{"id":471,"date":"2020-02-26T16:53:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T00:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/?page_id=471"},"modified":"2020-03-03T08:51:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T16:51:45","slug":"our-stories-monica-bryant-clarinet","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/our-stories-monica-bryant-clarinet\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Stories&#8211;Monica Bryant, clarinet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-526\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Monica-sized-259x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"259\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Monica-sized-200x232.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Monica-sized-259x300.jpg 259w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Monica-sized-400x464.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Monica-sized-600x696.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Monica-sized.jpg 621w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px\" \/>Monica Bryant<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I love the band because it&#8217;s great to make communal art together.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I grew up in central Kansas in Hutchinson.\u00a0 It&#8217;s on the main highway near Wichita and Salina.\u00a0 My parents both grew up on the farm.\u00a0 We visited my grandparents on their farm but we were always in the city.\u00a0 My father was in the grain business and worked all over the state.\u00a0 He worked in a grain business that had the world&#8217;s largest grain elevator in Hutchinson.\u00a0 It was eventually bought out by Cargill.<\/p>\n<p>We lived in Tribune, Garden City, Dodge City, and finally stayed in Hutchinson.\u00a0 I was born in 1950, the oldest of six and everybody but my youngest sister is still in Kansas.\u00a0 She lives out in a suburb outside of Houston, Kingwood.\u00a0 My dad passed away in 2002 and my mom in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Hutchinson is the salt capital of the world, they say.\u00a0 Morton&#8217;s Salt is there.\u00a0 The Plains were originally the bottom of the ocean so we had these salt mines.\u00a0 Now they&#8217;re used to store Hollywood celluloid films and all kinds of stuff because it&#8217;s a dry climate.\u00a0 You can take a tour of the salt mines and go down in the deep dark caves.<\/p>\n<p>We also have this space museum that a woman Carey worked on.\u00a0 It was her vision.\u00a0 She collected all the space suits and other stuff that they borrowed for the Apollo XIII movie.\u00a0 And an exploratorium, a planetarium, and other artifacts &#8211;even space ships.\u00a0 It&#8217;s an interesting place.<\/p>\n<p>My mother Pat Potucek was an artist.\u00a0 She was a muralist and she did portraits and landscapes.\u00a0 She did murals all over the state.\u00a0 She&#8217;s in a book about Kansas muralists.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-472\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-477\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-1-300x190.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"190\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-1-200x127.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-1-300x190.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-1-320x202.jpg 320w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-1-400x253.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-1-600x380.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-1.jpg 638w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-473 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-66x66.jpg 66w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-400x400.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-600x600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2-800x800.jpg 800w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural2.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-475\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural4-300x174.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"174\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural4-200x116.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural4-300x174.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural4-400x232.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural4-600x348.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural4.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-479 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural5-200x94.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural5-300x141.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural5-400x188.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural5-600x281.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural5.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-476 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural6.