Can You See What I See?

How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here forever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

– Virginia Wolf, The Waves

“I’m indecisive because I see eight sides to everything.” 

– April Kepner

The show has been successful, or at least tonight's opening has been. The show itself will be up for two months. It’s not the quality of the hors d’oeuvres that has made for the great turnout and positive nods of all the people who have attended. It’s Andrea’s artwork, which is how it should be. She is a very talented artist, that’s for sure. She has a future most people would die for.

The people in the gallery are captivated by her use of colors and how she layers them, both boldly and subtly. 

“Look at the depth of the pattern, its complexity.”

“Amazing color combinations. How does she select them and get them to work without muddying them?”

“The texture is so unique. She definitely knows how to layer the values of the shades. It looks like a collage of fabric, but there's none in the piece. What kinds of paper does sge use?”

“How did she ever manage to combine those forms without creating something chaotic?”

“Sheer artistic genius!”

Although everything said is high praise, Andrea is not really pleased on overhearing these commentaries. There are others as well as, more befitting true art critics. Not only is she not pleased, though, but she is also embarrassed. She is not convinced the observers are sincere. Maybe they just don’t want to hurt her feelings. That being said, the gallery has the best installation concept, including the lighting, and the exhibit is accurately presented to the viewers. The problem must be all in her head.

When the event is over, and it barely has lasted the normal span of two hours for an art exhibit, Andrea feels spent. The cause of her exhaustion, even her anxiety, is not readily clear. She only has reasons to celebrate, not the least of which is the number of sales. Andrea had not even thought about having people purchase her modest (so she thought) and simple (she was convinced that she was not a complex painter like many of those she admired). Yet of the thirty pieces in her show, ten or eleven, maybe even a dozen, have sold already. 

Insisting on her discomfort, it might seem that Andrea has not prepared herself for success, maybe is even in shock. Many shows result in no sales whatsoever or in a couple of sales. People have noticed Andrea’s skill, however, and most have agreed that she was on her way to fame… which is part of the problem.

On her way she is, too. In fact, an agent has come to speak with her toward the end of the evening to ask Andrea if she’s interested in a show at the Blue Glass Gallery in Portland. Andrea, unnerved and a bit overwhelmed, knows she has to, wants to, accept the offer. This is what she has been hoping and working for her whole life, ever since she decided to major in studio art in college years ago.

So why is she feeling so distressed right now? Why does she want to run away and hide, like a puppy who has chewed up a slipper or a child who has thrown a ball too hard and broken a window? Why does she feel chopped into pieces by gazes and the phrases of the crowd? Why does she wish the lights were turned down really, really low?

“What is wrong?” Asks her friend Iris, who has noticed Andrea's expression of almost-agony.

“What? Wrong? Nothing is wrong,” Andrea lies, because she has no way yet to express the truth behind her feelings. She doesn't know what the feelings are, even. She knows what is something akin to angst. Maybe the works on display will melt and drool down the walls. Maybe they will self-destruct, like Banksy made happen a while back. Except she had made no effort to install a crumbling mechanism in her paintings and prints.

Oh dear, why had she even considered putting oil paintings together with monoprints done in acrylics? Great artists didn't do that, did they?

“Go home and rest. Rest on your laurels,” says Iris, who is really a caring friend although does not suspect Andrea's inner crisis. 

Iris then hugs Andrea and leaves. She is seemingly the last to go. The caterers are about to start the clean-up and they will lock the gallery doors, so there is nothing else for Andrea to do. This thought hits her like a jolt. She is alone. She really can go home. She can stop making things come out of her mouth in sentence-like forms, full, of perfect color combinations and form coordination. Whatever. Just home, now. Fast, as if escaping.

Back home, late, she is sitting with a cup of coffee (it never keeps Andrea up at night, she's one of those people) and a sketchbook in front of her. She's surprised, not by the coffee but by the sketchbook, because it looks as if she were already preparing something for the promised show. The one in Portland she agreed to so the agent would go away.

Is this the start of something? She allows herself that proverbial glimmer of hope, but then pauses for a very long moment. She doubts it, shaking her head to show her d isbelief. It’s midnight now and she really needs to put any thoughts of painting, printing, even sketching, out of her mind. She can relax for a few days, and the relief she has been seeking washes over her.

"Close your eyes, sleep, stop feeling so queasy. Are you disconnected yet?" Hopeful that is the case. But no.

"My head is tied tightly to my chest and I should not be feeling pain there. I'm still too young for angina."

"My stomach is so out of kilter, it feels so woozy."

Andrea has had nothing to drink all evening at the opening. She is intelligent that way. 

"It went so perfectly, so why am I sitting on the couch feeling like a skein of tangled yarn? I feel like my grandmother."

Andrea begins trying to unravel the evening, the gallery with its perfect illlumination, magnificent hors d'oeuvres, multitudinous viewers. She's convinced there’s a very bad feeling at the center of the fibers that are strangling her, tangling her in their maelstrom, gradually leading her to the pit where the pendulum swings its eternal, deathly arc.

"Why, oh why, are you so distraught after an evening when everything went according to plan? " She can hear Iris's playful but accurate comment in the back of her mind and knows it's deserved.

“I feel like I’m being forced toward a precipice and must either do what I’m asked or will be pushed over the edge.” Andrea hangs her head. Yes, she's feeling a bit ashamed of herself, her irrational or childish feelings. Childish wouldn't be so bad, but irrational scares her, sounding as it does like a loss of reasoning. She knows so many life stories of artists, great ones, who edged toward that cliff and are no more.

