ITTP … You?..
New Zealand Dawn - Taken in Whangamata NZ this spring, 2022
I Trust The Process. Call it God, Ala, Yahweh, Universe, Him or Her - trusting The Process has never failed me during my mantra of “ITTP."
Kenya in the background, was in my Bucket-list foreground for 40 years before I took this - hanging out of my amazing driver’s car.
Thirty-six years ago, almost to the DAY, I moved to Portland OR from a small town in Eastern OR called Pendleton. I did it with big dreams and high hopes. What my dad called pipe dreams, I called the front seat of the rollercoaster - especially for the first time on a ride.
While the pandemic delivered it’s heavy doses of uncertainty, I masked up and threw my hands back while keeping the proverbial salt scrubbed off of my antenna. (Ask any boomer that grew up on an island, salty air builds up and corrodes your antenna, thus signal). Too abstract? I did a great deal of talking to “The Process”, that Divine Mathematician that knows how to make my ride very exciting, never boring and FULL of reasons to continue trusting It.
For my last five years in Pendleton, most of my weekends were spent driving east to the Wallowa Mountains to backpack or west to the Pacific, always with my Canon A1 buckled into the passenger seat. (Well, safely on the floorboard, but my way of saying we were “alone” if there is such a thing)
Life in the front of the rollercoaster, my intention on hanging my images in galleries, rather than booths took a great number of twists and turns before tomorrow’s debut. One of the biggest twists was the 20 years I spent in retail, mostly management, in order to afford my expensive photo “hobby”.
Booked a shoot in Kobe Japan, stayed to travel with more gear than clothes.
The next turn came in 1996, as I followed the advice of my then-deceased mentor Lou Ver Baere, when I opened a portrait studio to “put people in front of my scenics” to guarantee a steady flow of income while being in closer alignment with my REAL dream of selling in Limited Editions.
When the pandemic hit, I shifted down to increase my speed uphill. I used my six-week closure to show my worth around the house while I built www.GrahamSalisbury.com … www.SalisburyPaintings.art … www.88gallery.art … help my entrepreneurial, dressmaking wife Cathy with her www.SewKiwi.com … updated www.StudioBpdx.com and THEN - went to work on MY dream - www.Gratitudaholic.com (easier to remember than where it points at www.BrianGeraths.com . (And NO, I don’t build websites, I was just helping two people that have helped me to build that dream - Sandy (Graham) Salisbury and my AMAZING partner Cathy.)
Tonight I will be putting the finishing touches on website to include my first handful of images that are supposed to be displayed by 10:30am tomorrow. That “dream” I spoke of lived up to my rollercoaster metaphor. After a two week climb to the railed summit, there was a MASSIVE, straight-down SWOOOOSH!.. Called supply-chain issues.
The last of my US-made materials for framing were sitting on a dock in San Francisco at 5pm tonight, with “Early-overnight” labels fixed to them, due to arrive before 10:30am. The exact time of the last day that I have to hang them in the Lake Oswego Festival of The Arts, Open Show at the Lakewood Center.
pc: Tammy (mamarazzi) Sutter. : ^)
One might think that sounds dramatic, stressful or exciting, but me? … I was too busy setting up my studio/gallery to host 30-50 members of the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce tomorrow morning at 8am.
As soon as I finished setting up the studio, I headed over to help my studio-mate Sandy who is also using this as his first big show. At 78 yrs old, I figure I’m 20 years ahead of him for a switch.
We laugh that at times I seem to be riding the coaster he’s already been on, only he’s usually 20 years ahead of me. Rather than stressing about my photo-finish exhibition, I went to help him set up for HIS dream, and it was awesome. His girlfriend Tammy and I both had fun doing so as well as playing mamarazzi, snapping pics of us setting up his booth.
We three spent about 2.5 hours setting his up, and mine I whipped out in about 10 minutes! (For obvious reasons, just getting it prepped for my loop de loop before the big finish)
I learned from multiple spiritual mentors, that the fastest way to achieve a dream is to help someone to achieve theirs. While I was dishing out art marketing ideas to Sandy in 2020, I realized I was pointing one finger his way and three back at myself.
Easy as 123, the number of Graham Sailsbury’s first exhibition!
Though this was not a calculated course for me, my unwitting actions over that past 2 years, helping others to get what they want, have made me aware of how much closer I have gotten to mine in the process.
I created a gallery called Double Infinity in order to represent and sell Sandy’s work. While he bashed his 2020 work as “junkers” I was essentially picking them up off of the floor to say “No, I can sell that - AND I’ll created an image-file big enough to sell even larger, Limited Edition Giclee prints.”
It took me about a year of this to realize that I was projecting my dream on him. That the reason I had so much pent-up, entrepreneurial enthusiasm about it is, well, “The Process.”
En-Theos, for you linguistically curious sorts, is “In God” or “God within”. Enthusiasm is a POWERFUL fuel for this incredible rollercoaster ride I am on.
Pretty much my face before, during and after a good rollercoaster ride. Me with my 1 of 9 Limited Edition images that WILL be hanging tomorrow morning! 6/24/22. : ^ )
Will UPS make it before 10:30 tomorrow? No idea and I already trimmed my nails - no time for biting them. I just know that if I graduated from the plains of this Universe tomorrow, I would die a happy man. One that got to live my dream while helping others on the path to theirs!
How much better could it be than that? Okay, well, I’ll tell you…
I see about 40 witnesses standing in my studio tomorrow morning to watch my UPS driver deliver me mine!
My key fob will be in my hand when I say - “Please just put them in my car.” I will finish assembly under the big white tent in the parking lot of The Lakewood Center for the Arts. It just seems the fitting RUSH at the end of a pretty amazing ride!
ITTP, you?..
FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE - ALL ARRIVED and set up like an “Amazing Race” team of Cathy Geraths and Graham Salisbury!
Kyoto Japan 1999, digitally drum-scanned film 2020, coming out of the closet after a LONG journey!
Northern California Redwoods - “Enchanted” to me, but should look familiar to Star Wars 3 fans. Great setting to “have to work in” for the Lucas crew, right?..
“All Rise” - appropriately named for what I felt after trying to sleep in a teepee the night before in triple-digit heat. My sleep-loving Cathy even got up at 4am to join me for this INCREDIBLE display at about 5am. Arches National Park - Moab Utah.
“Bridal Veil” Columbia River Gorge
Mystic Beach. Awarded both the Kodak Gallery Award and Fuji Masterpiece in 1997. Hung at Epcott Orlando for a year, published in a Kodak book. Digitally reworked in 2020 for a new life of larger images. 24x36” Guild Canvas.
“Moonset Manzanita” - Yet another reward for rising before the sun. Watching the moon set was even more dramatic than the sun rising behind me.
Road-trippin’ with Sandy Salisbury Oct 2021 while Cathy was in New Zealand. “Sedona Vortex” is only one of at least a dozen favs from our 3700 mile trip, but the appeal of another Vortex within my reach won me over for priority.
“New Zealand Sunrise” - After two busy weeks helping my recently widowed mother-in-law, I joined my kiwi family for a weekend at Whangamata (East coast, mid north island) early April 2022. I was torn between this, New Zealand Dawn (above) and four others that MUST see metal and acrylic mounts.
