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Weekends with O'Keefe
Winner of the 2012 Zia Award from New Mexico Press Women
In 1973 Georgia O'Keeffe employed C. S. Merrill to catalog her library for her estate. Merrill, a poet who was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, was twenty-six years old and O'Keeffe was eighty-five, almost blind, but still painting. Over seven years, Merrill was called upon for secretarial assistance, cooking, and personal care for the artist. Merrill's journals reveal details of the daily life of a genius. The author describes how O'Keeffe stretched the canvas for her twenty-six-foot cloud painting and reports on O'Keeffe's favorite classical music and preferred performers. Merrill provided descriptions of nature when she and the artist went for walks; she read to O'Keeffe from her favorite books and helped keep her space in meticulous order.
Throughout the book there are sketches of O'Keeffe's studio and an account of once assisting O'Keeffe at the easel. Jockeying for position among the helpers O'Keeffe relied upon was part of daily life at Abiquiu, where territorial chows guarded the property. Visitors came from far and wide, among them Eliot Porter and even Allen Ginsberg accompanied by Peter Orlovsky. All this is revealed in Merrill's straightforward and deeply respectful notes. Reading her book is like spending a weekend with O'Keeffe in the incomparable light and clear air of Northern New Mexico mountains and desert.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
C. S. Merrill is the author of a book of poetry, O'Keeffe: Days in a Life (La Alameda Press, 1995). She works as librarian at Kewa Pueblo School and Cochiti Pueblo School.
ACCLAIM
"This is a book that deserves to be read for the insights it offers into the daily life of the complex and gifted O'Keeffe; for the love (I am tempted to write "adoration") that the artist inspired in those around her; and for the evolving and increasingly mature perceptions of the young poet who recorded her observations with such a sustained and clear-eyed focus."
-- Story Circle Book Reviews
"Anyone interested in the painter and her extremely private daily life will find this thoughtfully detailed account fascinating, for beyond O'Keeffe's high garden walls and guardian chow dogs, Merrill observed 'a visual feast.'"
-- New Mexico Magazine
"Those of us who never get tired of reading another insider's account of this icon of the modern art world will also take delight in Merrill's book."
-- Santa Fe New Mexican
In 1973 Georgia O'Keeffe employed C. S. Merrill to catalog her library for her estate. Merrill, a poet who was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, was twenty-six years old and O'Keeffe was eighty-five, almost blind, but still painting. Over seven years, Merrill was called upon for secretarial assistance, cooking, and personal care for the artist. Merrill's journals reveal details of the daily life of a genius. The author describes how O'Keeffe stretched the canvas for her twenty-six-foot cloud painting and reports on O'Keeffe's favorite classical music and preferred performers. Merrill provided descriptions of nature when she and the artist went for walks; she read to O'Keeffe from her favorite books and helped keep her space in meticulous order.
Throughout the book there are sketches of O'Keeffe's studio and an account of once assisting O'Keeffe at the easel. Jockeying for position among the helpers O'Keeffe relied upon was part of daily life at Abiquiu, where territorial chows guarded the property. Visitors came from far and wide, among them Eliot Porter and even Allen Ginsberg accompanied by Peter Orlovsky. All this is revealed in Merrill's straightforward and deeply respectful notes. Reading her book is like spending a weekend with O'Keeffe in the incomparable light and clear air of Northern New Mexico mountains and desert.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
C. S. Merrill is the author of a book of poetry, O'Keeffe: Days in a Life (La Alameda Press, 1995). She works as librarian at Kewa Pueblo School and Cochiti Pueblo School.
ACCLAIM
"This is a book that deserves to be read for the insights it offers into the daily life of the complex and gifted O'Keeffe; for the love (I am tempted to write "adoration") that the artist inspired in those around her; and for the evolving and increasingly mature perceptions of the young poet who recorded her observations with such a sustained and clear-eyed focus."
-- Story Circle Book Reviews
"Anyone interested in the painter and her extremely private daily life will find this thoughtfully detailed account fascinating, for beyond O'Keeffe's high garden walls and guardian chow dogs, Merrill observed 'a visual feast.'"
-- New Mexico Magazine
"Those of us who never get tired of reading another insider's account of this icon of the modern art world will also take delight in Merrill's book."
