Last week my girlfriend and I went to a gallery opening in Stuart, Florida. It was the first one I had been to, besides my own, or close friends, in years. I went because a friend of mine was in the show and I went to support her work. Immediately upon entering you are bombarded with all sorts of artwork. Some portraits....I think they were portraits, a large painting of a bag lady pushing a cart, some lovely palette knife works, and then something which looks like the artist glued rocks to the canvas. I'm not there five minutes and the owner of the gallery calls for every ones attention and then says that each "artist" will be speaking about their work.....Of course!!! Oh boy, here we go. This is going to be a long nite.
Well, mister rock guy has to go first. Mister rock guy is an older guy, greyish hair, and he is wearing leather pants and brown boots.....He looks like the type who should have been wearing corduroy pants and hush puppies....but no, of course he has leather pants on. Now he starts talking about his "art" and in one sentence has referred to himself as an "artist" at least three times...."jeez, is he done yet" I'm thinking. He goes on to say how he makes his art as a gift to the infinite universe. I want to throw up and he just started. His work is large paintings of clouds - we will say clouds, it was something else but I don't want to outright say who this was. So he makes large paintings of clouds out of resin and "10,000 tubes of paint", some of the clouds are big, some not so big. Each cloud is a separate chunk of something, he claims resin, looks like he is gluing rocks onto a canvas and painting over them.
He goes on for a few more minutes about how important he is, and how his work has given the art world a "new horizon" - his words, not kidding, and then asks if there are any questions. Someone asks "How long do they take to make"? He responds with a five minute story about how he was approached by the owner of Big Tent Circus, and how he instantly loved his work and wanted two of his "Masterpieces" - his words, again not kidding. After five minutes on this story he asks the woman, did I answer the question? Sharply she replies "NO, I asked how long it took to make?" He goes on again for about a minute or two before finally saying about five months, but adds how often he works on them for 15 hours straight and forgets to eat because if he stops he will break his mood and ruin the piece. I'm thinking if that festering turd took five months to paint you are either working for one minute a day or you are an absolute moron.This crap should take no more then two days to paint. I'll even tell you how!!! You can make it out of anything....Styrofoam, paper, cardboard, whatever.... then pour the resin over the top. Let it dry overnight and badly paint it the next day. That is all, five months my @$$! - two days and if it were not for the drying time I could make these things in a half hour. One of them was just painted white. Yep, that guy! And all of his work looks almost exactly the same...I was really temped to use David Leffell's line and ask him how he knows when he is getting better? But I controlled myself.
He also goes on to say that his paintings of clouds are more majestic then the sky itself....I really wanted to slug him. Now he starts telling a story about how he has to paint, "HE HAS TO" paint because some woman he loved was dying and her last words to him were to paint, "for the love of god paint!!! I added that but it felt like that......Now before you think I am heartless for laughing at the story, keep in mind, he is telling this to a room full of strangers, many of which he hasn't met yet.
At this point I couldn't take it anymore and walked outside. My friend met me out there, and after about a half hour we looked in and and he was still talking!!! He was the first of about five artists who were going to speak.....and the crowd had stopped paying attention long ago and were talking amongst themselves....but that didn't stop him!! I felt bad for the other four. I didn't stick around to hear them, and I wansn't the only one.
I have been meeting this guy, in one form or another for years. I went to art school with him when he took five sheets of blotter acid to help express himself. He slept for two days and when he woke up painted a red line on a black canvas. Thank you very much.
I met him in art history class when he told everyone Warhol was more important then Rockwell. Nice Mohawk pal, love the blue in it.
I met him at a party once when he was a photographer taking pictures of roadkill, telling me "I'm an Artist too!" Wow, glad we work for the same union, let me see your card.
This is why I prefer going to movies.........
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