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural6-200x69.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural6-300x104.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural6-400x138.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural6-600x207.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/PatPotucekMural6.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a Czech name.\u00a0 That was my father&#8217;s name.\u00a0 He was half Swedish and half Bohemian.\u00a0 In the last few years we visited Sweden and we visited Prague and we even found the home of my great grandfather who came over from Bohemia. <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-481 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6-200x149.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6-400x298.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6-600x447.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6-768x572.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6-800x596.jpg 800w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-6.jpg 915w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/> So it&#8217;s been fun to explore that family history.<\/p>\n<p>And on my mother&#8217;s side it&#8217;s English and Irish and German and we visited her grandfather&#8217;s town in England too, Yeovil in Somerset.\u00a0 My mother&#8217;s maiden name was Pudden.\u00a0 She didn&#8217;t like that name.\u00a0 I\u00a0 wish we had kept it in the family somehow.\u00a0 It&#8217;s such a cute name.\u00a0 Or a nickname.\u00a0 &#8220;Hey Pudden, come over here.&#8221;\u00a0 That&#8217;s why she didn&#8217;t like it.<\/p>\n<p>We visited my husband&#8217;s family in England as well.\u00a0 It goes back many, many generations there.<\/p>\n<p>I went to two different high schools.\u00a0 When we first lived in Hutchinson we lived close to a rural high school bus so I could just get on this bus and go to Beuer High School.\u00a0 It was a small high school but it was wonderful.\u00a0 I played clarinet in the band and I sang in the choir.\u00a0 The band director needed an oboe player and he gave me an oboe to play so I played oboe part of the time.\u00a0 And then my parents bought this big beautiful house in the middle of town so I transferred in my senior year to the high school there and that&#8217;s where I met my husband.\u00a0 We met in a physics class.\u00a0 But I didn&#8217;t continue the band.<\/p>\n<p>When I graduated from high school in 1968 my dad gave me tickets to fly to California to stay with my aunts and it was supposed to be a two week thing but I got a job and I stayed.\u00a0 They were in Seal Beach and Claremont.\u00a0 So I rotated between my aunts and I got a job in Claremont and stayed all summer and they said, &#8220;Monica, why don&#8217;t you just stay for a year and keep working and then you could go to college free out here.&#8221;\u00a0 But I was the oldest child and my parents had sent me off for a couple of weeks and it was already the whole summer, so I went back home and I went to the junior college.\u00a0 But I kind of wish that I had followed their advise.<\/p>\n<p>I graduated from the junior college in my local town, in Hutchinson, and then I moved to Kansas City to go to Rockhurst College which\u00a0 was Jesuit.\u00a0 I was an English major though I had been in drama and art.\u00a0 I was the first child and it was very expensive to send me to this private school so I got a Christmas job at Hallmark at the Hall&#8217;s Department Store which was owned by the Hall family who started Hallmark.\u00a0 The plaza in Kansas City is such a beautiful place.\u00a0 When I would have been starting my senior year, Hallmark offered me a full time job with benefits and told me they would pay for schooling if I wanted to go to the art institute.\u00a0 So my dad was like, &#8220;English major . . . you don&#8217;t really know what you want to do.\u00a0 This is good.\u00a0 You take this job.&#8221;\u00a0 So I did.\u00a0 I worked in the folk art department where we sold turquoise jewelry and folk art from around the world.\u00a0 It was nice.\u00a0 All kinds of \u00a0people would come in.\u00a0 Joel Grey came in.\u00a0 It was just such a beautiful store.\u00a0 They has wonderful art displays in the store including the Boehm sculpture of swans that Nixon gave to the Chinese.<\/p>\n<p>And when I worked for Hallmark I took some night classes from the Kansas City Art Institute.<\/p>\n<p>Then Michael asked me to marry him that year.<\/p>\n<p>I had a lot of boyfriends but he wanted me from the very beginning every year so he asked me to go to the Naval Academy for their June week and finally in his junior year I went and that was the real turning point.\u00a0 I was totally impressed by the place and all those midshipmen.