Trisha Ricketts

My baby sister Kathleen was a kick. Asked for and got a cowboy hat, two-holstered six-shooters and boots every year for Christmas until she was eight. Thought TV star Stony Burke was over-the-moon cool and was crestfallen when she discovered that Tarzan was…a BOY! Because she thought she was Tarzan as she climbed trees and swung from vines in our backyard hollering, “Ah-eee-yah!”

Her creativity fairly danced inside her like something psychedelic without the drugs, enhanced by a driving need to create, fueled by a full, rich heart. And create, she did. She wrote songs with heartbreaking lyrics, “Love, are you here. Will you whisper and be near?” and sang them in a voice that rang every bell in the room. Think Ella meets Simone. She played jazz standards on her enormous dreadnaught named Sally Steinway in honor of our oldest sister and as testimony to its deep, rich tones. Even though it dwarfed her, she made those tiny hands of hers stretch to catch every demanding jazz chord on that beloved instrument.

She landed gigs for her music and occasional buyers for her art; nonetheless, she was frustrated because she yearned to make a living from the soul of her natural talents and imagination, which never flagged. She painted sweaters, beautiful hand-built terra cotta tiles and even cloth suitcases and deck chairs. All of which were magic.

And she persisted. Her creativity manifested itself in the visual arts as her imagination became reality in paintings bursting with color in totally wild abstracts. Think Klee meets Kandinsky.

When she got interested in computers, she photographed her paintings, photoshopped them into wild-and-fabulous designs, hoping some interior decorator would turn her creations into fabrics for patio furniture.

But that never happened.

Perhaps a bit wistful, but undaunted, she began printing her designs on high quality paper, cutting out the creatures she found inside what she’d already concocted. She then bought shadow boxes and layered these critters in 3-D kingdoms of wild display, so vivid you can almost hear the cacophony of whistles and hisses and maybe even an “Ah-eee-yah!” coming through the glass.

Unfortunately, her shadow box menageries didn’t sell either.

Then suddenly—so suddenly—one day she died. Her heart, you know, just gave out. Maybe it was too full of aspirations? So full, perhaps, it had to burst?

But she finally got what she yearned for, even if it was posthumously. A year after she was gone, her husband mounted a gallery opening for all her works—the paintings, the shadow boxes, the suitcases, the chairs, the beaver sticks, the pottery.  And you know what? Every. Last. Piece. Sold.

God, I hope she knows.

I have four of her paintings, two of her shadow boxes, one of her painted terra cotta tiles, and I still sing one of her beautiful songs. “Love, are you here. Will you whisper and be near?” Every time I look at one of Kathleen’s shadow box critters hanging on my wall, I think she is.