-- Santa Fe New Mexican
Hardcover
Published November 30, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 3, 2017
Carol Merrill was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico in November, 1972, when she wrote an admiring letter to Georgia O'Keeffe. To her astonishment, the young poet received not only a reply but an invitation to visit. It took months to screw up her courage, but in August, 1973 she finally walked through O'Keeffe's gate. Merrill was 26; O'Keeffe was 85.
It was the beginning of seven years of on-off weekends and short stays with O'Keeffe, as a library assistant, household helper, companion, and sometime cook. Throughout the period (1973-1979), Merrill kept a journal both on tape and in her notebook. The journal is remarkable for its immaculate attention to details of O'Keeffe's person and personality, the settings (interiors and exteriors) of home and studio and the surrounding desert-and-canyon landscape, and the daily household activities. Because the journal was kept over an extended period, we can also see the changes in Merrill's relationship to O'Keeffe, from hero-worship to nuanced perceptions of the aging artist's human frailties, as well as her place in O'Keeffe's evolving household, increasingly dominated by a young sculptor named Juan Hamilton. He appears early in the journal and becomes an omnipresent and somewhat ominous figure.
But while a great deal of controversy swirled around the artist in those days, and particularly about her relationship to Hamilton, Merrill sets all that aside: "Tactful reserve is my motto," she says. She focuses her observations on O'Keeffe, not as an artist but as a frail older woman. Her journal entries include descriptions of O'Keeffe's clothing ("a black scarf pulled back like an Arab or a nun with a shawl over a short black silk kimono and fragile bluish-white blouse"), the house ("There is a tan comforter for a white bed, a tan telephone, white stool, and a brown and black fireplace carved in mud in the corner...White curtains cover an east wall full of windows."), and O'Keeffe's reminiscences about the past, her husband Alfred Stieglitz, and the many artists she had known.
Most striking, perhaps, is Merrill's frequent attention to the details of food. Breakfast: "Scrambled eggs, mushrooms, fresh radishes, orange juice, jasmine tea, muffins, whole wheat bread, butter, and honey." Snacks: "A feast of salted dry roasted peanuts, Norwegian goat cheese that tasted like caramel, and tart apples." Dinner: "Cottage cheese, onions and oranges and sesame seeds on lettuce. There was cheese, wheat bread, gingerbread, and raspberries, delicious without sugar." For Merrill, food—like clothing, furnishings, and surroundings—is an expression of O'Keeffe's essential creativity, which is exhibited not just in her work but in all that she is and does. Through all of Merrill's descriptions runs the thread of the poet's admiration for the artist: "Her way of life is art embodied. I enter her art by moving through shared space on weekends."
The style of the journal entries evolves over time in interesting ways. In the beginning, it is often stilted and awkwardly self-conscious but becomes increasingly fluid and lyrical as time goes on. And while Merrill occasionally worries that her note-taking is a betrayal of confidence ("I greedily put down every shred of experience I can remember of her and the house"), she continues to journal until the last day she sees O'Keeffe, in 1979. Over the next two decades, clearly considering the possibility of publishing her writing, Merrill annotates some of the entries with additional recollections, and in the published journal, inserts her own poems at the beginnings of chapters. In an afterward, written in 2009, she confesses that the end of her relationship with O'Keeffe came at just the right time. She was "losing herself" under the artist's influence, she says, and needed to become more completely her own woman.
This is a book that deserves to be read for the insights it offers into the daily life of the complex and gifted O'Keeffe; for the love (I am tempted to write "adoration") that the artist inspired in those around her; and for the evolving and increasingly mature perceptions of the young poet who recorded her observations with such a sustained and clear-eyed focus.
"She taught me to look, really look at things," Merrill says, reminding me of something that O'Keeffe herself wrote, about the hugeness of her flower paintings: "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time..." Merrill took the time to see and record the small things, the intimate details of an artist's daily life. And for that, we can only be grateful. (Originally published in StoryCircleBookReviews: http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org...)