<\/p>\n<p>In the &#8217;60s and &#8217;70s when he was there it was not a prestigious thing to be a naval officer in the middle of the Vietnam protests so they would put on wigs because people would throw things at them because they were in the military. \u00a0It wasn&#8217;t the same as other generations had imagined it.\u00a0 Gloria Steinem spoke at the Naval Academy.<\/p>\n<p>Initially I was pretty naive though I was always inclined to be a feminist.\u00a0 And I was upset with the Catholic Church, with the patriarchy, but my husband and I voted for Nixon because we were both from Kansas.\u00a0 We were outside of the protests that were going on.\u00a0 But over the years we&#8217;ve become more and more liberal.\u00a0 My mother became a Democrat over time and my father&#8217;s family were Democrats in a sea of Republicans.\u00a0 My great uncle John Potucek was a Democrat, one of the few in the Kansas Senate from 1945 until 1960.\u00a0 He eventually became a judge.\u00a0 He would joke that when he would go to the bathroom, he was going to go caucus.\u00a0 But he helped pass legislation that required all schools to have indoor plumbing for the State of Kansas in the 40s or maybe 50s.\u00a0 My one grandparents still had outdoor plumbing when I was real little.<\/p>\n<p>But that was the situation politically.\u00a0 I think everyone was infused with Eisenhower Republicanism.\u00a0 We went to the Eisenhower museum for my eighth grade field trip.\u00a0 Bob Dole was a neighbor growing up.<\/p>\n<p>My dad was on the Kansas wheat commission and vice president of Vamarco Industry when I was in high school and at that time there was all this grain surplus.\u00a0 He developed different products with wheat other than bread like bulgur, like what is used in pilaf.\u00a0 Food for Peace was a thing then and he went back and fed Congress pilaf to convince them to convince them that they should buy bulgur wheat and give it to these poor countries in Asia.\u00a0 It was about &#8217;68 or &#8217;69.\u00a0 He traveled over to Vietnam and other places to see the results.\u00a0 He was suggesting that it could be like a rice substitute for their diet.\u00a0 He found that most people were using it to feed their pigs.\u00a0 He realized that they&#8217;re going to keep eating rice; they&#8217;re not going to replace it.\u00a0 But he got to visit all those places and he came back all upset about the Vietnam war and all the corruption he saw and he told me that if I was his son, he would burn my draft card.\u00a0 People were making money off of it.<\/p>\n<p>My husband and I got married when he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1972.\u00a0 Then he immediately went to graduate school.\u00a0 Our first tour was at Monterey; we lived in Monterey.\u00a0 That was our honeymoon year.\u00a0 It was really fortunate.<\/p>\n<p>I was 21 when my parents divorced, right after we got married.\u00a0 It was hard and counseling wasn&#8217;t as prevalent.\u00a0 I just kept it all inside.<\/p>\n<p>They had a lot of difficulties and my dad was a heavy drinker.\u00a0 Cargill had bought his company.\u00a0 He was a vice president when the company was bought.\u00a0 He lost his job.\u00a0 It was similar to right now when men are laid off work at the prime of their life.\u00a0 He found other work; he continued to work but it was a setback.<\/p>\n<p>He was real angry with the lawyers that handled the divorce and disagreed with all the things . . . but then he was not paying child support.\u00a0 My mom had five children still at home.\u00a0 The whole family went through terrible times.\u00a0 Eventually my dad remarried. . . and divorced again and moved back to Kansas.\u00a0 He wanted to get back into my mom&#8217;s good graces but she didn&#8217;t want to marry him again.\u00a0 The friendship was there.\u00a0 He was included in family things.\u00a0 They actually visited me in California together a few times because his sister lived out there.<\/p>\n<p>From Monterey we went to Hawaii and I graduated from the University of Hawaii.\u00a0 Because I was transferring credits it took three semesters.\u00a0 It was a great school.\u00a0 By that time I had switched my major to art.\u00a0 I had been doing mostly two dimensional painting work.\u00a0 But I had one class in materials and techniques where we got to do egg tempera and frescos.\u00a0 This old man who was teaching it was retiring and he was afraid it was not going to be continuing and he wanted me to advocate it because I loved the class.\u00a0 We were all aware that we don&#8217;t have apprenticeship in this country.\u00a0 Meanwhile there were younger professors that were also very good.\u00a0 They were saying that art needed to be of our time.\u00a0 We need to be using the materials that are out there.\u00a0 So I had both of those experiences there that I appreciated.<\/p>\n<p>By the time we lived in Hawaii my parents had been divorced a while and my mother came to visit us by herself.\u00a0 It was like a big fun trip for her.\u00a0 She would meet people and she was still young; she was only in her 40s.\u00a0 I thought she was so old.