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SUNDAY MORNING          8/30/81                  8

MORTON: This is the ninth year for the festival, and every year since it started O'Keeffe has allowed one of her paintings to serve as the festival poster. To honor her and thank her, the festival this year commissioned and dedicated to O'Keeffe a piano quintet John Harbison.

(Applause)

JOHN HARBISON: My gratitude is expressed through this music, but the music is only a small portion of what I'm sure all of us feel towards Miss O'Keeffe for her continuing support, interest in the festival. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

(Excerpt from quintet; samples of O'Keeffe's artwork)

HARBISON: Well, she's a remarkable-durable, it's obvious to say-but in many ways a remarkable figure. Once the piece began, it began to develop its own energy: the piece itself had its own emotional trajectory which really had to be followed. In starting the piece, opening the piece, I thought of the unfilled space in her canvases, of the pleasure of leaving something out.

I'd seen her paintings, of course, many times, and the paintings that struck me most were the relatively recent ones from the early '60s, particularly one called "Winter Road". I feel in her work in general a strong commitment to sparseness. 

(Music)

O'KEEFFE: Oh, there's a very good little collection of bull heads here, in a row. I had the most beautiful buffalo head. I've never seen a more beautiful one, even in the museum, than I had. And someone took it. I had it hanging up there. Someone took it. 

(Music and art)

O'KEEFFE: I didn't come up until the dude ranch was started up here. And then I wasn't sure I could stay at a dude ranch. I thought that would be a dreadful place. 

HAMILTON: You don't look like a dude.

O'KEEFFE (laughing): Well, I didn't think I could, so I thought- I asked the woman that ran it if I could come up and spend the night. I didn't know what dudes looked like. (Laughing)