I Would Walk 800 Miles

After ten days of holiday celebrating and vacationing, today was just another day in the life.

Put on some "Undeniably Mauve" lipstick, go for a walk and put your life in gear again.

I finally got back to working, interviewing a curator, scheduling another with a musician tomorrow and taking my hired mouth out for a meal.

Eating alone has its distinct pleasures, none more so than listening to and/or joining the conversations of strangers and tonight I lucked into a couple of good ones.

When one of the guys mentioned a band he used to be in back in the day, the other guy knew the bass player of that band and within minutes they were doing the back and forth to determine possible shared friends.

They threw out the names of lots of former local bands (Modern Groove Syndicate being one of the few I recognized) before segueing into stories about the glory days.

You know, the '80s.

One guy shared how he'd bought a '50s Jeep ("Left over from the Korean war") back in his heyday and done all kinds of irresponsible things with it.

One story was about how he'd left Sidewalk Cafe and driven home on the sidewalks all the way. Get it? He seemed to think this was hilarious.

But the coup de gras was how he'd offered this girl a ride home in his jeep after a long night of drinking at the old Bogart's ("I wasn't drunk, really!") and how on the way there, she'd fallen out of the Jeep.

"Wait, was her name Jennifer?" the other guy asked mid-story, as if he recalled a Jennifer falling out of a Jeep 30 years ago.

"No, man, no," Jeep guy said, eager to finish. "So she falls out and I have to pull over and yank her back in, right in front of a cop car to get her home."

The other guy nods in appreciation.

"Yea, those were the days, back when a girl could fall out of your Jeep and the cops didn't give a shit. Man, I loved the '80s."

I couldn't have ordered better entertainment.

When I left it was for the VMFA to hear the Mary Hermann Garcia Group, notable because the band's trombone and percussionist was Antonio Garcia, director of the Jazz Studies program at VCU.

Conveniently, he seems to have fallen in love with and married a singer for his quartet and tonight they were playing sambas, bossa novas and standards at the Jazz cafe.

Thinking that between New Year's eve and the rainy evening it would be a slow night for jazz, I was immediately proven wrong when I got to Best cafe to find the room mobbed, leaving standing room only.

Standing where I at least had a good view of the band, Mary said it was their last song before a break. "Our last song is 'Lover Come Back," she said sweetly.

"And I'm going to play it faster than I have a right to," Antonio said with a big grin and damned if he didn't do just that.

I soon saw a familiar face when a J-Ward neighbor walked by on the way to score a second round for her and her husband. "We've got an extra chair at our table, come join us," she invited.

On the way to their table, I saw one of the No BS guys, no doubt there because he came out of VCU under Antonio's tutelage. At another I saw a couple dressed to the nines with her was in a strapless gown, no less.

Besides the expected husband, another couple was at the table when I got there and the woman scrutinized me before saying, "We've met, maybe at Balliceaux? You're the blogger."

Good memory. She and her husband live in Carver, so it was a table of neighbors, albeit not intentionally.

But since we'd all been in the neighborhoods for seven-plus years, it was only natural that we got off talking about the changes we'd seen over the years.

In rapid order, we discussed the influx of students (both VCU and MCV), the hope that Whole Foods does buy the old Sears building, how our Kroger could use a better cheese selection and what everyone thought of Max's and Lucy's, our two newest eateries.

With samba music playing, I looked outside to see rain falling on the reflecting pool and around Chihuly's red reeds, the ones the VMFA recently bought for our own (hooray!) and thought how lucky we are to have this lovely place to hang out in any Thursday and Friday evening we care to.

But then the art geek in me kicked in and rather than stay for the third set, I wanted to go upstairs and see "Clare Leighton: From Pencil to Proof to Press," an exhibit of drawings, woodcuts, posters and even a porcelain piece.

I had the focus gallery to myself, at least until the gowned woman and her date strolled in, but they seemed less interested in art than each other and soon abandoned me for a more private gallery.

As a reader, I loved seeing some of the illustrations Leighton did for Thomas Hardy's book, "The Return of the Native," even more impressive when seen in a first edition copy of the book under glass.

Talk about a nerd's wet dream - rare book plus art after music. Thanks, Thursday.

I read where Leighton traveled to Dorset, the book's setting, to get a feel for the heaths where the book was set before she drew them.

Nice research trip if you can get it.

There were two watercolors, both delicately exquisite, the colors soft and inviting and a couple of pieces she'd done in New England, one of "Clam Diggers" and another of "Lobstering," done on a porcelain plate.

My favorite was a poster for "Week End Walks. 800 miles of these in London's country," advertising a set of three books, "Available at station bookstalls."

Bookstalls, now that's a wonderfully antiquated word.

Apparently Leighton did a fair amount of posters because she felt there was no distinction between fine art and commercial art and that art should be available through all different modes of production.

Amen to that or we economically-challenged would never have a shot at owning any.

Likewise, she was an artist who participated in subscription print clubs, an idea first conceived of in the mid-19th century and revived during the Depression to promote the affordability of prints and help artists make a living.

Clubs commissioned limited edition prints from artists for subscribers. Voila! The democratization of art.

Just one more piece of brilliance put into play during an economic downturn to help the creative class continue to eat, stay warm and sleep indoors. Count me as a full supporter.

In my favorite "only a woman" moment, there was a print called "The Baptising" done in 1952 when Leighton traveled through the south to get ideas for a series of illustrations.

Coming upon a scene of people gathered around a woman holding a baby standing in the river with a minister on a hot August Sunday, Clare did what any self-respecting artist caught pencil-less would do.

She pulled out her lipstick and a scrap of old paper and put down a sketch of the scene which she turned into the engraving in front of me months later.

Never underestimate the uses of lipstick. Or find yourself out without it.

Just in case you're lucky enough that a man whisks you off to a gallery where it ends up on him instead of you.

Undeniably one of my goals.