A Work of Art 7

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Peter

Peter

I ran to see the scene in my living-room as soon as I woke up. It was still there, it hadn’t been a dream. Last night I painted the day’s dream, and left it in the middle of the night, my clothes spread in front of it as if they were a strange offering to a deity. You see that in temples of nearly any religion, people leave food (probably eaten by the priests), flowers, incense, objects of their daily lives. The miraculously healed leave crutches, white canes and wheelchairs. There had been transcendence happening right here in this modest (albeit expensive) apartment in San Francisco.

Only saying that could be taken as pretentious. I repeat: I am not an artist. I had a strong urge to paint the impressions of an encounter with a beautiful young man. I took classes, yes, and I suppose one take classes only in something he wants to do. But unlike Engineering, Medicine, or Law, one cannot acquire the expertise to be called an artist. You become one by showing up with your art, by having it recognize one way or another: selling a piece now and then would probably be a sign that you could let yourself be called an artist. Or if your art causes a person to experience an emotion.

I am, like perhaps 99% of people who put paint to canvas, an amateur. And perhaps this phenomenon that occurred last night was narcissism. Or perhaps I was adoring the idea of yesterday’s encounter and had designated the painting its ultimate representation, its religious icon.

It’s hard to say. Perhaps one can start calling himself an artist when, after the paint hasn’t even dried, he wants to start another one, a better one that will take him to a summit, to what I suppose would be called ecstasy. You experience it without any drug.

The scene before me in my living-room inspired the next painting that I now needed to realize. To do so, I had to (1) go through a day at the shop, at the end of which (2) I should have found a blank canvas to bring here and start again.

I took pictures of the scene, in case it would be disturbed, and perhaps it was going to be if I wanted to use the easel. Or I would leave everything there in order to find the other things, the odors good or bad, the light, the ghost… Yes, there was a ghost, even though I don’t believe in the traditional kind of ghost that comes to haunt you.

I guess I had to disturb the scene anyway to get my shoes and my wallet…

The day went by rather quickly. It was Saturday, when a steady flow of customers come in to pick up their frames, or bring new art that they just got and discuss what they would like me to do with it. Some are very precise and demanding, others trust me to suggest alternatives they had not thought of. And the shoppers will be asking a lot of questions and walk out when I tell them how much I would charge. I actually don’t know where they end up going, because even the chain stores charge for custom work. It may be that they buy something ready-made in Thailand that they think is good enough. In a way it is similar to art: people get what pleases them. It could be that a poster of a master painting with the name printed in big letters procures them great pleasure, greater than original art for which they have buyer’s remorse. I know people who, upon seeing just any work of art on the wall, will say something like “It’s just…” a bunch of paint strokes, or a close-up photo of a tree trunk, or something they could do themselves. And I suppose we fall in the same judgment trap when we look at what others have done. It’s envy, I guess. I had fallen in that trap when I judged Sam’s art, until I looked at it with a magnifying glass.

But I digress. Tonight I will paint the ultimate adoration scene, and nobody will know. It won’t be for sale anyway: this is for myself.

A Work of Art 6

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Peter

Peter

There was no time for cooking, and fortunately I live in the Mission, where taquerias abound. And corner stores with cheap wine. With a burrito and a bottle of wine in hand, I entered my apartment where I would clear space to make it my studio. I guess I am a closet artist: in my closet, I had a canvas, an easel, and paint supplies that I took out into the center of the living-room. Now that it was there, blank, ready to go, I didn’t know how to start. I took a bite of the burrito and opened the bottle of wine. Then I reminded myself to relax, to first clear my mind before I could focus on the subject.

But what was my subject? I was not going to paint him, but the emotion born from our encounter. I guess that would make it abstract painting. Still I was to paint beauty, a subjective comparison between all things seen before and this encounter. A sunset may be more beautiful after witnessing a thousand others, and your surroundings, the clouds, the colors, the temperature, the wind, your mindset, the company and so many other factors can make it uniquely beautiful. I may have seen thousands of faces, bodies, colors of eyes, shapes of noses, colors of skin, shirts, hair, absence of hair, muscles, chins, smiles, facial expressions, gestures, heard as many voices, accents, choice of words, and of course experienced them all in different contexts. I should refrain from justifying my infatuation. I can’t really explain why, that particular night, I had enough in me to express an emotion in paint, lines and gestures, colors and tonalities.

