Revolution

I like a sale. I like to feel like I am actually saving money, when I probably am not. One of my favorite sales is the Hobby Lobby half off custom framing. I scour the house looking for something, anything, that needs a frame, run it down there, play with the mat boards and wood samples, and just get a rush that I am getting a custom framing job for 50% off. It doesn't take much to get me excited.

So a few months back I took in a picture that used to hang in my room when I was a child. Of course it already had a frame, but it needed a makeover. It needed to be updated to match Kathryn's room, which I refer to as the Garden Tea Party. Could there be a more perfect place to hang a picture of a girl with flowers? I think not.

So when I took the print to Hobby Lobby and the framer disassembled it from its former condition, we made a few discoveries. It wasn't a print but an actual etching, and it was number 53 out of 100, made sometime in the 70s. Mr. Framer man looked at me and said,"How much is this worth?"

"Well, it's priceless I suppose. Because it hung in my room as a child and it means so much to pass it on to my daughter."

I was met with a blank stare.

"If I were you, I would go home and Google this and see how much money you could have coming your way."

So I went home and puttered around, thinking surely not, surely this picture is not worth thousands of dollars. Well, what's the harm in a little Googling? Mind you, I am not good at this whole Google thing. I do not know where to put the commas, backslashes, apostrophes, etc. to narrow my search down. So I enter the artist's name, Thomas Lewis, and come up with 3,650,000 possible matches. Then I enter, Thomas Lewis, artist and hey what do you know, only 324,000 to search through now.

Here's what I knew about Thomas Lewis from the blurb on the back of the etching. I knew he was born in 1940 in Pennsylvania and went to John Hopkins, Georgetown, Bucknell and Harvard. Apparently he's an idiot. His work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, in galleries around DC, and in some Ivy League schools. And he "is particularly interested in the artist's role in society."

Let's weed, shall we? The first Tom Lewis was born in 1979, well that rules him out. The next born in 1907, died in the 70s, plus he did watercolor landscapes. The next one born in Northern Ireland and fancies himself a singer. I kept on, really what else did I have to do, except the laundry. Finally I get to an entry about Thomas Lewis, peace activist, in of all places, Wikipedia. Don't you just love Wikipedia? A wealth of knowledge, where was it when I was doing school reports? Well, here's what it said:

Thomas Lewis is an artist and peace activist.
In the late 60s, he was involved in such "actions" as the Baltimore Four, who poured blood on draft files at the Baltimore Customs House in 1967, and Catonsville Nine, who "napalmed" draft files in Catonsville, Maryland.
Lewis was active in the civil rights movement as a member of CORE and has close ties to the Catholic Worker Movement. He was a member of the Prince of Peace Plowshares, and has been arrested many times over the years. Lewis is active as an artist and teacher, and lives in Worcester, MA.

Bingo!! I am thinking this is definitely a man who would draw a picture of a hippie with daisies!

But sad to say I have never found out how much this print is worth. Frankly I am quite frustrated with the Internet search thing and anyway it has become priceless to me for a different reason. I have hung the picture up ALL BY MYSELF.


I, who have made an art of playing the poor, little helpless lady. Who has, through the years, managed to avoid yard work, balancing the checkbook, killing bugs, changing light bulbs, and any task involving a tool. Yep, I hammered that baby up there and it felt quite liberating, I feel a change coming on, I feel free, okay I'm stopping.

I have to put my women's lib on the shelf right now, there's dishes in the sink.