\u00a0 She had me when she was 25.\u00a0 She enjoyed the company of all these men who were flirting with her.\u00a0 And I was like, &#8220;MOM!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I graduated from art on the Manila Campus, the main campus on Oahu.<\/p>\n<p>I think as a country we are so lucky to have Hawaii as part of our country.\u00a0 We were there three and a half years.\u00a0 Our daughter was born there.<\/p>\n<p>We went from Hawaii to Annapolis where Michael taught at the Naval Academy and where my son was born.\u00a0 I did some art commissions and loved being there.\u00a0 Someone from the Naval Academy chapel was retiring and I did a commission of a pastel drawing of the chapel.\u00a0 And I did some commissions of paintings of row houses.\u00a0 And I went to the Maryland Institute of Art to take some figure drawing classes.<\/p>\n<p>When we go back to his reunions, it&#8217;s pleasant for me because I actually lived there for a while.<\/p>\n<p>When\u00a0 he got out of the navy, he took a job with Teledyne &#8211;his first non-military job&#8211;and we settled in Mountain View and bought a condominium.\u00a0 At first he was going to do postgraduate work at Stanford but he took the job instead.\u00a0 We were lucky in terms of the real estate thing.\u00a0 We sold it for more than his annual salary when Michael took a job at Hewlett Packard and we moved to Santa Rosa in 1979.\u00a0 We bought a house on Leaf Green Drive.<\/p>\n<p>We were lucky to get to move to Santa Rosa.\u00a0 When my kids started at a Montessori School I volunteered to teach art there and eventually they hired me to do the art program.\u00a0 So I decided that to get my teaching credential and went to Sonoma State. \u00a0And I took all their art classes . . . forever.\u00a0 They recently honored me in their alumnae exhibit even though I graduated from the University of Hawaii.<\/p>\n<p>Hewlett Packard sent Michael to Singapore from &#8217;96 through &#8217;99.\u00a0 Singapore was wonderful.\u00a0 I loved it from the minute we were there.\u00a0 We made many good friends within the ex-pat community and also the local Singaporeans.\u00a0 Our kids were in college then.\u00a0 There was this empty nest group of the American wives club.\u00a0 I came back thinking, &#8220;Every community should have an empty nest group.&#8221;\u00a0 You make your friends through your kids but empty nesters don&#8217;t have that connection that would bring people together.\u00a0 So that was a fun group to be a part of.<\/p>\n<p>I was in exhibits in Singapore.\u00a0 I did an exhibit at a contemporary substation, a far out place of art, though it was supported by Singapore.\u00a0 Singapore knew that if they wanted to be a first class place, they had to have the arts, so they were cultivating it.\u00a0 I taught at an art college and had an exhibit at this substation that was called &#8220;A Singapore Diary.&#8221;\u00a0 It was a watercolor that folded out into the street.\u00a0 And I was writing of my experience in Singapore.\u00a0 What people liked was when I was real and vulnerable, where I would reveal glimpses of myself that people responded to.\u00a0 Like I said that I thought of myself as being too old to be having this experience.<\/p>\n<p>I had a Mandarin teacher and she gave me this beautiful chop and made my name into Mo-Ni-Kai.\u00a0 Monikai&#8211;That was from Singapore.\u00a0 The Mo character had its roots with the horse; it was a really cool family name with a horse.\u00a0 And Ni and Kai are feminate affectionate things.\u00a0 So I loved that and kept it.<\/p>\n<p>I had a house guest in Singapore who came back to Marin County.\u00a0 He was taking a hike and ran across someone who was selling all of his father&#8217;s carousels of slides, travel photos.\u00a0 And there was a carousel labeled Singapore.\u00a0 He emailed me and said, &#8220;Would you like these?&#8221; and I said, &#8220;Yes, yes.&#8221;\u00a0 So he sent them and they were immensely fascinating because they were taken in the &#8217;60s but there were so many similarities between what was happening all over the world and what was happening in my life&#8211;the VW bus and Coca Cola and Tony the Tiger and all those things.\u00a0 And the people, there was so much continuity between the Chinese people then and now.\u00a0 Generationally we do the same things. I&#8217;ve been doing these over painted photographs ever since.\u00a0 Photography has always influenced everything, all of my work.<\/p>\n<p>I got my MFA at Berkeley in &#8217;93.\u00a0 One of the highpoints of my life was to be accepted at the UC Berkeley for their graduate programs.\u00a0 I commuted down there when my kids were in high school.\u00a0 It was a typical woman&#8217;s story.\u00a0 You can never be 100% one thing.\u00a0 You&#8217;re missing some of the back-to-school nights and you&#8217;re torn because you can&#8217;t go to every visiting lecture at grad school.\u00a0 But it was a great experience.