. I still have a small garden in which to putter, a sewing room convenient for my projects, and a wriggly-wraggly dog to walk and talk with and generally spoil. Actually, Lola spoils me, takes care of me, my therapy dog.

No artist could have duplicated the sunrise colors this morning. Nobody could have painted the crisp air, the wonder at being able to walk the lane, Lola exploring every scent along the way, the way the double-barreled cane trucks roll along the highway to the factory in Tala, the goats across the highway, waiting to be milked. These things are precious, the same, and, yet, different every day.

When I step out the door, I say, “Thank you.” Lola knows what I mean.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

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The Day I Did Nothing

 

The Day I Did Nothing

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“What are your plans for today?” my daughter asked. We talk by phone most mornings, early mornings.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do absolutely nothing today.”

She laughed. “Mom, you never have a do-nothing day.”

That’s pretty much true. I don’t always follow plans, but things get done, chores, projects, food, garden. One never knows what plans the day might bring, I say.

We no more than said our good-byes when I noticed that my power had gone out. Kaput! No warning. Just gone. No lights. No refrigerator. No heater on the coldest day we’d had so far this winter.

I have some weird (to me) thing with my bones. If I get cold, my bones hurt right through their centers and into the joints. We know from the song that all the bones are connected, therefore, I am one long pain.

Josue, our usual reliable fix-it man, was working on a job in town, and thus, unavailable. Leo had hared off to Tequila assisting another neighbor so I couldn’t ask him to find me another electrician.

This was early morning, remember. I dare not open the refrigerator, so a creative cookery day in the kitchen, with heat from my propane powered oven, was not an option. Within an hour I was properly frozen, my personal definition of frozen, and thus was immobilized. I ventured outside and parked myself in a patch of (fluctuating) sunlight, wrapped in robes for the arctic, gloved, lap blanket over my legs, book in hand.

I was, certifiably, properly, “doing nothing.” Doing more of nothing became the pattern of my day, as I moved from sun patch to sun patch. In the afternoon, I was saved from self-pity by visits from three different neighbors.

The day wore on, as days inevitably do. Josue returned home from his job later than usual and had committed to a different fix-it job for a neighbor. Leo did not return from Tequila until after five o’clock. I asked Leo if he could find me an available electrician. Twenty minutes later, my new fix-it man showed up.

Lights went up. Lights went down. Lights went up again. I’d no idea what the men were doing but I had no need to know. It was well past dark, when by flashlight, Leo and his friend had fixed my electrical problems, both out where the power comes in from the highway and at the panel at the house.

“Well past dark” means the bitter cold of night had robbed the heat from the day.

My refrigerator clicked on. I cranked up my trusty electric heater, fed myself, donned wool socks for frozen feet and piled on the blankets and huddled into bed awaiting sleep. For the first time ever, I ran my heater all night.

So that was it. That was the day I did nothing. As recreational pastimes go, I don’t recommend it.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

February 11, 2026

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