Day 82: John Lennon was THAT Kind of Artist?

On Day 82, I was preparing myself for a meeting with someone interested in my entrepreneurial journey, aka, he wanted to jump on my awesome, awesome idea and potentially rob it from my by "working together." Okay, a little overdramatized, he really just wanted to talk about some ideas I had thrown out into the ether for judging.

He was helping to host the "So This is Christmas" John Lennon art exhibit at the Westin to benefit the Atlanta Children's Shelter, to which I gladly agreed to attend. Plus he said he'd comp me in, which, for all of these expensive new things like flying helicopters and betting my money on a failing penny stock, was a sweet offer.

I showed up to the exhibit on time, but my future working partner wasn't there. The guy at the door let me into the exhibit anyway to walk around and wait for the guy I was waiting for.

Okay, now, don't kill me or say nasty things about me behind my back for not knowing this, but John Lennon was an artist artist? Like a painter/drawer/sketcher kind of artist. Please tell me I'm not the only one who didn't know that his money-making talents weren't limited to singing for the Beatles and solo. Make me feel better, please?

I knew these kinds of pictures were signatures, but not that they were done by Lennon himself!

The exhibit was a wonderful little one-room gallery of whimsical, inspired pieces and came from a totally unique place in time and spirit. It was very much a peace-love-and-happiness atmosphere, complete with John Lennon-sung Christmas ditties, showing off artistic (read: nude) portraits of Yoko Ono, as well as two-word illustrated stories about living in the moment, recognizing the beauty of life and love and following the things that make you genuinely happy (NOT money, fame and material goods, that is).

There were also lyrics of his music, hand-written and signed by John Lennon himself. Okay, that's pretty cool.

I got halfway through the exhibit before realizing that my compadre was not going to show up after all. I checked my phone, for the first time in days, and saw that he had left me a voicemail about not being able to attend.

Le sigh.

Stood up.

I looked around the rest of the exhibit, truly enjoying a little art in my life, and walked out feeling significantly more peaceful, despite my failed date. I felt bad for being comped in, but I didn't have any money. So I left two Thomas Jefferson "gold" dollars (gold plated) that I had won from a VW dealership months prior. Leaving them in the donation bin, I hoped that people would automatically assume they were Sacajawea dollars, and turn them into real money.

A sort of failure for the day, except for the fact that I learned John Lennon was an artist artist. Welcome to 60's pop culture...welcome.