PSTL Gallery: Friday, 12 November 2010

Jim Schmidt: Remembering Teddy
Needlepoints, cards and other things

Memories and gifts from a special friendship - an extraordinary and continuing legacy which those who knew Carla Trova will fully understand...

Nov. 12, 2010 - Jan. 8, 2011

Please join us for the Opening Reception: Friday, Nov. 12, 6pm-9pm.

I met Carla Rand Trova in 1968 when Ernie asked me to help him out with some of his projects. I remained his assistant for almost a decade. Ernie took me under his wing, encouraged me to paint and make collages, introduced me to the art world, and set me on the path of the rest of my life.

Carla (Teddy, T., & T.T.) was a wonderful artist as well. Her art was not intended for the marketplace or even for exhibition; it was the way she found to give far more to life, family, and friends than she was ever able to take for herself.

Teddy awakened me to new worlds, new ways of living life. She taught me to needlepoint, to garden, to eat good food, and to cook. She gave me my first real camera with which most of the photographs in this exhibition were taken. She shared her love of music and her love of family. Mostly she shared her remarkable spirit.

That spirit, her reason for being (at times she even called herself Mrs. Being), adopted me as part of the Trova family, and taught me to love people for what they are rather then what one may wish them to be or what we could take from them. Our friendship was about giving. We exchanged gifts, cards, love of family and somehow created a world within a world.

When Sandra and Paul asked me to show my needlepoints at the PSTL Gallery, I found it impossible to separate the pieces from how they came to be and the spirit that remains with every stitch I continue to take. Thus this exhibition was transformed to that of the many gifts Teddy and I exchanged. These are but the memories of the many worlds we inhabited and shared with family, friends, and so many others along winding and never ending paths.

Jim Schmidt

PSTL Gallery
3842 Washington Blvd.
Saint Louis, Mo. 63108
314-531-4304
www.paceframing.com