<\/p>\n<p>I had an exhibit in San Francisco of those photographs that I printed on canvas and then painted over them.\u00a0 I started getting emails from people inviting me to be in photography shows.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t really see myself as a photographer.\u00a0 And they also would assume that they were my photographs.\u00a0 Even a lot of contemporary artists work with found photographs and nobody&#8217;s even doing anything with them.\u00a0 They&#8217;re throwing away family photos and stuff.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-480\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-7-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-7-66x66.jpg 66w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-7-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-7-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-7-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-7-400x400.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-7.jpg 594w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Lately I&#8217;ve used either my own photography or works in the public domain that I paint into.\u00a0 I have a recent painting called &#8220;This land is your land.&#8221;\u00a0 I took a picture of the TV screen with Trump and Netanyahu and then I painted in other people.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-488\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-8-202x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"202\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-8-200x298.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-8-202x300.jpg 202w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-8.jpg 266w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 202px) 100vw, 202px\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-486\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-10-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-10-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-10-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-10-400x266.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-10.jpg 530w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I was part of a feminist project in Berkeley called The Beauty Project.\u00a0 We did an exhibit at the Richmond Art Center called WAY IN.\u00a0 \u00a0We had bathroom scales making a path, a commentary about the obsession with weight.\u00a0 Other people had cosmetics selling for more than gold.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-487\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-9-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-9-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-9-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-9-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-9.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>And this Asian artist in our group had a profile with one side being straight hair and the other side curly, like trying to be not Asian but it was also like becoming water.\u00a0 (editor: <em>Gigi Janchang was born in Shanghai, China. Her family fled to Taiwan during the Cultural Revolution, and Janchang moved to the Bay Area in 1987, earning a MFA in new genre and conceptual art at San Francisco Art Institute. Her internationally-acclaimed work investigates appearance and identity, challenging assumptions about scale and perception. She presented a mural-sized photograph, Facing the West where the profile of a long-haired Asian woman morphs into an abstract linear texture created by hair.)<\/em>\u00a0 It was really cool, amazing.\u00a0 We had a reunion exhibit two years ago called &#8220;Glass slipper to glass ceiling&#8221; at the City College of San Francisco.\u00a0 And we did another show called GRAVITY in San Jose.\u00a0 It was fun and nice to stay connected to them.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-483 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-200x150.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-400x301.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-600x451.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-768x577.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-800x601.jpg 800w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-1024x769.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12-1200x902.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-12.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-484 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-243x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"243\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-200x247.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-243x300.jpg 243w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-400x495.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-600x742.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-768x950.