by Karen Karbo
§ A complete collection of the best existing prints of a mounted photograph in a photographer’s oeuvre. Like everything else about Stieglitz, his key set was monumental, numbering 1,642 photos.
¶ Pretty much the dream of every middle-aged woman I know, who’s had it with worrying about the state of the water heater and who the fuck is going to mow the lawn (not me, that’s for sure).
* An oxymoron in my book, but I realize this is not a view shared by everyone.
†† My mother’s word, a cross between “nut job” and “fruit cake.”
‡‡ With a lot of local help, it must be continuously noted.
§§ Maria Chabot–Georgia O’Keeffe: Correspondence, 1941–1949, edited by Barbara Buhler Lynes and Ann Paden.
¶¶ No one ever said Zen simplicity was cheap.
** Georgia chose one from her abstract In the Patio series.
††† In more ways than one.
‡‡‡ Me.
§§§ According to Dr. Oz, it feels like someone is doing yoga for you. Against your will, I might add.
¶¶¶ Your mind can still be blown by this piece at the Brooklyn Museum.
*** Then as now, we still have vaginas.
†††† Georgia offered Bry more money. Bry was happy to take it. She found Norman to be undiscriminating in her taste and otherwise “slushy.”
‡‡‡‡ Somewhere along the way O’Keeffe dropped Dorothy Brett, her compatriot from her early New Mexico years, because she felt she’d gotten too fat.
§§§§ Ida had died in 1961.
¶¶¶¶ She also built a gym, so the kids would have somewhere to play in the snowy winters, and donated $50,000 for the building of a new elementary school.
**** O’Keeffe was far too old to know that every one of that generation who ever successfully threw a pot in his high school art class considered himself to be a potter.
††††† Perhaps only 75 percent.
Acknowledgments
With each book it becomes harder to adequately thank my literary pit crew who, over months and years, cheers me on, listens to my endless complaints, turns a blind eye when I stomp around in a bad mood, brings me burritos, asks how it’s going (often at their own peril), forces me to go to yoga or even just run around the block for God’s sake, reads and rereads my manuscript, offers constructive criticism even though it might result in a beheading, promotes my unsung genius to dubious strangers, and responds to neurotic e-mails with respect and good humor.
Among them, my agents at Inkwell Management, Kim Witherspoon and David Forrer, support my work and believe in me in a way that qualifies them for superhero status.
Likewise, I cannot say thank you enough to my editor par excellence Lara Asher, and everyone else at Globe Pequot: Gail Blackhall, Shana Capozza, Allyson Coughlin, Himeka Curiel, Melissa Hayes, Sheryl Kober, Jennifer McKay, and Kristen Mellitt.
I am also deeply grateful for Jerrod Allen, Fiona Baker, David Biespiel, Hilary Black, Hannah Concannon, Kim Dower, Debbie Guyol, Karen Rae Johnson, Stephanie Loftis, Whitney Otto, Danna Schaeffer, and Cheryl Strayed.
A special thanks also goes to the wise women of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum: Barbara Buhler Lynes, Eumie Imm-Stroukoff, Elizabeth Ehrnst, and Fran Martone.
I cracked wise about the length of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s Bibliography, but in truth it’s a fantastic resource, available online at www.okeeffemuseum.org.
Some O’Keeffe biographies I’m especially fond of, whose margins are now filled with my scribbles include, Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp; O’Keeffe and Stieglitz: An American Romance by Benita Eisler; Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe by Laurie Lisle; Georgia O’Keeffe by Roxana Robinson.
Other books that captivated me and helped me more fully understand the complex woman behind the art: O’Keeffe by Britta Benke; Georgia O’Keeffe: In the West, edited by Doris Bry and Nicholas Callaway; Georgia O’Keeffe and the Camera: The Art of Identity by Susan Danly; Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch: A Photo Essay by John Leongard; O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 1916–1929 by Barbara Buhler Lynes; Weekends with O’Keeffe by C.S. Merrill; From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon, edited by Christopher Merrill and Ellen Bradbury; Some Memories of Drawings by Georgia O’Keeffe; Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction [exhibition catalog, Whitney Museum of American Art]; Miss O’Keeffe by Christine Taylor Patten and Alvaro Cardona-Hine; In a Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe by Margaret Wood.
For a woman who said, famously, that she and words were not good friends, O’Keeffe wrote a staggering amount of letters. These collections capture her intelligence, humor, and esprit: Lovingly Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O’Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer, edited by Clive Giboire; My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Vol. 1 (1915–1933), edited by Sarah Greenough; Maria Chabot–Georgia O’Keeffe: Correspondence, 1941–1949, edited by Barbara Buhler Lynes.
Finally, the astounding two-volume, 1198-page Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonne, assembled by Barbara Buhler Lynes, depicts every piece of art made by O’Keeffe (2,045) during her lifetime, and confirms, in case there was any doubt, what all the fuss is about.
About the Author
Susan Seubert
Karen Karbo’s first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year. Her other two adult novels, The Diamond Lane and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me, were also named NYT Notable Books. Her 2004 memoir, The Stuff of Life, about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was an NYT Notable Book, a People Magazine Critics’ Choice, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist, and a winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her short stories, essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, the New York Times, Salon.com, and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award.
How to Hepburn, published in 2007, was hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “an exuberant celebration of a great original”; The Gospel According to Coco Chanel (skirt!), published in 2009, was a BookScan bestseller. Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California, and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she continues to kick ass.