Vanessa is twenty-two when she stands in a hushed room with white-painted walls and careful lighting, a pile of brightly-wrapped candy piled in the corner. It's a shattered rainbow at her feet, spilling over the glossy hardwood floor.
She does not need to read the placard to know this piece; she's heard about it, she feels it, right down to her bones.
(Her life drawing teacher died just this past spring, so, so thin that she couldn't look at him in the hospital without remembering how vine charcoal snapped in her fingers the first time she tried to make a mark with it. His partner had thanked her for the flowers, already distant, already following in his beloved's footsteps.)
Alone, she allows the tears to fall until they are spent, and then she sets her jaw, picks up a piece of candy and unwraps it. It's not very good, but then, that's not the point.
She tucks the wrapper in her pocket and moves on to the next room.
***
The girl can't be more than twenty-two when Vanessa first sees her in the gallery. She's standing in front of a variegated field of green, so lush and rich that it seems to pulse on the wall like a growing thing, like grass and jungle and sickness. There is something very pretty about the scene, this girl with corn-silk hair and sky-blue eyes staring at the verdant canvas like she can consume it, take it into herself if only she looks hard enough. Vanessa is loath to disrupt the moment, so she watches instead, observing carefully.
There is something wild about this girl, like a stray, or, no, like something feral from the woods looking for a refuge. Like the first wolf who laid beside a camp fire, hoping to rest. Elegant in her rawness, her unselfconsciousness as she moves about the room. Long limbs, wide eyes, most would probably associate her with a deer, but like calls to like, and so Vanessa can sense the fight in her, not flight.
The girl is carrying a notebook - no, a sketchbook, because for all the plainness of the cover, the smudges of graphite on the outside of her palm gives her away.
An artist, Vanessa thinks to herself, smiling. Oh, this will be a treat.
- tbc -
The piece in the first scene is "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. It's one of my favorite sculpture pieces, and if you don't know about it, do look it up.
Fill: "Untitled Portrait Series" 1/?
She does not need to read the placard to know this piece; she's heard about it, she feels it, right down to her bones.
(Her life drawing teacher died just this past spring, so, so thin that she couldn't look at him in the hospital without remembering how vine charcoal snapped in her fingers the first time she tried to make a mark with it. His partner had thanked her for the flowers, already distant, already following in his beloved's footsteps.)
Alone, she allows the tears to fall until they are spent, and then she sets her jaw, picks up a piece of candy and unwraps it. It's not very good, but then, that's not the point.
She tucks the wrapper in her pocket and moves on to the next room.
***
The girl can't be more than twenty-two when Vanessa first sees her in the gallery. She's standing in front of a variegated field of green, so lush and rich that it seems to pulse on the wall like a growing thing, like grass and jungle and sickness. There is something very pretty about the scene, this girl with corn-silk hair and sky-blue eyes staring at the verdant canvas like she can consume it, take it into herself if only she looks hard enough. Vanessa is loath to disrupt the moment, so she watches instead, observing carefully.
There is something wild about this girl, like a stray, or, no, like something feral from the woods looking for a refuge. Like the first wolf who laid beside a camp fire, hoping to rest. Elegant in her rawness, her unselfconsciousness as she moves about the room. Long limbs, wide eyes, most would probably associate her with a deer, but like calls to like, and so Vanessa can sense the fight in her, not flight.
The girl is carrying a notebook - no, a sketchbook, because for all the plainness of the cover, the smudges of graphite on the outside of her palm gives her away.
An artist, Vanessa thinks to herself, smiling. Oh, this will be a treat.
- tbc -
The piece in the first scene is "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. It's one of my favorite sculpture pieces, and if you don't know about it, do look it up.