Who's Waiting Behind that Open Door?
There's a house on Common Street that I've walked, run, biked, and driven by at least a thousand times in the 10 years I've lived in Groton. If I've noticed it at all, it's with a quick mental label, "house," and that's about it. I've been too busy pushing a stroller full of twins or wondering if I really should have signed up for the Groton Road Race or listening to the news on the radio to pay more attention that.
That house belongs to a lovely woman named Sharon Wooding, and last week she responded to a call for artists from Open Studio, and invited me inside to see her studio full of beautiful artwork.
An hour and a half later, I reluctantly peeled myself away from her watercolors and encaustics, from our conversation about teaching and writing and artwork and Italian lessons and raising children.
Now when I walk my dog down Common Street, I see more than a house. I wonder what image Sharon has sitting on her easel. I remember her kind smile and her quiet enthusiasm. That house is not just a house, it's the home of a friend.
And then there's the story of Miranda and the plumber who came to her home to do a repair. A perfectly nice man, good at his job, she had him mentally filed away as "plumber," just like I had the structure that holds Sharon Wooding's sweet self and gorgeous work as "house."
But after the plumbing repair was done, a conversation started. Almost two hours later, Miranda -- a committed vegetarian and animal lover -- felt that she could understand her plumber's passion for the meditative aspects of hunting. She was charmed as he recited some of the poetry she had no idea he wrote.
The next time Miranda's pipes spring a leak, she will call on the plumber for his expertise, but she'll also be curious about where and what he's been hunting. She'll ask him about his latest poem.
We stand behind one another in line at Donelan's, brush elbows at Florence Roche afternoon pick-up, maybe even stop our cars to let each other cross Main Street.
We are busy, and we only have so much mental bandwidth, and perhaps it's simply not realistic to think that we can get to know remarkable details about every single person we encounter over the course of a day.
But one of the charms of living in a small town is that we don't have to just be anonymous strangers. We can get to know one another with some warmth, depth, and curiosity.
We hope that Open Studio can be a place where this kind of meaningful connection between people will happen naturally.
At our Weekly Creative Community Hours, you'll get some of your own work done in a supportive environment, and you also might find out that the bald guy you saw eating a banana split at Johnson's is also an artist who makes gorgeous pen-and-ink drawings of birds. The harried-looking mom you saw trying to keep her four kids quiet at the library is writing a book about her pre-parenthood adventures spelunking in South Dakota and Hawaii with George Clooney. The woman who drives that minivan with all the bumper stickers on the back has actually been looking for someone just like you to collaborate with on her next project.
Who will you really meet this year? Come Find out at Open Studio! Our doors are open for Creative Community Hours every Tuesday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm and Wednesday evenings from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.
Sharon Wooding's encaustic paintings will be displayed at Open Studio through early February. We hope you'll come take a look! Pictured above: Beyond the Meadow, by Sharon Wooding.