Dusti Bonge: The Life of an Artist

A production of Mississippi Center for Educational Television. Dusty bones yay. The life of an artist. Like twenty nine forty by video date nine thirty eighty two audio day and three eighty two direction bank late. OK. OK. Oh. That used to be to me being

recognized as a good time. And of having shows and selling out a complete show when it's. Just really a recognition of. A billet. And now. So it says to me. That the fine can I don't care whether anybody seen that or not. I mean success to me is that. I have accomplished exactly what I want to do. Because when you having shows and things you don't always accomplish what. You. Maybe paint a good picture. Maybe it doesn't hit them. But you know yourself. I love a lot of color every day. I love dull colors I love gray

colors I I mean they don't have to be bright. And this special someone said maybe. What's your favorite color. Well I don't know how you could have a favorite color. It's like having 12 children and somebody saying which is your favorite child. You would know because enough of them of the same thing. We're both in school. And with eventually ended up in New York. Where we were married after a. Certain length of time. And. I was working in pictures out in Long Island. And she was working as a doorman. At the. PIER. In. Ballaban in cats. They have. Forgotten. The

name of it. The paramount. And. One day. Well because we didn't see much of each other because he worked at night. And I slept that night. When I worked in the daytime and he slept in the daytime and in the daytime. So one morning we had just a quarrel or we just had an awful fall and he's gone down afterwards and. I. Took up a paintbrush and I painted him a picture because I didn't know how to make up because I was going to be there when he came back. So I painted this picture and he liked it so much that he asked me if I would paint with him when he was back. So that's where I got started writing was just being with Jian and painting and getting criticisms from him. And he didn't want me to go to a school. He wanted me to. Just not be bound by rules and regulations

that were laid down mild people. Sometimes are look at a by. Feel like oh yeah get a canvas up that think I who have lived to. 100 and it's a there's nothing definite I don't look at it and say Gee I'll make a circle. The circle has to grow because if I say make a circle. It never turns out any good because then I make a circle and I get live and rare. And if you're going to paint abstractly you can't be literary. That's the one thing that I guard against. If I find myself saying Well. I'll fill out a red that better get a little green. Then I knew I know I've lost. Love. Because I begin to revel in it. And it has to it has to come from deeper. Than a

verbalisation. Has to be something that. Brings the book out of you it's a part of you. One sounds simple in the distance. So big it is blue. Perch on a patient that the. Sound held captive by the wind splits the tension down the middle and leads to a hollow spot. That defined only a

brown thing where the memory of a sound. Was plucked. From me. Yellow gloom green and gold. Suspended in space surrounded by night. Held together by small tentacles. Small world on top of small on top Bob's small. Poems are just things that you know they just happen. And I mean I don't say oh well I'm going to write some poetry. And I have never thought well I want to do a poem about death. The poem comes and I write it down and then I usually forget all about it. Full flowered with Froot hands out to the sky green gracious and giving touching the air and reaching for the sky. I have never written a poem as an illustration.

Of a drawing and I've never made a drawing of a poem so they just happen. I suppose it's the same thought that dictates both the poem. And. The painting. When I was in school in Chicago while so went down boys and open a road show would come in they had a lot of road shows a day and age and. I would go down and ask if they had a walk on or off a bit. PS A lot of them made just something and. Also got jobs. Playing in the shows others a baba scene or something like that and. Not see the Duncan sisters.

Had. This show called Top seed Eva This started in California. And they were Sister Act this sort of song and dance group and. They were banging on a room so I got a job and overfeeding in it. And with. I think it was the whites just. So. We played in that and through it. We got. There. During the main show for a while but then they went back on the road and I stayed. In the city. Then. Try to get work as a night. I got. Quite a few things. And. This of course is a deficit picture that I had taken. When I met Archie. That was in the show business. I mean I guess I did go on working but I didn't have much interest

in. I love black and. Because. Black is. The place you can go and price is as high as you can go and just think of the Faroes of shame that you have that come between black and white and you have such such a range that it's fun and fun to work with. You can express. Joy or sorrow or sadness anything you want. Whereas in color. You get very gay and fine and beautiful and you can express any great pathos there. So black and white is. I use a lot. I used to use a lot in ink drawing.

Because I love using using. You know with watercolor paper and then use the main candidates. It's fun it throws it in response to what you want it to do. The house that I live in is next door. To the house I was raised in where I played as a child and really knew as a home. My mother was a tiny person but she was very very strong. She was a good Augen eyes and she didn't organize one of the first mothers clubs that turned out later years later to be PTA. My father is very handsome and very very dignified.

But he was quite successful as a banker and he had a phone and it was sort of his recreation and he planned it. I think it was fifty thousand Pinetree and he went out practically every day to look at him and my mother claimed that he went out and patted each one over there and those eyes just shot out of the ground and Bruce. You can imagine how tall and how fast they grew. I enjoyed working with clay but. I don't throw on the when I did it one time. But I enjoyed making very good bones by molding them by hand I'd rather do it by hand than to do it on. And then I'd rather. Make sure. My son and grandson out of all sail. And I like to cook special things like make gumbo.