It was the beginning of seven years of on-off weekends and short stays with O'Keeffe, as a library assistant, household helper, companion, and sometime cook. Throughout the period (1973-1979), Merrill kept a journal both on tape and in her notebook. The journal is remarkable for its immaculate attention to details of O'Keeffe's person and personality, the settings (interiors and exteriors) of home and studio and the surrounding desert-and-canyon landscape, and the daily household activities. Because the journal was kept over an extended period, we can also see the changes in Merrill's relationship to O'Keeffe, from hero-worship to nuanced perceptions of the aging artist's human frailties, as well as her place in O'Keeffe's evolving household, increasingly dominated by a young sculptor named Juan Hamilton. He appears early in the journal and becomes an omnipresent and somewhat ominous figure.
But while a great deal of controversy swirled around the artist in those days, and particularly about her relationship to Hamilton, Merrill sets all that aside: "Tactful reserve is my motto," she says. She focuses her observations on O'Keeffe, not as an artist but as a frail older woman. Her journal entries include descriptions of O'Keeffe's clothing ("a black scarf pulled back like an Arab or a nun with a shawl over a short black silk kimono and fragile bluish-white blouse"), the house ("There is a tan comforter for a white bed, a tan telephone, white stool, and a brown and black fireplace carved in mud in the corner...White curtains cover an east wall full of windows."), and O'Keeffe's reminiscences about the past, her husband Alfred Stieglitz, and the many artists she had known.
Most striking, perhaps, is Merrill's frequent attention to the details of food. Breakfast: "Scrambled eggs, mushrooms, fresh radishes, orange juice, jasmine tea, muffins, whole wheat bread, butter, and honey." Snacks: "A feast of salted dry roasted peanuts, Norwegian goat cheese that tasted like caramel, and tart apples." Dinner: "Cottage cheese, onions and oranges and sesame seeds on lettuce. There was cheese, wheat bread, gingerbread, and raspberries, delicious without sugar." For Merrill, food—like clothing, furnishings, and surroundings—is an expression of O'Keeffe's essential creativity, which is exhibited not just in her work but in all that she is and does. Through all of Merrill's descriptions runs the thread of the poet's admiration for the artist: "Her way of life is art embodied. I enter her art by moving through shared space on weekends."
The style of the journal entries evolves over time in interesting ways. In the beginning, it is often stilted and awkwardly self-conscious but becomes increasingly fluid and lyrical as time goes on. And while Merrill occasionally worries that her note-taking is a betrayal of confidence ("I greedily put down every shred of experience I can remember of her and the house"), she continues to journal until the last day she sees O'Keeffe, in 1979. Over the next two decades, clearly considering the possibility of publishing her writing, Merrill annotates some of the entries with additional recollections, and in the published journal, inserts her own poems at the beginnings of chapters. In an afterward, written in 2009, she confesses that the end of her relationship with O'Keeffe came at just the right time. She was "losing herself" under the artist's influence, she says, and needed to become more completely her own woman.
This is a book that deserves to be read for the insights it offers into the daily life of the complex and gifted O'Keeffe; for the love (I am tempted to write "adoration") that the artist inspired in those around her; and for the evolving and increasingly mature perceptions of the young poet who recorded her observations with such a sustained and clear-eyed focus.
"She taught me to look, really look at things," Merrill says, reminding me of something that O'Keeffe herself wrote, about the hugeness of her flower paintings: "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time..." Merrill took the time to see and record the small things, the intimate details of an artist's daily life. And for that, we can only be grateful. (Originally published in StoryCircleBookReviews: http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org...)
May 2, 2025
The book is written as a journal recording the author's time working for Georgia O'Keeffe.
I had a lot of questions as I read. The first was why the book was so poorly edited, published almost three decades after the events, the entries would have benefited with some polishing. The author is a poet yet the writing is flat. Even the descriptions of New Mexico were plain. I found the details of O'Keeffe's life somewhat interesting, what she wore, what she ate, her crabby moods but what I really wanted was some depth. What lessons were learned, or how did O'Keeffe feel about her art late in life. I would have enjoyed some self reflection from Merrill.
A chronicle of a great artist's life is valuable. The book is worth a look if you love Georgia O'Keeffe but I was disappointed. 2.5 rounded up.
I had a lot of questions as I read. The first was why the book was so poorly edited, published almost three decades after the events, the entries would have benefited with some polishing. The author is a poet yet the writing is flat. Even the descriptions of New Mexico were plain. I found the details of O'Keeffe's life somewhat interesting, what she wore, what she ate, her crabby moods but what I really wanted was some depth. What lessons were learned, or how did O'Keeffe feel about her art late in life. I would have enjoyed some self reflection from Merrill.
