Family concerns over the past two years
have caused me to become intimately familiar with the four-hour drive
on I-95 between Baltimore and northern New Jersey. I know every toll
booth, every rest stop and every speed trap along the way. Because
radio station signals tend to fade in and out, I've started listening
to old audio cassette tapes I created years ago from favorite record
albums.
I never thought much about why I chose the songs I did, or how they
all matched up with one another on the tapes. I'd just plunk them in
and sing along with James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and all the rest as I
traveled up the highway.
Until my most recent trip in late December. Inching forward at 10
miles an hour during a blinding rainstorm with way too many other
holiday travelers and lots of time to think, it dawned on me that
nearly every one of the folk songs I'd recorded dealt with home. Going
home. Longing for home. Being home. And I was struck by just how
powerful that one little word can be.
Home may be a real place. It may only be a state of mind. Either
way, it packs an emotional wallop. It's where you feel safe. Where your
creativity takes flight. Where, to quote Kentucky sage John Ed Pearce,
"you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to."
Just as we focus on our own homes, we tend to be equally curious
about each other's. Add artists to that equation, and you have the
perfect jumping off point for
AmericanStyle's annual Art
& Design edition. Once again, our focus is Artists' Spaces, and we
invite you to join us as we journey to the homes and studios of more
than a dozen working artists from California to Vermont. The settings
are as diverse as the artists behind them, and just as intriguing.