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-800x989.jpg 800w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-828x1024.jpg 828w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-1200x1484.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13-1242x1536.jpg 1242w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-13.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 243px) 100vw, 243px\" \/> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-485 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-14-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-14-66x66.jpg 66w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-14-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-14-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-14-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-14-400x400.jpg 400w, https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/photo-14.jpg 594w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of the artists&#8211;a great artist &#8211;Kerry Vander Meer, moved to Healdsburg.\u00a0 A lot of her work now was purchased by the Kaiser building at Mercury Way.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like we&#8217;ve grown up with feminism.\u00a0 There was a time when there was such anger at the patriarchy but I feel like my husband&#8217;s a partner.\u00a0 My daughter is just so wonderful.\u00a0 She went to Barnard in New York City.\u00a0 She studied theater and economics and then she got an MBA at UC Davis and now she&#8217;s one of the vice presidents at Wells Fargo.\u00a0 And she has two wonderful daughters and a great husband who went to the same MBA program.\u00a0 They met there and he was like, &#8220;Well, why wouldn&#8217;t you want your wife to make the same amount of money.\u00a0 Your want your partners to be successful and succeeding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s a constant bump up against the deeply ingrained patterns that can hold people back.\u00a0 And I don&#8217;t like to make waves; I don&#8217;t like conflict; I don&#8217;t like to upset the boat; I want to make people happy.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t like to be in conflict.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not one of the most strident.\u00a0 I am strong about it.\u00a0 But certainly it&#8217;s good to have all of us at our potential.<\/p>\n<p>I have four grandchildren.\u00a0 My daughter has two daughters and my son has a daughter and a son.\u00a0 The oldest is 13 and then 10, 8 and 6.\u00a0 And they&#8217;re just great.\u00a0 My sister&#8217;s daughter just had a baby last night and it&#8217;s so exciting.\u00a0 It was daytime in London where she was born.\u00a0 It&#8217;s thrilling.\u00a0 The whole universe is expanding and they think how exciting to start this new life but it&#8217;s like a separation from the womb, from the comfort of the womb and then you&#8217;re always like moving out.<\/p>\n<p>My son is working for a couple in Palo Alto called Confident Cannabis.\u00a0 But he lived in Santa\u00a0 Rosa for a long time.\u00a0 His son from his first marriage is still here.<\/p>\n<p>My son worked for PNI and a lot of startups and local companies.\u00a0 He was one of the founders of Brewometer, a device he wrote the software for.\u00a0 It helps people make beer.\u00a0 He&#8217;s an algorithm engineer.\u00a0 He has his PhD in physics from UC Davis.\u00a0 He&#8217;s basically a mathematician but he&#8217;s also an artist.\u00a0 He&#8217;s got a piece of work at the Ross Perot Museum of Technology in Dallas and a piece of work in Walnut Creek.\u00a0 He&#8217;s been in a Maker Faire. \u00a0And Adobe sponsored an art project recently that he worked with.\u00a0 His colleague, someone at he&#8217;s done a lot of things with, is now VP or higher in Adobe.<\/p>\n<p>I taught at FIDAM, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in San Francisco from 2011 to 2013.\u00a0 At the same time I was teaching at the Montessori School again and they were paying me and it was really close and my granddaughter was going there.\u00a0 I taught at Ursuline High School.\u00a0 I was the chair of the art department there for nine years until the school closed.\u00a0 So a big part of my Santa Rosa life was teaching there at Ursuline.\u00a0 The nuns just stopped it.\u00a0 It was the 2008 financial crisis so that the nuns that were aging were having to put more and more of their own money to keep the school afloat and they just couldn&#8217;t sustain that.\u00a0 And so they closed the school.\u00a0 They were always separate and this is where the feminism and patriarchal stuff was happening.<\/p>\n<p>From the beginning . . . The Ursuline nuns founded that school before Santa Rosa High School was built.\u00a0 They had the first college in this town.\u00a0 The nuns had such a huge history.\u00a0 It was an Ursuline College for a period of time right downtown but the diocese would be condescending to them.