And. I'm. Like. Different fishes and. Salads. Like make lotsa big sound like big bowls of it every night. And. When my son and grandson. Are down because I do much more cooking when I don't. As a baby Winslow says. There were three children. My sister brother and me. My sister Mary. And my brother went into the bank. And is still. In the bank. And. Working. We have pot plants in the three banks the main branch and the West and the North Biloxi. Branch

and we have pot plants in those and so once a week I go around and take care of the pot plants in the three banks and that's my contribution to the if that survive my work at the bank. When I started painting from reallife I painted some because they were so vital and they were so marvelous to do. And now. The first. Dream picture I ever painted was sunflowers They Yes I dream I dream this complete canvas and I jumped up and ran to the studio and I hated it. And painted it very sad and I'm. To not forget I could remember the old it was yellow yellow here no that wasn't there

in that I've thought the whole I could remember the whole thing because I did it very quickly. And I just. Jumped out of bed ran to the studio and started. I didn't. I put on a robe I didn't mean put on shoes or anything. And. That was the first picture that I ever dream. Then after that I did dream pictures. And so then I kept small canvases stretched up because that big picture log bridge was about about thirty six point forty eight a day and I was losing it. Toward the last I was having trouble recalling so that I did these small ones and I could jump up and really go to town and. Do the whole thing before it would get away because it's like you know you have a dream. You know that's an amazing dream. If you don't tell it somebody or write it down the

next day you think oh that was a dream about. What. What was that dream. And he's gone and. I keep my drawings and watercolors and things like that in draws this. And that. This is very early. Days from here Wrong much later. Oh. I can.

Think. I can think and walk a lot in the house but I can't think in watercolors do you think the studio is too big into open to you know. It doesn't lend itself to something small. This way you can sit in the table and. And do them and you don't need say. And then you have all the things around you that. You know that belong to you that. Contributed toward making you what you are now. This is some of the things that I picked up when I was traveling around most of them came from Mexico. Of all the places I've ever been to Mexico is my favorite. And every time I've taken the trip and I come home I always say well next. To Mexico. Now why that is I don't know. Maybe as soon as I cross the border.

I have this. Feeling that. I'm home. And yet none of my people ever came from Mexico. I have no Spanish and there's three of us. Any. Mexican ancestry. But I still love Mexico. One day when I was working in the studio I was work it was a very big heavy painting. The smallest was four feet by six long nationwide and that makes it pretty heavy because you have to have a frame around that too. So I was so tired and so frustrated that I said well the next time I do and do minute two years I'm not going to do any more of these great big.

And so I came home and I got out my acrylics and my watercolors my in and I started doing managers which was a lot of fun but also awfully hard because I had a lot of misses before I got any I've forgotten hits. And I hear a few of them. They're all different sizes shapes and form. And the fact. I don't even have a name. Oh. My son is married to a doctor

but he loves his home and he loves Biloxi so he comes down periodically. And this time he's coming down to spend the money. I love to travel. And one time I was getting ready to go on a freighter trip around the world and this friend of mine asked me if I would take a dog. So I said yes I'd like. If. We had the understanding that if we didn't get along I would drive home and didn't have to put up with it but turned out she was just a terrific traveling companion. She could go as long as I could and we we had the same tastes and she was a marvelous child. Well we got on this ferry to New York and then we went all the way around the world took us five and a half months. And

while on the freighter I took my sketchbook and my felt tip pens and I made drawing but I had also gotten a new camera. That my son had picked out for me. And I had quite a few rolls of film. So yeah. Took some pictures where the pictures turned out. The crew couldn't understand what I was doing because I took pictures of that funny thing and the pictures turned out to be as abstract as my painting which you can say when I'm done and I mean it. I. Flew in Florida and I think Loman's has more

pictures. Plus where ya than any place I've ever I never saw so many pictures in my life and most of them were poorly lit and I thought well you know what wrong if you would tell those forward you wouldn't get that glare of the candle. You could see them. So when I got home I decided that I would. Take my candles and. Make it onto a train that. Was. Wild at the top. Now at the bottom kill thought. That was very good. And then I got off into this maybe different shape. And I just started making machine and. The. Bill just grew. Printer moved down from New York to Biloxi. We moved into a little four room house right near the school and in the back

there was a. Shed a tiny little house round which we planted banana plants things and we call that. Live elves. Club. Why I don't think it's a bad. Here. I mean you play a game of. Seeing things for the first time. Which. In the morning we have a laugh they will see everything they express. No dictates of what it is. What if anything this is something very few approaches so you could see something. And you would see it for its design and its color. You wouldn't see it as a question. Thought to be a chair. Everything takes on the look VERY has then is nothing is dictated its history doesn't tell anything till you see it completely fresh. One time I had a.

Portfolio. Drawings that on the top shelf of a posit my studio. And my grandson came out he was looking around and he pulled it out. And. I. Had gotten come from the ground and had gone up into this thing and these drawings. Eaten great holes and all sorts of places. So I took them down and there was such beautiful shapes. That I. Took. Them. And compose them in pictures. And. They really. They're my victims but it helps all the. Way. I didn't paint steadily. Until. Well I started just before she died. I would look out at the studio and he'd be sitting there and I knew he was worried. So I would go out and chat and try to keep him from being worried while that of that was important I don't know but I did.

So then I started painting in the studio with him and he liked he liked my being there and he helped me a great deal you know. So that's when I really started the painting was when he was ill. Well then after he died of course I went right on. There's a trail called the toxic right. And it. Goes they tied the topsy Chaney rhythm which is a tiny little has one little fan big round it and beautiful just a beautiful little river. And the

next. Time. A friend of mine told me in fact he's a dog. Yeah his wife both cars. And he loves to go to the woods too. So we would often drive up and take this trail. We like the sound of them the northern end of the French find all black. And horrible mess. I am. Well I like mace and I because. You can kind of

Gallatin to it and stand it for a pittance Pratchett and draw than. Just really abusive and. Sometimes it turns out very well. And this is supposed to be. My first one man show was with very possums and of course I felt like that was funnest dowry to be had and so she gave me a show every second year then for a long time until finally I I kind of didn't go back to New York is often I was more intrigued with painting than with showing. I think my last show was of the. Fiberglass. Paintings for Windows. Yeah.