By Carolyn Ellis
This past Saturday I drove to Tyler to change out artwork in an alternative art venue (not a gallery), where I have been showing work for three months. Surprisingly, what happened is that instead of changing out artwork I ended up removing my entire exhibit (4 large canvases and three pen and inks) from this place and heading for home!
The details of what happened are not important. The bottom line is that one of the store managers hurt my feelings enough that I decided on the spot -after 3 months of feeling unwelcome every time I entered the door of this place – that I did not want to be part of this unpleasant scene any longer. The fact that I had a similar “ugly experience” in Dallas earlier in the week only made the Tyler encounter worse.
What happened in Dallas is that when I visited a new high end restaurant in Deep Ellum to make face to face contact with the General Manager (GM) there, I was so humiliated by the GM’s snobbery and presumption that I left the restaurant with tears in my eyes. Having exchanged a number of encouraging emails with this GM over the past month – complete with pics/websites showing my work – about the possibly of exhibiting my artwork at this restaurant, I actually came to this meeting hopeful about the prospect of getting my artwork into this place. When the GM met me, however, and got a look at me (long denim skirt, straw hat, penny loafers …), her whole face flashed with “Ugh, an old lady, a total redneck…!”
In both of these instances, I came away deeply shaken. Driving home from Tyler on Saturday I finally put together why I was so hurt by these two experiences: Though I am from Washington, DC, I have lived in small town East Texas for 14 years, long enough to get so used to friendliness, warmth, and hospitality, that to be treated with standard urban disdain now comes across to me as heartless, even cruel!
While I am still reeling from being so poorly treated in Dallas and Tyler, I must say I feel much better knowing the source of my woundedness – and so blessed to live in a small town where everyone gets treated like family. O the wonder!
Carolyn, sorry you had to endure this unkindness. People who look down their noses at others, as you describe, are the losers both literally and figuratively. They lose out by having a closed mind and a closed heart and thereby impoverish their intellectual and spiritual life; and eventually they will lose financially because people just don’t like dealing with such jerks.