\u00a0 The nuns let them have part of their land to build Cardinal Newman and they never paid for it; they just took it.\u00a0 The woman that did all of the academic schedule of the school&#8211;that&#8217;s really hard to do&#8211;they didn&#8217;t hire her to help.\u00a0 I can&#8217;t explain it.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone was appalled by the sexual abuse scandals but there are a lot of wonderful spirits there.\u00a0 Great deep love, faith.\u00a0 They are wonderful.\u00a0 It&#8217;s kind of a puzzle of what&#8217;s the best way to deal with it.\u00a0 To withdraw and object or to say, &#8220;I&#8217;m part of this place to.\u00a0 You can&#8217;t just take it all to the conservative side.&#8221;\u00a0 My grandparents and great grandparents and generations of people have poured their lives and treasure into all this.<\/p>\n<p>My father-in-law . . . He&#8217;s now 95.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a young boy that moved into the neighborhood who has a tragic story but my father-in-law has befriended him.\u00a0 The boy likes to come over and use his computer and stuff like that.\u00a0 At one point my father-in-law . . . he was saying he didn&#8217;t want anyone to think there was any kind of scandal.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 It&#8217;s in everybody&#8217;s consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>When we lived in Singapore one of our best friends was from Ireland, Galway, and he worked for Guinness.\u00a0 She told me that her mother only had two children and the Catholic priest came by when she was younger.\u00a0 &#8220;Are you denying sex to your husband that you have only two children.&#8221;\u00a0 That they would even think that they could do that.<\/p>\n<p>There was a really dynamic nun who came to give us a talk when I was teaching who explained the history of Catholic education in America and it was just fascinating because originally the Catholic church was teaching the immigrants who were hungry and poor and the schools were all staffed by priests and nuns that the church didn&#8217;t have to pay other than what they were already getting.\u00a0 One of my favorite friends who taught forever at Ursuline grew up in San Francisco.\u00a0 She said that there were social events everywhere then.\u00a0 Free lessons for kids.<\/p>\n<p>The apex of Catholics in America was when JFK was elected.\u00a0 But then things changed.\u00a0 Nuns were declining.\u00a0 They didn&#8217;t have the free teachers anymore.\u00a0 They had to start hiring staff.\u00a0 Then they had to pay for that and they started charging tuition and the schools became something that rich people could come to.\u00a0 And the Ursuline nuns that closed the high school, they wanted to be more like that helping kind.\u00a0 And what moved in to Ursuline that then burned down was the Roseland Academy, a charter school, so it became a place where they were teaching kids like the original population that they taught and because it was a charter school, they were getting some money and they could pay the nuns.\u00a0 It was great for them.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of Catholicism&#8211; there was this book I discovered by Matthew Fox called <em>Original Blessing<\/em>.\u00a0 A wonderful book.\u00a0 Matthew Fox was silenced by Pope Benedict along with Hans Kung who was also a theologian that I liked, all these more liberal theologians who were liberation theology, they all got shut down by him.\u00a0 I still like Matthew Fox.\u00a0 He&#8217;s getting old now.\u00a0 In that <em>Original Blessing<\/em> he said that if there had been a different idea of blessing instead of sin, we&#8217;d appreciate everything.\u00a0 How different it would have been like when Columbus landed in America it wouldn&#8217;t be like just a pursuit of gold, it would be like, &#8220;Look at these plants and these people and the smells and this gorgeous place.&#8221;\u00a0 It would be so different.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At this point I have more time with less distraction in the studio but I love the band because it&#8217;s great to make communal art together.\u00a0 It&#8217;s fun to be in my studio and focused on all this strands of my life but it&#8217;s just such good medicine, such a good place to be here. I quit the whole thing in high school.\u00a0 But now I&#8217;ve taken lessens from Roy Zajac.\u00a0 He&#8217;s such a musical spirit.\u00a0 I just want to visit with him and hang out, as much as I want to practice the clarinet.\u00a0 It&#8217;s like reclaiming a part of myself to play the clarinet again.<\/p>\n<p>Monica&#8217;s website:\u00a0 www.monikaiart.studio<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monica Bryant &#8220;I love the band because it&#8217;s great to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-471","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/471\/revisions\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}