A Place of Her Own

I have the most enjoyable, least employable degree in the world. Art history. And in order to graduate with a BA in art history, you have to take "Art Technique for Dummies" which turned out to be a comedy of errors because art historians tend to be more academic than artistic. A real art teacher helped us do all sorts of artistic styles: watercolor, tempera, wood blocking, lithographs. He even had us do etching (although whatever possessed him to allow art historians anywhere near a vat of acid is beyond me). While we were waiting our turn to put our plates into the acid bath, we were looking through a bunch of plates that were still in the studio. One of them was by James C. Christensen who used to teach at BYU and who still had plates in the studio.

They were amazing. Detailed. Beautiful.And because they were etching plates, completed in mirror image of the final piece. That's when I fell in love with James C. Christensen. A couple of years ago, Tony found a canvas of Christensen's The Responsible Woman for Mother's Day and I think I cried for a week.

Fast forward to this past July. We were getting packed up to leave Utah the next morning. Out of the blue my mom calls from Spanish Fork and tells me I need to come meet her in American Fork because she has something for me. When we met up, she handed me a rolled up print. When I opened it, it was a signed James Christensen print of A Place of Her Own. AMAZING. When I got it back to Sandy, I showed Tony and the first thing he said was, "Amber, that is YOU". A woman in comfy clothes and messy hair surrounded by stacks of books. I am a lover of books. I don't remember a time when I didn't love books. I love the smell and feel of books. I love having a stack of books waiting to be read in the basket by my bed. I even read all assigned books in high school (except I didn't finish Moby Dick or Grapes of Wrath which still haunts me to this day). I even loved reading my big, beautiful art history books in college. So this is the perfect union of the art lover and the book lover in me. In one print.

And I picked it up from the framers today. Thank you, mom! I love it.