Artist and writer Tracy Holdeman will appear at a High Street Company event from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday.
He’ll share the “wise, wacky and wonderful” of his real-life grandma, the late Mabel Werner, comment on the paintings and the stories that inspired him, and be available to sign Grandma Mabel’s Legacy wall calendars.
On display will be a selection of the original large-scale oil paintings used in the calendar, as well as some of Grandma Mabel’s journals.
The 2010 Grandma Mabel’s Legacy art calendar is being distributed and sold nationwide by The Lang Co., the worldwide leader in calendar sales. Lang has produced illustrated calendars of the works of some of America’s finest artists, including Jim Shore, Warren Kimble and Susan Winget.
Mabel Matilda Werner was a real person, who lived at 507 W. Ninth St. in Newton for most of her life.
As for his calendar, Holdeman said, “The story begins when my Grandma Mabel was 83 years old and I was attending art school. She sent me a postcard that read, ‘When you needed me, I was there to help you. Now I need you.’” Grandma Mabel was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but her eight children had grown up and moved away, her husband Chet had died eight years earlier, and she was lonely.
“I left school to live with my grandma,” Holdeman said in a news release, “not entirely out of selflessness, but because I thought I would have time to paint. I did have time to paint, and draw, and write, but what I didn't expect to have was the experience of a lifetime.”
Holdeman describes the Grandma Mabel paintings as “modern folk art.” Sometimes the written vignette would come first, sometimes the painting. The stories — “Grandma’s Dinner Theater,” “Grandma’s Alarm Clock,” “Grandma’s Cinnamon Rolls,” “Grandma’s New Perm” — became narratives that enriched the art.
The paintings and stories arose from Holdeman’s observations, experiences and conversations with his grandmother. He said they reflect the nature of Grandma Mabel’s “precious but imperfect character,” and that everyone will realize one of their own grandmothers, or perhaps someone else’s grandma, has a little — or a lot — of Grandma Mabel in them.
And now, almost 30 years later, his “experience of a lifetime” has culminated, Holdeman said, “in this calendar, which is, really, a collection of real-life stories and paintings about my grandma. This is her legacy.”