My hands were trembling at the first strokes. Then I mixed richer tones of aquamarine, added strange yellow fish that had come floating in my mind. Slowly it was coming to me, the strange sensation that I was starting to fly, hopping and running towards a cliff where everything would be finally alright.

I certainly didn’t know what the final image would be. Painting can be this strange act of visualizing and experiencing something in your mind, and transmitting it to your hands and your eyes to coordinate and apply a little of this here and a lot of that there, with varying strength.

Then I was back in the room, took a bite of the burrito, and a sip of wine, looking and judging, wanting to return to the mysterious dream state I was in. But then it was different, it had a base, an object to work from, to transform again. And now the two of us were bathing in a sea of paint colors.

It is a bit disconcerting to be saying this now. You will think I’m crazy.

Let’s just say that after a few hours I had all my clothes off and I needed to refrain from physically ruining the painting by embracing it. Yes, these were moments of ecstasy, I believe. I stepped back, watching what it had become. It was time to put the brushes down.

 

A Work of Art 5

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Peter

Peter

The drive from the Marina district to the Castro car share parking space was uneventful at this quiet hour after commuters have reached their destinations. All along I had thought about painting the angelic vision of this young guy Max, and reconsidered multiple times. It wouldn’t be wise to push the work I needed to finish to a later hour so that I would realize this impulse of a painting. Yet, I compromised: I could do one or two sketches, so I wouldn’t forget the impression he’d made.

Perhaps that was very childish of me. I am not really what would be called an artist, but it felt like only the right side of my brain had been functioning. The left side was still asleep I guess, numbed by the urgency of the work I needed to do. And at the end, it only took a few minutes. It was a relaxing experience, a bit like meditation, and my mind was clearer then.

Sam had given me permission, if not license, to be creative on this frame, and he had, fortunately, approved when I showed him how it was going to work. It is ironic at times that the cost of framing material can be superior to the cost of material in the art to be framed. In this case, it was obvious. The glass maker had to drill holes so the two panes could be bolted together and hooked to the hanging cable, recalling the structures found on the Golden Gate Bridge. I had been tempted to decorate it with little figurines falling, and to call it The Gates of Hell, but I doubt Sam would have taken the joke very well.

Before I started putting it together, I lay the sheet on my work table and fetched a magnifying glass. I was intrigued by how the shades of gray could be realized not only with black ink, but also with combinations of the other ink colors that the viewer’s eye would perceive as gray. I saw it was the case, but I also saw interesting patterns, letters in fact, of different shapes and sizes. What could have Sam hidden in this image? I couldn’t make words out of the letters I saw, and suspected that some of the letters had become invisible or imperceptible. Perhaps some would be visible in a different light? I didn’t have different light bulbs to play with. Was there a message hidden in the big picture? Was this art, or trickery? Could Sam be provoking the people who bought his art with a message? That was unlike him. He did not really care who they were, as long as they bought it.

My job was to give the art its best presentation, and be unobtrusive. The glass needed to be perfect and spotless, the sheet inside perfectly aligned. White gloves were in order. And the glass needed to be protected while I worked on it with tools, steel cabling, and bolts. I even worried that gravity could have an effect on it over the years, but who would be alive when that happened? Would they still have printers and papers to produce a new version of it? Or even computers? Suddenly it seemed more ephemeral than oil on canvas. A lot more.

I was halfway done when I was hungry enough to dash out to Castro Street to get a pizza slice (potato, pesto, and garlic is my favorite). At the same time, I would find Amanda to arrange for transport. Otherwise, I would need to rent a van. I wished Sam had arranged for it as he had said he would.

“Amanda isn’t working today, she’s in Colorado,” said the young woman at the pizza place.

“Who does your deliveries today?” I asked, hopeful it would be someone with a van.

“Rick. That guy,” she said, pointing at a guy covered with black hair. He wore mirror sunglasses so you couldn’t tell what he looked at.

“Nah, only have the motorcycle,” he said when I asked if he had a van.

“Amanda usually does deliveries for me with her van,” I said. “I thought perhaps you’d have one.”

