The Power of Art in its simple Form

As I ride back to Atlanta feeling just exhausted with pure simple happiness, I think of why I was drawn to Mavis “Swan” Poole & her friends. I first spotted her and one of her friends as he played the guitar and she sung when we first walked through the park. They resonated of the earthy, simple artsy beautiful thing that happens in Washington Square Park. She had this beautiful care-free smile and her friend was picking at his guitar looking at her with this look of just pure joy and fascination. They were so caught up – I am not sure if it was just their music, the aura of the park, their fascination of each other or a fantastic combination of all the above. No I was not freakishly staring at them – I just got that sense in a quick glimpse as I absorbed the essence of Greenwich Village walking through the park with my husband.

When we were passing back through I saw her with her crew again except this time it was three of them sitting on a bench. I was captured by their Greenwichesque essence that poured from their pores. I sat down across from them with Rob and told him that I wanted a picture. I wanted to capture that feeling in a picture. This was what the park was all about. Someone sitting next to us rushed over and indicated that I wanted a picture. I asked “Can I?” and they warmly accepted. I was able to take one picture and my camera died. Mavis gave me her card and the rest is short history.

Mavis and I don’t know each other from a hill of beans. I am not a photographer just a woman with a PHD (push here dummy) camera. My children’s Greenwichesque spirit is inherited mostly from their father. Yet Mavis and her friends represent what I felt and still feel when I experienced New York City for the first time. About twenty-one years ago, I was on the brink of a breakdown. The shock of losing my mother five years earlier and being separated from my siblings was slowly wearing off and being replaced by the depression of grief. My young innocence had been taken from me by a college football “star” that felt entitled to anything he wanted and my heart slightly damaged by the pain of young-heartbreak. But strangely enough what my soul remembers is the excitement of meeting people, the kindness of strangers on the street, the power of hope and the coolness (not cool as in cold but coooooooool) of being in NYC!

For that moment Mavis & her friends represented what I have reaffirmed in my heart – you can’t have too many friends, we are 99.9% the same and.1% different and finding that difference is what makes us all so crazy special! I hope by sharing my picture of my new friend you will do me the honor of showing her that throughout whatever struggles she may experience in living her destiny of an artist, that her .1% difference was so evident that an absent-minded goof like me was able to zone in on it in our brief encounter! Show the swan some love and tell her Jowanna sent you.

Mavis Contact Information

mavis@swanvocals.com
www.swanvocals.com
http://www.myspace.com/swanvocals 
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/mavis.swan.poole

Jowanna

 

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