Sunday, January 27, 2013

My friend Cindy Myers and Arts Prescott Cooperative Gallery



Cindy Myers

My dear friend Cindy was diagnosed with Stage 4 colorectal cancer in early January. She will begin chemotherapy this week. She has been told she will have up to 2 years with this treatment. This devastates the art community in Prescott and her friends.  Cindy is a cornerstone of this town. She and her husband, sculptor Michael Myers have been in the heart of Prescott’s art world since they arrived many years ago. I met Cindy 19 year ago when a group of us started the art coop.  We spent a lot of time together getting the “Coop” off the ground and in the ensuing years helping keep it up and running. No one worked harder than Cindy or did more.  I wrote the following when she left the gallery and stopped blowing glass.  She found that blowing glass took a great physical toll on her body and she moved on to work at Tis gallery.  She still continued to work hard; I don’t think she has another speed, but full tilt!  

Cindy and I became best friends as the years passed, kind of like “war-buddies”! One of my favorite places to spend time was in her backyard garden on a warm afternoon talking, solving problems, laughing, gossiping and enjoying the sunshine, the birds, flowers and each other’s company.  

I have always loved Cindy’s freckled, wrinkly face and have said many times that next lifetime I want Cindy’s red curly hair! She has a face that tells you there is a big heart behind it.

I wrote the following when she retired from the gallery and it tells you a lot about how Cindy operates in life and why she means so much to me and everyone else.

A little about Cindy Myer's tenure in Arts Prescott Cooperative Gallery:

Cindy is probably more responsible than any of the founding members for getting the group together that started the Co-op.  She was the glue and driving force that keep the idea of the Co-op from just fading away into a pipe dream.
It took me a while to “get” Cindy, because she is not like other people.  Cindy always thought of the great good of the gallery, she never had a personal agenda and she always strove to do the right thing.   She is different from most of us!
Cindy came up with the name "Arts Prescott Gallery" and settled one of our first arguments and then she helped design, build and hang our first sign for the front of both buildings.
She personally found and brought in more new members than anyone else in gallery history.  
Cindy produced beautiful hand-blown glass and woven rugs/tapestries. As an aside, Cindy probably has the best handwriting of anyone in the past, present and future of Arts Prescott. Our daily sales logs were a lot more illegible after she left the gallery. 
She was vice president at least 4 times; she was chair of the Display-Maintenance and Screening/Quality Control committees and a board member too many times to count.
Cindy was been the "go to" person for just about every question anyone has in the gallery.  If you can't find something, don't know how to do something, can't remember something, your first call was to Cindy.
There was almost never a gallery emergency that Cindy wasn’t called and that she didn’t come down to help fix it. She directed the purchase of almost every vacuum cleaner we have owned!
If something needed to get done Cindy was there.  She quietly and without fanfare just shown up and gotten things done. We all started to see all the things she quietly did for us, because they stopped getting done anymore.  She was our “Mom”!
She was one of the pillars of this gallery. Her uncommon common sense kept us afloat through some very stormy seas.  When that curly red mane came through the door, you knew all would be well.
Most of all Cindy is an extraordinary friend and I am lucky enough to have her as my friend. 

Linne Thomas
January 2013





1 comment:

  1. I was sorry to hear this news, too. Thanks for sharing more about her.

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