Grandma Moses Was Good with Snow

There is currently (21 Nov '15 through 21 Feb '16) an exhibition of her paintings and her needlework at the Dayton Art Institute, and seeing her delightful treatment of snow is still in my mind. There was a lot of old-time New England in her paintings that also went deeply with me.

There is a continually-running video at this exhibit of the Edward R. Murrow interview with her in 1955, during which you can see her painting snow into trees with pure delight. She was, by the way, 95-years old at the time of that interview and Murrow was 47 – twice his age – but she is far more youthful, alive, intelligent, exciting than Murrow. He sits there chain-smoking, unutterably sad, asking stupid questions while she is bright-eyed, full of fun, and painting snow with sprightly dabs into her trees.

But what struck me most at the exhibition was a stitch sampler done, not by Moses but by an 11-year-old girl named Elizabeth Sharpe, in 1809. There were several old samplers like that which the museum used to build context around Moses' needlework. Eizabeth Sharpe's piece had some faded samples of the letters of the alphabet and the following words:

By this piece of work you will see

The care my parents took of me.

When I'm dead and in the grave

This piece of work may you have.

I looked at that, came back to look at it twice again, and keep coming back to it in my mind as being right at the heart of the truly human life.