Posts Tagged ‘eleanor karp’

In taking care of my ankle, I’ve been off from running since Sunday’s race and don’t plan to run again till this Sunday. You’d think I’d be freaking out but I’m doing great with the time off. Bottom line is, I know that if I don’t fix myself, I could be screwed for the big picture (Steamtown) and that would be tragic.

My initial worry in taking a week off was my memory of getting the flu last Feb. and being off for 11 days. That one knocked me for a loop, took me probably an entire month to get back to fighting shape. But I realized recently that there’s gotta be a difference in taking off to be sick lung-wise, then injured limb-wise. I might be creaky when starting again, but it won’t be weeks of trying to recapture my old self.

Meanwhile, I’ve been keeping myself busy. Very good week for voiceovers, had a lot of jobs between last week and this, so…cha-ching!

Lastly, and probably most importantly, a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I finally, FINALLY, made my mother’s website and put it online yesterday. I’ve felt this job haunting me since January 2007, but couldn’t deal with actually sitting down and doing it. Thanks to the comment from Mr. Novie on the “Why I Started Running” page and subsequent emails with him, it was the exact kick in the pants I needed. The site requires a bit of editing and additional content (waiting for family input), but if any of you guys are interested, check out www.eleanorkarp.com.

Not much to tell about the Broad St. Expo, though knowing how I am about Goody Bags, it may surprise you that I am not irked by the two meager goodies we got in ours – a bottle of Calcium and a chapstick. But this is only because I read one account of another runner getting zilch (besides the endless paper inserts) so I consider myself lucky.

On a non-running note, a very strange thing happened yesterday when, after returning from a fabulously fun chick Pot Luck last night, I drunkenly sat down at the computer to find this comment on my page “Why I Started Running”.

I knew my mom had worked for Frank Lloyd Wright in some capacity through Aaron Green’s office, but I was never exactly clear on the particulars, so Mr. Novie’s letter was truly a gift out of nowhere. And what a moving surprise to finally see a couple of the projects she worked on.

This is my mom giving a welcome speech at Cooper Union’s Ninetieth Anniversary Convocation, on November 2, 1949.

The men behind her are quite an esteemed crew. From left to right:
Edwin Burdell (director of Cooper Union), Frank Lloyd Wright, Great-grandson of Peter Cooper Hewitt-Green, Rene D’Harnoncourt (Director of Museum of Modern Art) and the napping guy is Francis Henry Taylor (Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

And with that, I’ll put my figurative running hat back on and say I’m excited to meet up tonight with Lara, Matt and his lovely wife Marianne along with some forum folks I’ve never met as we stuff our soon-to-be racing bodies with pasta galore. Here’s to a fun dinner and a sincere hope that the chance of rain predicted for tomorrow morning is all show, no action.

My mom, Eleanor Karp, was an original. A weird, crazy, difficult, deeply intelligent woman born and raised in NY, she was an architect, writer and amateur scientist with an impressive list of achievements, though “painter” is what best describes her contribution to the world.

A hermit, mom rarely left her apartment. Every 3 weeks or so she’d get groceries, or sometimes she’d go on a hunt for something odd to make a slide for her microscope (the acquiring of a sheep’s brain was the last big event), but she was generally always at home. So on Thanksgiving 2006, when neither me nor my brother could get ahold of her to wish her a happy holiday, we knew something was wrong.

The next day, cops entered the apartment and found her on the bed, where she’d stabbed herself in the stomach several times.

Me and Nick, my boyfriend at the time, hurried down to Arkansas where we met up with my brother and nephew to take care of her belongings and clean the apartment.  The awfulness was confined to a small area – anatomy was one of her interests; she knew what she was doing.

She left behind 90 panels of large paintings, 4ft. x 6ft., all done in oil on masonite (she painted on both sides of some) that she’d been working on for decades, stacked thick against the walls of her tiny apartment.

The paintings are incredible. I made a website for her with the intention of getting representation or gallery interest but I’ve since changed my mind.  I don’t have the energy or heart to think about something that large, I’d rather forget about it and the responsibility.  So aside from the pieces my brother and I have displayed in our homes, the rest will probably stay in storage forever.

Here is a 4-panel piece and my favorite of all her paintings, I always just called it “The Subway Painting”. The little girl and the woman sitting on the train are my mom and her mom. My grandfather’s in it, my brother and I are in it, even my father (whom mom divorced and never spoke to afterwards) is in it. This photo doesn’t do it justice, it’s pieced from 4 photos because the whole thing is 16 feet wide.

Closeup inside the train

After it happened, I began re-evaluating my life, looking for something to jump wholeheartedly into, something to keep my mind occupied and at the same time, clear my head.  So I bought a bunch of exercise DVDs and two months after that, for no reason I can fathom, a pair of running shoes.  That’s how it began.