“Marxism stirred me deeply,” Grace says, leaning back in one of her two chairs, crossing her long, blue-jeaned legs on her low table. “It struck chords in me as deep as the remembrance of New England. It transformed the memory of those isolated human efforts, made my parents’ lives a thing of beauty. Simply understanding their lives through Marxism lent them a beauty in my eyes. Clarity, purpose, seeing them in the larger design, that was beautiful to me. The act of understanding was an act of creation. The discovery through new materials, so to speak, of the hidden content.

“Marxism was the transforming stuff, the new color, the new space, the new texture, the one that brought to the surface the life until then obscured. Do you know what that means? That’s what the artist waits a lifetime for, that newness, that particular discovery that catalyzes inner sight, makes you ‘see’ like you’ve never seen before. . . .