the art class

The first time I walked into an art class I arrived as the main event. The details of why in the early 1960's I'd decided to work as an artist's model are irrelevant, so I'll leave it at the fact I needed money for the plane fare to Europe and nobody was going to give it to me. College? Fine. London? No.

All it had taken to get that first job was a phone call and my mother's permission ('Well, all right if your nice friend Emma is doing it but don't tell you father').

At 17, not many people had seen me naked and, although I wasn't particularly shy,  Toronto in the early '60's was still very much locked into the '50's. It's no wonder I was a bit nervous as I walked from the streetcar stop to the converted factory where the open evening drawing class was being held. When I found the little cloakroom the models used for changing there was someone there preparing to leave. The conversation went much like this:

Her: 'So, who's your pimp?'
Me: 'I beg your pardon?'
Her: 'Who do you work for? Who got you the job?'
Me: 'Nobody. I just called the school.'
Her: 'Well, I better not see you on the corner of Jarvis and Queen later.'

Not in the least unhappy to see her flounce out, I quickly changed into the lounging outfit I'd bought a few days earlier and went out to find the classroom. I stuck close to the wall as I sidled up to the studio's back entrance and peered through at the artists who were arriving with their gear and setting up. The modeling stand, nothing but a bare platform raised about 2 feet above the floor, looked very exposed and was already surrounded by people. Late arrivals looked peevishly at those who'd appropriated a favorite position and more people kept crowding in behind.

Just as I was wondering if I could quietly slip away one of the students noticed my slinky outfit, determined I was the model, and said they were ready to start. There was no instructor so it was time for me to figure out what to do for the next three hours as I walked over to the platform. I asked the woman who'd spoken to me what the usual procedure was and was told 5 minute poses so everyone could loosen up followed by longer poses as they settled in to work on more complex drawings.

Not for the first time in my life, or for nearly the last as it's turned out, I stepped up onto the stand and wondered how the heck I got myself involved in such a strange situation. Everybody else had their clothes on and was waiting for me to remove mine so they could draw pictures of me instead of a bowl of fruit. Oh well..

Once I was unzipped and stripped, the only thing I could think to do was to act out stop motion plays and count seconds in my head between one pose and the next. After a little while I got so caught up in the imagined stories I forgot to be shy. I also learned a few things as the posing times grew longer than 5 minutes ie, don't stand on one foot, don't put your hands higher than your shoulders, and whatever else you do, don't assume that bridge position you learned last week in calisthenics class. After an hour had gone by without a break one of the students called out it was time for a rest.

I'd become quite curious about how their work was going and was eager to make a little tour of the pictures in progress. One man in particular had been working on the same drawing ever since the class had begun so I was especially interested to see what he'd been doing. By then I was feeling very comfortable in my skin and the idea that there was a big difference between looking at someone naked on a modeling stand and having them stand beside you simply didn't occur to me.

I hopped off the platform and walked up behind the artist who was still adding finishing touches to the picture he'd been busy with for over an hour. I was imagining I'd see something wonderful, perhaps a study like one by Toulouse-Lautrec or Monet. He was very focused and didn't hear my approach but when I saw his drawing had made me look like the Venus of Willendorf I must have gasped. When he turned around to see a breast staring into his face he retreated faster than the wheels of his stool would go, tipped over backwards and knocked over the easel of the artist behind him. It was kind of like dominoes.

I used those moments of confusion to slip back into my lounge suit and no more was said about the matter. I'd learned something else. Never assume you're going to like the way someone else portrays your appearance.

***

Between my own classes and other jobs, I continued working at that school and several others while I earned enough money to travel. Although the work was grueling, I was good at it and learned almost as much from the opposite side of the drawing board as from the charcoal to the paper side. I got a real job in London but also took classes at the Slade and the School of Art, working as a model to pay the fees and meeting lots of very interesting people. As time went by more and more students were willing to take off their clothes and mount the modeling stands. The '60's had begun.




.

gallerivanting

When I was painting all the time, following the hints and flashes of inspiration that showed the next three or ten pictures or maybe just parts of another complete watercolor, there were always two things I looked forward to. The first was taking all of them out of the portfolios, where they'd been stored within a day of recognizing one more line would cause ruin, and looking at 12 or 20 all at once. Seeing where I'd spent the past year or two in imaginary worlds was always the best moment and I'd start making plans toward a gallery show, imagining the delight they'd bring to others and hopefully, enough money to allow me the peace and long silences required to stay in watercolor land.

