It is one of the many examples of GS observing and learning and being stimulated by everything she came in contact with. She made contact easily and willingly and with pleasure. This is very clear from her writing and contact with people and places and things was an essential part of her life and work.

When I was walking the other day I saw some workmen digging up the street, that happens very often and I always ask them what they are doing and why they are doing it. It is a way I have, and means nothing except that while I am walking I like to stop and say a few words to some one. (EA 10)

. . . I like to know the name and occupation and what their father did or does and where they were born about any one. After all occupation and your name and where you were born and what your father’s business was is a thing to know about anyone, at least it is for me. (EA 203)

I am very busy finding out what people mean by what they say. I used to be interested in what they were I am now interested in what they say. (GCA, PRIMER 105)

GS considers the problem of refusal of art.

I can be accepted more than I was but I can be refused almost as often. After all if nobody refuses what you offer there must be something the matter, I do not quite know why this is so but it is so. It was not so in the nineteenth century but it is so in the twentieth century. And that is because talking and writing have got more and more separated. Talking is not thinking or feeling any more, it used to be but it is not now but writing is, and so writing naturally needs more refusing. (EA 46)

In her lecture Composition As Explanation GS describes how everybody refuses for a long time until suddenly it is accepted. Once accepted it is considered beautiful. Of course it is what it was in the beginning and as she says

If every one were not so indolent they would realize that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. Of course it is extremely difficult nothing more so than to remember back to its not being beautiful once it has become beautiful. (CAE, PENG. 23)

I do not consider that any creative artist is anything but contemporary. Only he is sensitive to what is contemporary long before the average human being is. He puts down what is contemporary and it is exactly that. Sooner or later people realize it. (TI, PRIMER 33)

And so if an artist’s work is easily and quickly accepted it is not a truly contemporary expression. This is why GS was refused and is still most often refused. Her work is still contemporary. Of course this does not mean that if an artist’s work is refused it is necessarily contemporary.

Picasso said that no one is capable of understanding you who is not capable of doing the same work himself. (TI, PRIMER 33)

I like that.