As exaggerated as it sounds, those are her feelings. Poor Andrea. At least she cares about what is happening, is asking questions. That much can be said about her.

"What are you afraid of?" Iris is mouthing the words, gently. Only there in Andrea's mind. A good friend.

At last Andrea figures it out. It was right in front of her the whole time. She’s not crazy even if she can’t enjoy her own success. She’s merely uncomfortable. Like the well-known fish out of water. Or fearful, which makes the fright-or-flight thing (or whatever they call it) kick in.

"I should have seen it long ago!" bemoans the artist. "I knew it as a little girl, but forgot about it."

The reason is simple. Andrea is not fond of openings, meaning the ones in galleries for shows of her work, because talking is painful. Making art for walls or other such places is not, but talking at an event like a show opening...

"Words. They sound like a nails run along a chalkboard. They're like sirens blaring a quarter of a mile away, never stopping, like a dog that keeps yapping. It requires a huge effort to produce and to perceive them, too much of an effort. Essentially most words, the spoken ones, tend to make my skin crawl."

Since talking was pretty much invented for extroverts, it is probably safe to assume that Andrea is not one of this group. It has taken the artist until this perhaps magic, perhaps mad, moment to realize it. Conversation is a struggle, exhausting. It is not her thing. Or at least not her thing when the words are being used in conversation. (There are other uses for words, though.)

“Words weigh a ton,” says Andrea, and is silent again. Is at ease again, too.

There the reverie stops. Something else has arrived.

Andrea looks around the room with its faded goldenrod shadows now, thinking she should go to bed or she risked falling asleep sitting up with a half-full cup in her hand. 

She looks on all four sides, all her walls. She is thinking about words said and words not said, and sees the coffee table being used precisely for what its name says: for coffee. A simple mug, one of her favorites, on a coaster. She had even made the coaster a couple of years ago, although that is not quite relevant.

She speaks softly to the coffee, or to the cup, or perhaps to the coaster, or to all of them as they watch her:

“You are better company.” Andrea needs no acknowledgment of her four words which are a statement, not a conversation, and therefore do not provoke stress.

There is no answer, of course, which is fine. Just before she gets up to leave her empty cup in the sink, Andrea stops and makes a brief list of things she feels comfortable being with. Things, not people. She will add more items as they come to her:

a geranium in a clay pot, glowing red

a book, preferably one whose cover has an interesting texture

a succulent plant, maybe an echeveria or a lithops or hens-and-chicks

a cat, hopefully a soft ginger boy with long hair and a notch in one ear

a table set for one, with patterned cloth napkins and tablecloth, silverware 

a flat fragment of shale from each of three places: Lampoldshausen, Santiago, Val do Mao, each piece rough and comforting

a pot of lavender, every atom of France in its fragrance

The list is clearly going to grow.

********

Andrea gets up early and is ready to work in less than an hour. Today she she is working with the three fragments of shale, immersed in following each one's irregular surface, the details of their colors, what variations there are. While she is focused on the mineral, she’s also pointing out things to other objects in her home studio. The objects feel comfortable, pleasant. (There's a gutless word for you, but sometimes it works.). 

Right now Andrea has no head, heart, nor gut problems of any sort. She doubts she will experience a panic attack as long as she has this. Her quiet little world.

Still, she feels guilty, ungrateful. Her friends and strangers also have shown so much enthusiasm. She feels like they are forcing her to produce works of art. She should be very grateful. She isn't, and she knows that’s a ridiculous, even childish way to be. Works of art mean selling and selling means gallery shows, and opening nights with opening conversations.

"I need to produce another twenty or thirty pieces. My friends here will help." Andrea nods at the objects that are around her, gifting her with their conversational silence.

The works are finished on time. 

Six months after the previous show, the opening at Blue Glass is in full session. It is another success, like the one so many artists only dream about. It is by now obvious that the woman has talent and is hitting the big time. That means more people at her shows, more wanting to talk to her, to say they've spoken with her.

Andrea is going around talking to people who want her attention, feeling her molasses feet. She always nods and uses her best body language. Not poses, not something false, just natural and slow. Like some paintings, as opposed to Fauvism, for example.

Boston and New York are not far away any more, and soon Chicago and San Francisco are likely to follow. Great art markets.

However tense she might be at being in the midst of all the hubbub, Andrea senses who is really important in the gallery. Maybe what is better than who. She is looking at the cups and potted geraniums, the carved cat on a gallery shelf, the pot of lavender sitting on a stand off to one side, and similar items to those on her list from a few months ago. Items that are on the walls of the gallery, at this opening.

Andrea is apparently speaking (silently, of course, because she’s not crazy, just an introvert) to those simplest things. Things that silently gave her the art that is on the walls of this gallery and that everybody seems to love when they don't know how to love silence and try to annihilate it with conversation.

Things that ask no questions. That don't worry about their public image. That aren't demanding or overbearing. Or lying, or twisted. Or able to hide things. People who are things, she doesn't want those. Andrea wants the real things, sometimes without a single sound or syllable.

Things that allow her to be like Virginia with her coffee cup, knife, and fork. Or alone by the sea, with only waves. 

That allow her to be herself. In silence and solitude. To be, not an entrepreneur but an artist. A profession that might require her to look at something from eight different angles, the way series character Kepler did.

Andrea could survive the new ocean that was ahead of her, because she could rest her gaze in the arms of her painted objects, the respectful, quiet ones. Theirs was the conversation that mattered, not the other.