A chronicle of a great artist's life is valuable. The book is worth a look if you love Georgia O'Keeffe but I was disappointed. 2.5 rounded up.
October 1, 2012
I'm a huge O'Keeffe fan (maybe more so of her as a person, though I also love her work), so I was glad to read this account of Merrill's seven years (off and on) working with her at Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch.
It's basically a series of journal entries, so the prose is plain, but her account of conversations, meals, the physical spaces they shared, and O'Keeffe's impact on Merrill as a woman and poet is a fascinating insight into the artist near the end of her life. Recommended.
It's basically a series of journal entries, so the prose is plain, but her account of conversations, meals, the physical spaces they shared, and O'Keeffe's impact on Merrill as a woman and poet is a fascinating insight into the artist near the end of her life. Recommended.
November 24, 2015
This book isn't a splendid piece of writing and is chock full of mundane details. It IS a diary at it's most basic level and as the mundane details involve a very famous and enigmatic artist, perhaps you'll forgive the form and take away the substance. CS Merrill was a graduate student in New Mexico in the 1970s when she "cold called" an elderly and nearly blind Georgia O'Keeffe via a letter, desperate to meet her. Merrill, a struggling poet and playright, is a little "out there" and she is so transfixed by the minimalistic, beauty-in-nature-at-all-costs lifestyle that O'Keeffe lives that she reminds you perhaps of a starry-eyed Congressional staffer or Hollywood personal assistant. That is, she takes a lot of crap and keeps coming back for more.
I enjoyed the book and it's a quick read ... but it can be random at times with name drops and references that will not be that valuable unless you've read one of the other flagship biographies of O'Keeffe. A few things we still don't get clarity around: Was the 80-something O'Keeffe's young male assistant Juan Hamilton simply out to co-opt her estate and use her to further his own ceramics career? And are the rumors about O'Keeffe's dalliances with women true -- or just sensational rumors suggested out of jealousy and sexism? Merrill never goes there.
I enjoyed the book and it's a quick read ... but it can be random at times with name drops and references that will not be that valuable unless you've read one of the other flagship biographies of O'Keeffe. A few things we still don't get clarity around: Was the 80-something O'Keeffe's young male assistant Juan Hamilton simply out to co-opt her estate and use her to further his own ceramics career? And are the rumors about O'Keeffe's dalliances with women true -- or just sensational rumors suggested out of jealousy and sexism? Merrill never goes there.
June 26, 2019
This is such a strange book. On one hand, it made me respect Georgia O'Keeffe even more. I think she's an incredible fascinating woman, so I enjoyed that aspect of the book. However, it feels like no one read through this before it was published. I know it was a personal diary, but it could've done with a little light editing so that paragraphs made more sense. All in all, I found Merrill's writing confusing and ultimately, disappointing.
August 20, 2018
Felt like a behind the scenes account of what it would be like to work for and spend time with the late painter Georgia O’Keefe. The book is largely written in diary form as reflections as time with O’Keefe occurred and some later addenda from the author as she worked to complete this volume. The author is also a poet and it was fun to see the poems she wrote after spending time at ghost ranch in Abiquiu. A beautiful portrait of rural New Mexico, and intimate wisdoms from both author and artist on life.
December 21, 2018
A nice look into the last years of Miss O'Keefe's life. The author's voice is strong throughout, but sometimes detracts from the story as she is clearly in awe of her employer.
June 22, 2017
I have mixed feelings about this book. It is a diary -- not a memoir -- meaning it is filled with mundane details, names that are never explained, huge shifts in action that are never mentioned until they are over (an engagement for Merrill, for example). There isn't a coherent "story" she's trying to tell.
On the other hand, from these details emerges a portrait of O'Keeffe you rarely get elsewhere: what a typical meal was like, her recipe for raspberry juice, her attention to simple, beautiful clothing, the graceful movement of her hands, the beauty of her perfect simplicity in decor, her spontaneous, insightful comments about nature, her outbursts of rage. Merrill herself seems like a starry-eyed teenager at first (which she virtually was), but even that adoration of O'Keeffe (e.g. her desire to study O'Keeffe's recipes to make something the great lady would enjoy), tells us something about the impact O'Keeffe had on those around her.