He didn’t answer anything, and diverted his attention to the guy putting pizza in the oven. I took my slice to the side counter and started eating it.

“You could try the balloon lady,” Rick said to the whole room. I guess he had been thinking about my question.

“The balloon lady?”

“Yeah, she has a van. It’s got helium tanks in it, but she can take them off.”

“OK,” I said, thinking perhaps I ought to look for other options rather than going with the random advice of a bushy guy behind mirror glasses.

“Her number,” he said, “it’s easy to remember: 581-LOON”

“581-LOON,” I repeated, “thanks.”

For some reason, I wanted to explore other options before dialing that number. I walked back to the shop and called the gallery.

“Of course, I can send you the lorry,” said the gallery manager, Mr. Paul Lewis, who sounded like royalty.

“It fits in a regular van,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. I gave him the address and the time, and I wondered why Sam hadn’t simply done that.

The artwork was ready to go, framed, cabled, and wrapped well before the 3:30 time I had given him. It was a small truck, the size of a van, and the driver, whose name was Roger, was nice enough to give me a ride. He also gave me his card, “for all sorts of deliveries.”

“Sure, that could be handy. All I could find today was the Balloon Lady,” I said.

“Only in San Francisco,” he said.

“No balloon ladies where you live?” I asked.

“All sorts of ladies, but none like that,” he said. He scored 0 on my gaydar.

“Do you do lots of deliveries for the gallery?”

“Maybe once a week or so,” he said. “Big art pieces, and their guy comes along to install it.”

“Is that Paul Lewis?”

“No, Lewis is the manager, he wouldn’t do manual labor in his three-piece suit. Nice guy, though.”

After he mentioned the three-piece suit, I realized I would not be dressed appropriately for an opening reception. Then I thought it could be a very good excuse to go home and start working on the painting.

At the gallery I met Paul Lewis in his three-piece suit and a white rose in his lapel. He delegated his assistant and disappeared. I had to hang this – now heavy – art practically in the middle of the room. There was a hook and pulley that seemed in good enough condition to do it. We would anchor it with sand bags so it wouldn’t fly and knock people off as soon as the door opened.

When Sam arrived, everything was ready. I told him I couldn’t stay because of how I looked.

“Oh, Honey,” he said, “you just look… Bohemian! People will think you are the artist.”

I knew he didn’t really care, unless of course nobody else showed up. You never knew, there could be a Baseball or Football game (I wasn’t sure which was playing now), or what else people usually found as a last minute alternative. But I really wanted to go home and start painting. I gathered my things and slipped out, ran to Van Ness where I’d find a bus home.

 

A Work of Art 1

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Peter

Peter

“A work of art,” I said, looking at the giant computer-generated suggestion of a gray Golden Gate Bridge. More like 65,536 shades of gray, I thought, but as I always should when looking at art, I didn’t say. Who am I to judge, anyway? I frame art, whatever it is that customers call art, which is sometimes a challenge. This one, by my friend Sam, was a challenge for its size, and the fact it had to be ready and hung for opening at the gallery tonight.

“Oh, I need to sign it,” said Sam, going back to his desk to fetch a purple pen.

“Wait,” I said when I saw where he wanted to sign it. I placed a pad of paper underneath. “That should help.”

Gerald came rushing down in his lawyer’s suit, carrying a leather briefcase, and I could see a spike in the line of Sam’s signature.

“Is it ready to go?” he asked. “Hi, Peter.”

“Hi Gerald,” I said, feigning indifference. He was the kind of person for whom people made space when he entered a room, like royalty, but here the art and the task at hand was king.

“Yes, it is ready,” said Sam, moving to greet his lover. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s fantastic,” said Gerald. “The star of the show!”

“It will hang so that it floats in the middle of the room,” I said.

“It’s two-sided, you know. Oh, you know this, I’ve shown you the project,” said Sam.

“Yes, of course,” said Gerald, who, in my opinion, would never admit he had not been paying attention. “So,” he turned to me, “the framing makes it two-sided?”

“Yes,” I said, “the back is printed as the mirror image, and with the right lighting and opacity of the paper, the reflection-free glass, it will give it a tri-dimensional aspect.”

“Almost like a hologram,” added Sam.

