parking lot seminars -- a personal account

One day there’s a call for artwork by a non-profit agency acting as broker for a local transportation enterprise moving to new facilities. I wouldn’t normally respond these days, but a percentage of my work suited their theme, the visual requirements seemed to favor my style, and the money offered was respectable, so I took another chance. Although I’ve slacked off in recent years, it was always my policy to enter all the competitions and apply for all the grants available, even though the system smelled fishy and looked overbearingly ‘rigged.’ I did this because, like many artists of my acquaintance, I found studio life and cold desperation to be frequent dance partners who would sometimes ‘shack-up’ for days, weeks.

If anyone had ever decided I deserved a little grant money, immensely unlikely looking back, I certainly would have taken it, stretched it -- paint and studio time, but money was never the reason for filling out the forms, writing the essays, labeling the slides. Those applications were more like messages stuffed in bottles floating away into the sunset, to be seen, picked up and read by someone, anyone, a visionary dealer, the supportive art-loving industrialist. The lagoon is always full of them. This collective professional desperation for even the chance at an audience is actually the fuel core that powers those vast art-stifling state bureaucracies. It fills their seldom visited galleries for free, and justifies their relentless petitioning for more office space, updated technical and additional staff. On the other hand, a transportation center with lots of foot traffic would be a nice place to have a painting, so I email the images, so much easier these days, and turns out they want to eyeball two of three submitted and I should bring them in. Now I’ll tell my story. 

In the parking lot adjacent to my studio I’m loading the two paintings into the van and the attendant shows an interest, so I show him the first and he wants to see the second when it comes down. I don’t remember word for word but he admired them, and says something about how well I draw, so I say I don’t make the drawings, I project the images, because I say, if Miles Davis plays a piece of music everyone knows already, it’s not the song but the way he plays it that people want to hear. He nods, maybe not a big fan of Miles but he get’s it. So as I’m closing the hatch I overhear him calling his mother telling her about the painter he just met on the lot. That’s cool.

I deliver the artwork to a small office. ‘Gee I love your colors’ was the only remark I heard as I leaned them against the wall, and the same thing again when I picked them up. It’s a lesson learned so many times I guess I must be crazy, but it was almost worth it for the conversation in the parking lot, for the contrast in sensitivity and interest, and for verifying what has been my personal experience almost since the beginning. Through the years I’ve taken turns at industrial occupations, and never felt less than respect whenever it was known I was an artist. I’ve noted as well who actually looks at the artwork when in my studio, maintenance and delivery people included, and can say definitively it’s time for reformation, revolution is in the air.