I wouldn't recommend this as a first book about O'Keeffe, maybe not even a second book. But if you've read a lot about the painter, and want to know who she was as a person at the end of her life, this is a valuable resource. If you've visited Abiquiu or Ghost Ranch, it really makes those places come alive in a way it's hard to envision today when they are still, silent museum buildings.
As a side note, I find it fascinating how selected details from Merrill show up repeatedly in modern O'Keeffe biographies (how she moved a rock from one spot to another after completing each circle walked around the large driveway). And other details (how she elegantly moved her hands, smoothed a napkin, chose beautifully simple elegant clothing) don't get a lot of attention. I was fascinated by what I already had seen in other biographies, and what I hadn't.
On the other hand, from these details emerges a portrait of O'Keeffe you rarely get elsewhere: what a typical meal was like, her recipe for raspberry juice, her attention to simple, beautiful clothing, the graceful movement of her hands, the beauty of her perfect simplicity in decor, her spontaneous, insightful comments about nature, her outbursts of rage. Merrill herself seems like a starry-eyed teenager at first (which she virtually was), but even that adoration of O'Keeffe (e.g. her desire to study O'Keeffe's recipes to make something the great lady would enjoy), tells us something about the impact O'Keeffe had on those around her.
I wouldn't recommend this as a first book about O'Keeffe, maybe not even a second book. But if you've read a lot about the painter, and want to know who she was as a person at the end of her life, this is a valuable resource. If you've visited Abiquiu or Ghost Ranch, it really makes those places come alive in a way it's hard to envision today when they are still, silent museum buildings.
As a side note, I find it fascinating how selected details from Merrill show up repeatedly in modern O'Keeffe biographies (how she moved a rock from one spot to another after completing each circle walked around the large driveway). And other details (how she elegantly moved her hands, smoothed a napkin, chose beautifully simple elegant clothing) don't get a lot of attention. I was fascinated by what I already had seen in other biographies, and what I hadn't.
June 3, 2024
This is an amazing insight into the life of this artist and how her habits came across to this writer. It gives a clear picture into how she lived with losing her eye sight and continuing to create via the help of others.
Merrill tells about the relationships in the artist's life and she also gives the reader a glimpse of how she handled several situations while working for O'Keeffe. This writer is also a poet and there are several sections about poetry and how O'Keeffe admired it.
The two homes are referenced and Merrill goes into great detail them and how they are ran. Hamilton is mentioned frequently and he is a force in O'Keeffe's life. The two Chow dogs are also referred to often in the scenes between Merrill and O'Keeffe. The reader gets a clear view of the landscapes, the art, and homes as this book is read.
I enjoyed reading these details about one of my favorite female artists. She lived a full life in a beautiful location where she enjoyed the scenery, the peaceful land, and being away from the city life. O'Keeffe lived in New York part of her life but this book focuses on her life at the Ghost Ranch and her other residence in Abiquiu where Merrill will be with her for seven years organizing her library, cooking for her, reading to her, and taking care of her.
Merrill tells about the relationships in the artist's life and she also gives the reader a glimpse of how she handled several situations while working for O'Keeffe. This writer is also a poet and there are several sections about poetry and how O'Keeffe admired it.
The two homes are referenced and Merrill goes into great detail them and how they are ran. Hamilton is mentioned frequently and he is a force in O'Keeffe's life. The two Chow dogs are also referred to often in the scenes between Merrill and O'Keeffe. The reader gets a clear view of the landscapes, the art, and homes as this book is read.
I enjoyed reading these details about one of my favorite female artists. She lived a full life in a beautiful location where she enjoyed the scenery, the peaceful land, and being away from the city life. O'Keeffe lived in New York part of her life but this book focuses on her life at the Ghost Ranch and her other residence in Abiquiu where Merrill will be with her for seven years organizing her library, cooking for her, reading to her, and taking care of her.
