And Many More . . .
Happy birthday and thank you for the inspiration to artist Beatrice Wood, matron saint of free thinkers everywhere and especially the many who flourish in her adopted hometown of Ojai.
Wood turned 105 last week, amid a fresh ripple of celebrity over her role as prototype for the 101-year-old character Rose in the hit movie “Titanic.”
Like Rose, the renowned potter universally known as Beato has a story that spans a century with all its ups and downs.
Well known are the stories of Wood’s early years as “the mama of Dada,” romping with that art rebellion’s leading light Marcel Duchamp as their crowd rattled the world in the 1910s and ‘20s. Much admired are her brilliantly glazed works of pottery (which fetch as much as $40,000 apiece) and her wry, often naughty, sketches. Lamented is the squabbling and legal jockeying that has fractured her close circle of friends and caretakers in recent years.
Yet today let us pause to appreciate the place Beato holds in the heart of her Ventura County neighbors. She is a living challenge for each of us to follow our deepest dreams, to seek out our truest talent and share it with the world--even if that takes a lifetime. (By the time her pottery achieved worldwide acclaim and she began to create her finest work, Wood was in her 90s.)
Ojai is full of people, especially women, who are reinventing themselves in wondrous ways. Like Beato, many of them have spent decades playing supporting roles before deciding, at last, to become the star of their own life story. You see them nurturing their artistic sparks, blowing gently on the glowing coals of their spiritual awareness, learning and growing and blossoming. They are challenging their personal muses. They are redefining age. They are redefining life.
And as their light combines with that of kindred spirits across Ventura County and around the world, the glow resembles the luster of a shimmering Beatrice Wood chalice.
A life well and truly lived is Beato’s finest work of art and greatest gift to her neighbors.