Finding Glimmers in the Dark

The Art of Ann Cushing Gantz

To say this week has been disconcerting and at times harrowing would be an understatement. From the macro to the micro, from the sinister charades on the world stage to the challenges in our individual universes, we are navigating ferociously precarious times.

But amidst the dizzying swirl of inanity and my own murky mess, I experienced some surprising synchronicities this week. I felt the presence of my late mother more directly than maybe . . .  ever. Ann Cushing Gantz, who passed from complications of a devastating stroke in 2012, was winking at me around almost every corner.  

It began about two weeks ago when I offered to help my son Ian with the “deaccession” of several of my mother’s/his grandmother’s paintings he had collected in his Dallas apartment. He was preparing to move to Austin with his girlfriend Taylor, cat Maeby, and gecko Carlton last weekend. A deeply bittersweet event as it was. And is.

So, I called John Vance, my writing friend of many years who had contacted me about my mother’s work about a year ago after discovering one of her paintings at an estate sale. Though John initially passed on the painting, he could not stop thinking about it, so he decided he to go back and buy it. Alas, it had been sold. At that sale, he encountered dealer/broker Mike Mee, a fan of my mother’s work and coincidentally, a workout buddy at John’s gym. To make it even more interesting, we then discovered that Mike also was my next-door neighbor Tracy Mee’s ex-husband. Let that sink in.

John realized Ann Cushing was my mother—both named Gantz, and that’s when we connected all the dots. When I asked Tracy if she thought Mike and her son, Travis, who works with his dad on estate sales, might be interested in Ian’s paintings, he immediately contacted my friend John. Oh, the circle of art.

The plot was clearly thickening, and the world was contracting. Plus, this was the sort of delicious, entangled coincidence that always delighted my mother immensely. She loved recounting my “crazy coincidences” that often related to art.  And I was delighted to find a home for her work with someone who adored and appreciated it with such passion. A win-win in my book, and Ian received some unexpected “help” for his move. It was a hat trick.

But there is more to the story.

This week, I heard from a fellow Hockadaisy and high school chum, Anna Lively, whom I had not seen in decades. She was frantically preparing her parents’ estate sale in Dallas. (Will open July 26, 2024, at 6219 Joyce Way 75225 — if you are in town.) Della Lively, Anna’s mother, was a vivacious bon vivant and real estate whirlwind who studied art with my mother. They were a dazzling Dallas pair, frequently seen resplendent in their eye-popping fuchsia and purple finery. Anna contacted me on Facebook wondering if I knew of an appropriate venue for my mother’s art. Of course, I thought of my friend John and my neighbor.

Following an afternoon at the sprawling midcentury manse in North Dallas, I was thrilled to connect John with the Lively collection of my mom’s paintings. John fell in love with a couple of pieces the family was not keeping. As a bonus, I had the opportunity to wax nostalgic with John Clutts, a St. Mark’s high school connection, who was helping Anna meticulously curate the sale. John Clutts’ parents were receiving care at Presbyterian Village North when my parents were there at the end of their lives. As we perused the impressive array of furnishings and art, we discussed our many intertwining threads of memory, synchronicity, and heartbreak. I recalled fondly how his sister, Mary Clutts, and I had connected and supported each other during those emotionally raw times. Such a surprising and unexpected convergence of worlds and hearts.

And there was yet another glimmer from John Vance. Before his visit to the pre-sale, he sent me a video interview of my mom from 1979 with Patsy Swank when she was at Channel 13, a place I also worked in my early career. I am intensely grateful for these startling moments of connection, as they are what sustain me through the darkest heaviness, but they can be as heartbreaking as they are beautiful.

I had never seen this before, nor did I know it existed. Another wink—well, more of a wallop:

KERA/Channel 13 Video Interview: Ann Cushing Gantz & Patsy Swank

Honestly, I am still a bit agog as I process all of this. I have watched this video numerous times—absorbing the familiar and the surprising.  It exudes a poignancy that somehow reminds me of the detachment and dismay I often felt from my mother going up. Still, I can barely catch my breath after the events of this week, which grounded me in the presence of my mother’s exceptional talent, beauty, and memory. And the pain I suspect she carried as best she could in a very different kind of complicated world.

Indeed, these are chaotic but clarifying days.

As I sit in quiet bewilderment, I am reminded of the Nietzsche quote, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

Thinking of you today with love, Ann Cushing Gantz.