“Fantastic,” said Gerald, who usually had more vocabulary in his head to avoid repeating the same word twice in the same context. But it was morning, and he was not trying to impress us. “I gotta go,” he said, giving Sam a peck of a kiss, and giving me a tap on the shoulder in lieu of a hug.

After we heard the rumble of his little MG getting out of the garage, I started wrapping the artwork in tissue paper in order to roll it. Then I fit it inside a big plastic tube.

“Were you able to get them to send a truck?” I asked, meaning he had said he’d take care of that with the gallery people.

“Oh, I forgot!” he said. “Can you get your Mexican friend? Although I don’t know, this may be too delicate.”

“Angel is back in El Salvador,” I said. “Remember? He had to go back to take care of his mom, we raised some funds to buy him a truck there?” Sam and Gerald had not contributed.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “Sorry, I worked on this all night, I can’t think.”

“That’s OK,” I said, “I’ll ask Amanda.”

“Who’s that?” Sam said.

“The woman truck driver in the Castro,” I said, knowing it didn’t matter to Sam.

“I’m going back to bed,” said Sam. “Can you carry it to your car?”

“Of course,” I said, hoisting it on my shoulder. It wasn’t heavy, but it helped to have someone open the door for me. “I should be at the gallery around 4.”

“Okay, honey, thank you so much.”

“My car” was not really my car, it was a Car Share that I had selected for the rear folding seat so the tube would fit inside like a pair of skis. Once inside, I figured I had time to stop at a cafe to sample the local roast. We were in the Marina, after all, on the other side of the hill, almost a foreign country. But I wondered, looking at the grayness of Sam’s street under the morning’s gray clouds, how this was an upscale neighborhood. You were, of course, at walking distance from the bay, although I never saw people walking on this street (except for the occasional hired dog walker), and your neighbors might be some foreign diplomat or the son of a retail magnate. I still felt it was gray, like Sam’s work.

The cafe, on the other hand, looked like it had hosted the Bohemians in a bygone era, now replaced by well-dressed people with notebook computers and iPhones. I approached the counter, looking at the price of coffee on the board, and searching my pockets for the matching amount.

“Hi!” said the young man behind the counter. Only a beautiful young man, I told myself as if I were meditating and sweeping passing thoughts aside.

“Good morning,” I said. Was I to say anything else? Like “can I have your phone number?”

“What can I get for you?” he said, still smiling, perhaps amused by my apparent paralysis. There was perfection in his features, and I suppose that was how Leonardo da Vinci had come to paint the Mona Lisa.

“Small coffee,” I said, “to go.”

“Would you like a dark or light roast?” he said. “Maybe you want the light roast, it has more caffeine in it.”

“That would be good,” I said. I must have looked like I was sleepwalking.

“Rough night?” he asked, seeing how I was fumbling with a crumpled dollar bill and small change as if I had begged for it on the street.

“No,” I said, “rough day ahead. I just picked up a big thing to frame for a show tonight.” I realized I had said “thing” as if it couldn’t be “art” or “a painting.” How was I to call it? A computer print-out?

“Oh cool,” he said, taking my money, perhaps thinking he should wash his hands and dip the money into a special sanitizer jar. They must have that now, a money drawer with a UV-ray in it to kill bacteria. “What’s the thing you need to frame?”

“It’s like a big sheet, 8 feet tall, 4 feet wide, a two-sided computer-generated image…” I didn’t want to say it was just a gray image of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“And it’s going to a show, you said?”

I couldn’t believe he was interested in what I was saying.

“At a gallery, over by Ghirardelli Square, yeah.” That might have evoked images of expensive art for tourists.

“Oh, I see,” he said. “Well, good luck with it, let me know how you liked the coffee.”

Another customer had arrived behind me, and probably wanted to push me away. The 7 minutes on the green curb parking space were probably over. So I pulled one of my business cards out and dropped it on the counter. “Here’s my card,” I said, “in case you need it.” In case you need it? I thought, what kind of reason is that to give him my business card?

“Nice,” he said, looking at the card. “Peter? I’m Max.”

We actually took the time to shake hands, despite the plow-like pressure from behind me. I left awkwardly, spilling some coffee even though it was covered with a plastic lid. I took a deep breath once I was back in the car. I was going to paint him.