ED. 2013, Sad Books, acrylic on Mylar, 48X30
A woman across the table squeezes Elmer’s glue on the grid
and picks one colored square from a plate. She stretches it out into my face,
“Elena, what color is it? It’s purple, a-a-a-a,” and presses it onto the paper
missing the grid, then leaks extra glue from her fingers. “Good job,” I echo.
For years her mom makes her follow the grid employing me to
assist her, but I am poorly fit for the job. I question the reasonability of
the task and admire the capriciousness of voluntary results. She misses the grid
but hits my definition of art. What her mom envisions her doing may also be art.
In fact, I would totally look at it as art have I not known her mother. O, my
god! What am I saying? I don’t know… Is it not art?
I like this plate on the table. Elmer’s glue smeared over the replicated
19th century design makes it look like a mistake.
At night, before falling asleep, I see ever-changing images floating
in the cups of my eyelids. Mark once said called them hallucinations. I was
surprised that he didn’t have them, too, but not all artists do.
To help me, he searches Internet to show me works of portrait
painters who have made it. I eagerly examine their work and try to imitate, the
exercise inevitably making me feel empty. I cannot be shaped like that. We have
very different ways of approaching art. Could it be that we have married by
mistake? It only can be bad for him because I like mistakes.
For seven years I have been applying to one established
career development nonprofit, piling tons of art production each year. On the first
year I showed my melted bottles. On the second year I submitted monochrome
paintings marked by unfettered depression.
On the third year I offered genre paintings with moments in lives of
people with intellectual disabilities. On the fourth year I applied with
paintings based on the dreamt myth of a woman and a bull. On the fifth year I
sent colorful portraits of elderly people with butterfly wings. By then my art
production multiplied faster than I had chance to submit. I worked on a series
of paintings on photo paper based on the snapshots and in the size of snapshots;
I also started painting on bed sheets and old ornate scarfs, and at the time of
submission I proposed my mixed media layered panels build with old domestic
scrap like our kids’ bed sheets and my grandma’s wallpapers. In my project I made
painted imitations of family photos once covering the walls of her bedroom. I
didn’t even bother to check mail for rejection letters this time busy
portraying homeless on the streets, and Jenkintowners in my studio. On the
seventh year I submitted nothing. If they were sensitive to art, they might
have written me a letter of acceptation since it was as good a shit as any other
from the previous years, but seven years may be enough time for me to grow
independent.