July 28, 2024
It was hard for me to rate this book--the writing did not seem stellar to me, even though the author is a poet and playwright, but then again, it's a personal journal, so perhaps that is too picky of me. But the observations are fascinating--I can't imagine actually knowing and living with such an iconic artist! (I have been to Ghost Ranch, and it is an amazing place, startling in its beauty. No wonder Georgia O'Keefe found it so inspiring. There are classes offered, and it is a retirement goal to take a class and spend a number of weeks living and breathing in Georgia's land.) The author does explain how the artist lived in beauty that went beyond what she did on her canvases. It encompassed her whole being, her dwelling, her way of life even. The best part of this book indeed is that revelation about O'Keefe. Worth a read for that alone.
October 15, 2020
I bought this when we visited Georgia O'Keefe's homes at the Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu last year. It's mostly a compilation of journal entries over 7 years. I have spent a fair amount of time in New Mexico and studying O'Keefe's work. I've also seen exhibitions in NYC. I think because I could imagine the scenery while reading the book I enjoyed it more than someone who has not been there. It was actually pretty boring in many parts and I read it a little at a time.
May 9, 2021
I struggled to rate this because 1) the writing is atrocious 2) half of this book is so very mundane and repetitive that I found myself skimming multiple times and 3) the author is a bit annoying and obsessive and immature but 3) there were some interesting tidbits about Georgia that I learned for the first time. So in summary: this is a book *only* for serious O'Keeffe fans.
September 9, 2025
I have liked Georgia O’Keefe’s art since I was in high school. My college friend & I would go to the Cleveland Museum of Art at least once a year & see her paintings. She gave me this book as a present so now I’m going to revisit my book of O’Keefe’s art . This book was about her daily life in her 80s. I googled more as I read to learn more about her past.
October 7, 2019
A great read for anyone wanting to know more about the day to day of O'Keeffe. Sometimes slow, but quite enlightening!! Recommend to all Georgia enthusiasts!!
April 6, 2025
A must read for artists of anykind. Gentle and sweet too
February 10, 2024
This not particularly well-written, loosely thrown together to the point of being disjointed, set of reflections is based on the author's time spent as personal assistant and sometimes cook and caretaker for O'Keeffe in her Abiqui and Ghost Ranch homes in the late 1970s. A glimpse into O'Keeffe's lifestyle (with detailed accounts of the food, settings and conversations over meals), and an appreciation for how O'Keeffe, so reliant on her visual perceptions on the world for her artwork, lived with the loss of her sight from macular degeneration. There is lots of rambling in this book, but a key theme is how O'Keeffe's life-long connection to natural beauty, whether the vast New Mexican landscapes or the simple objects of shell, bone, or rock she collected, remained strong and was not lost to her even as her eyesight faded. Her sense of the natural world's beauty was seemingly innate, and as a result, she used it to adapt and continue to nourish her in old age.
June 20, 2024
After spending a week in Santa Fe at a painting retreat in May, we completed two activities involving Georgia O’Keeffe: we went to the O’Keeffe museum, her waterecolors are my favorite, and we drove out to Ghost Ranch, where she kept a second home and we painted in plein air. So when I stumbled upon the title Weekends with O’Keeffe, it felt like the right time to pick it up and read it. This is a memoir about 26 year old CS Merrill who essentially wrote a fan letter to O’keeffe in 1973 and much to her surprise, O’Keeffe wrote back with an invitation to meet her. O’keeffe was 85 at the time. Over the next seven years CS Merril performed many jobs for the painter beginning with cataloguing her personal library, cooking for her and even setting up her palette to paint. Merril was a poet and graduate student at the time and some of her poetry inspired by her time with O’keeffe is in the book. There’s nothing revelatory here, but that’s kind of what I appreciated about it, just these every day experiences, interacting with, sometimes butting heads with Georgia O’keeffe a legend, but humanized. This is a quick read for art lovers who crave insight into O’Keeffe’s daily life.
December 31, 2020
DNF. I think this is my 2nd or 3rd DNF this year— oy!
I really wanted to love this book, as it was highly recommended by a friend whose taste in great books is often in synch with mine. But while I was hoping to learn more about O’Keeffe, this is really Merrill’s diary, telling how she felt about her times with her. She doesn’t describe how or why the artist does anything, only reports that “she stretched a canvas,” or “simply likes the form” of a skull she has painted. She doesn’t even explain why she is captivated by the artist, only reporting dispassionately that she feels “passionately.” I wasn’t invested in who Merrill was or how she felt, and after reading well over half the book, I couldn’t get there. I was still bored and just stopped reading.
