Community

Ten Years

In 1982 I became pregnant with our son. Jason Andrew Warnke was born on Christmas Day of 1983. I loved him as a Mother can, completely and totally to this day and forever. When Jason was little, Harvey got a job in What is now Silicon Valley, I got a job in a tech company as a financial analyst and got a perfect score on my MBA. At the same time I had a show of my work in a Paris. Harvey had a drug problem. In the Bay Area it was more accepted to do drugs while you worked long hours. My patience grew thin as I tried to save our family. Finally in 1990 upon completing my MFA at San Francisco Art Institute, I took Jason and left. It was very hard to do and not something I would ever want to do again. I took Jason to London and had my attorneys get me full custody of Jason before we came back into the country. While we were in London, Jason and I would go to the British Museum where I would draw the Parthenon marbles. I am convinced that these drawings became the first of the Peace Angels. The gowns, the movement all took on life. Jason was six and I began therapy to determine the whys and how’s of living with someone who was addicted to drugs. I didn’t want that continued in my life but most especially in my son’s. Upon our return, life took on a different normal. We moved to San Francisco. Jason now in grade school took Chinese classes and I had six exhibitions up in San Francisco and Los Angeles. I had models come to my studio. What I was working in were prayer wheels and 3 dimensional ba relief of spiritual images. One day as I was working, with all the windows closed, the model asked me where the wind was coming from. There was wind in the room with no windows open. Jason was coming home more and more upset every time he went to his father’s. The riots happened in Los Angeles and it reminded me of the last night that I worked at Sears part time in high school. As I left, the city of Chicago was on fire. For some reason that is beyond me, I felt it was important to leave San Francisco and go back to Los Angeles. As my upset friends told me: all the moving vans are moving to San Francisco from Los Angeles. Yours is the only one moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I had a couple of friends in Los Angeles. But I wasn’t wearing thousands of dollar designer gowns and putting on huge exhibitions in Los Angeles. But, that gut feeling. The fact that I might be able to keep Jason from crying in pain from his father’s situation and that there was something in front of me. Ever since that first encounter when I was 4, and Maria gave me her message, it had been repeated by men, women, all different ages, various geographic locations... all telling me the same message. I didn’t believe in psychics. I was happy just living a full life everyday. In 1987, I met a woman and invited her to see the art to sell her a piece. She, instead, was the last person to give me this message that had followed me around all of my life. She told me to see her friends Leslie who could tell me more. Upon going to see Leslie, she told me two things: there is good news and there is bad news. #1. It is going to be very hard. #2. Everyone on earth is going to know your name. She then went on to say that my husband wouldn’t listen to me or to anyone and that he would decide not to continue to live. I had just lost my Dad a couple of years previously and could not imagine this for Jason or for me. In 1990 when I received my MFA a session with Joya was brought to me as a gift. I didn’t want a session but my friends knew what was going on. In order to break my denial, my friend brought me to a Joya. We have been friends ever since. But when I moved to Los Angeles, Joya asked me to go see a woman who saw Angels. I told her that I would defer. Some people, after all, see Leprechauns.