I really wanted to love this book, as it was highly recommended by a friend whose taste in great books is often in synch with mine. But while I was hoping to learn more about O’Keeffe, this is really Merrill’s diary, telling how she felt about her times with her. She doesn’t describe how or why the artist does anything, only reports that “she stretched a canvas,” or “simply likes the form” of a skull she has painted. She doesn’t even explain why she is captivated by the artist, only reporting dispassionately that she feels “passionately.” I wasn’t invested in who Merrill was or how she felt, and after reading well over half the book, I couldn’t get there. I was still bored and just stopped reading.
December 19, 2023
Well written and an absolute treat for fans of this genre - the diary and inventories of the mundane.
Captures Abiquiú and GOK’s house and style so well, you can walk the rooms and hang out there, see the hills from the kitchen, the black door in the courtyard, the tiny fireplace in her bedroom. The pace and writing convey the sense of place you feel when you visit, down to crossing the highway to go to Bodes.
I came for the genre and the house, stayed for the interesting meals and people and tidbits of juicy gossip but you never get the full tea. Some stories can be fleshed out if you dig online. By the end I liked the writer better than GOK but I admired her house and way of life more than I’ve been a fan of the person or her art. Sacrilege, I know. That house though, it’s just heavenly and this book lets you be there for leisurely afternoons and evenings. Loved it.
Captures Abiquiú and GOK’s house and style so well, you can walk the rooms and hang out there, see the hills from the kitchen, the black door in the courtyard, the tiny fireplace in her bedroom. The pace and writing convey the sense of place you feel when you visit, down to crossing the highway to go to Bodes.
I came for the genre and the house, stayed for the interesting meals and people and tidbits of juicy gossip but you never get the full tea. Some stories can be fleshed out if you dig online. By the end I liked the writer better than GOK but I admired her house and way of life more than I’ve been a fan of the person or her art. Sacrilege, I know. That house though, it’s just heavenly and this book lets you be there for leisurely afternoons and evenings. Loved it.
August 20, 2018
This has been added to my favorite books of all time and quite possibly my top three. This book felt like home and I am now officially obsessed with Georgia O’Keeffe.
September 4, 2011
Although this is a quiet memoir of life with Georgia O'Keefe in her later years , the reason that I enjoyed this book is that it was a look behind the curtain at slices of life of an aging lady that has the condition, macular degeneration. She happens to be an artist and it intrigued me how she chose to spend her life as her sight changed. Merrill shares with the reader, without dishing, quiet moments at Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, the homes of Miss O'Keefe , (as Carol called her). I have visited both locations and it was easy for me to visualize the scenarios that Merrill described. My Grandmother dealt with macular degeneration in her later years and too, was an artist.
October 8, 2012
See my review at www.local-iq.com.
Excerpt: "Weekends with O’Keeffe is an rumination on a life lived fully and insightfully. Author and poet C.S. Merrill was a lucky UNM graduate student who found herself assisting artist Georgia O’Keeffe for seven years.
Merrill kept copious notes from her time at O’Keeffe’s Abiquiu home, where the young librarian organized the artist’s impressive book collection and helped the 85-year-old with cooking, reading and secretarial duties. ..."
Excerpt: "Weekends with O’Keeffe is an rumination on a life lived fully and insightfully. Author and poet C.S. Merrill was a lucky UNM graduate student who found herself assisting artist Georgia O’Keeffe for seven years.
Merrill kept copious notes from her time at O’Keeffe’s Abiquiu home, where the young librarian organized the artist’s impressive book collection and helped the 85-year-old with cooking, reading and secretarial duties. ..."
December 25, 2015
I like to read stories about O'Keeffe, since I really think her art beautiful and I was very interested in her life in New Mexico. But the authors voice started to drive me nuts pretty soon: too self absorbed, too winy. Unfortunately this turns the book more into some gossip then in serious information.
January 4, 2016
I bought this on a trip to see O'Keefe's home and studio in Abiquiu. So far, it's been really interesting! :)
September 8, 2012
Carol did a great job with this book, a labor of love.
June 5, 2013
Really a 2.5 but I'm in a generous mood. C.S. Merrill just annoyed me, which spoiled much of the book. But I still want to get out to the O'Keefe ranch in Abiqu!
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