The next best part was going to the picture framing shop where, naturally enough when I think about it, the guys who ran the place were always delighted to see me. As is normal in such places it was decorated with multiple examples of picture framing arts throughout the ages, and since my favorite store in RI had been in business for more than a century, it was an old fashioned wood floor, tin ceilinged place that offered feelings of security and harmonious gentility. Since framing for galleries meant sticking to clean lines and simplicity we'd spend the time it took deciding on the shade of white museum board mattes, whether to edge the separate pictures in gold, silver or copper frames and the benefits of regular glass compared to the non-reflective kind. Framing then wasn't as expensive as it is today but I was still happy with the professional discount and always satisfied with the result when I went to retrieve them a week or two later. The only problem then, of course, was that they were now huge, unwieldy objects.

So followed the next part. Although painting always has been a pretty intense part of my life I never really connected with the marketing side. I'd start making phone calls to the few people I knew in the New England arts scene. I tend to be pretty shy when it comes to such things but there were a few gallery owners who'd bought some of my paintings for themselves and were happy to hear I'd finished another selection. Since art shows are usually booked a year or more in advance it wasn't a surprise when I learned there were no venues currently available. One friend, having opted out of showing the work of contemporary artists, had turned her gallery into a showcase for dead nautical painters, since even if the paintings weren't good, at least they had historic value.

Two days later she called me back to say she'd met a woman who was planning to show her sculptures at the Providence Watercolor Club and required watercolors to comply with their rules. Would I be interested? I agreed with no hesitation since it was a great opportunity to have my work shown to the rich and well connected old New England society members who belonged to the place.

Accompanied by my friend I met the sculptor at her palatial home on Providence's East Side one early spring afternoon. Have you ever heard of a merry widow? This woman was the epitome of the title and having inherited her husband's factories and fortune, was using her newly gained money and power to make a frontal assault on the previously mentioned society. Her husband had not only owned a ceramics business that mostly made lamp bases but also owned one of the jewelry factories that made Providence famous in the 50's and 60's. What he hadn't let his wife do was to follow her artistic tendencies and after 45 years of marriage she felt she had no time to lose if she was going to make an impression.

What she'd done was to turn the ceramic factory into a production center for some of the ugliest lumps of hardened clay I'd never imagined seeing. She was quite proud to tell us the workers had to make these (poorly designed, acid colored giant lumps) sculptures if they wanted to keep getting their regular paychecks. Two of them were delivered and uncrated while we were there and a couple of her maids were dusting and polishing them so she could add her own unique artistic signature, namely, gluing large pieces of colored cut glass to each one in random patterns while dancing around her studio drinking from a large glass of wine. She called them her 'Dragon' sculptures and was happy to know I'd painted dragons too.

She came by to see the paintings and told me they'd make an excellent counterpoint. Just a week before the show was scheduled to open she called the friend who'd introduced us demanding I paint dragons into the pictures that had none. She'd donated $100K to the Club in order to bypass their watercolorist rule so if I couldn't comply she planned to cancel my part of the show. Well, since that was not only outrageous but impossible, I cancelled. My friend offered me a corner in her dead seascape gallery and a few of the paintings went there for a month. It was a pretty funny juxtaposition.


Late in the summer I got a call from a woman who owned a restaurant gallery in Newport wondering if I'd be interested in hanging a show for the autumn season. I'd never dined there but knew the place had a good reputation. Arriving on a beautiful sunny day I met the owner and checked out the gorgeous space, finding windows galore, even tall clerestory ones all around the dining area, linen tablecloths, antique carpets and tons of flowers. Feeling buoyantly hopeful we went back and hung the paintings a few weeks later.

My friends at work were excited about the show and had insisted on making reservations for a big dinner party on opening night. It was after 7:00 pm when we arrived, the first time I'd been there after dark. Remember I told you about the windows? Well, it turned out they only let in light during the daytime and what I hadn't noticed the other times was something that struck me immediately when I walked in that evening. The place was dark. Well, it wasn't grope around, black dark but the only lights were tiny ones high up in the ceiling and low ones at the front counter. The tables were all lit by candles that at least hid any disappointment I may have been showing.

We ate, laughed and told silly stories. The owner introduced me to the other diners who all applauded, much to my embarrassment and delight. Just before dessert the waiters brought out several dozen more candles in their little holders and my friends led a procession around the room examining each painting in turn. It was a wonderful night.

outsider art

Once there was a girl who decided to pack up her clothes and her paintings and fly away from her dull life in southern Ontario to London, England where she was sure to win fame and fortune. She was a self taught artist since the school she'd attended taught all sorts of subjects but not art. Everyone (mostly her parents) agreed she was very good and art school would only spoil her vision.










 
That's how I wound up in London in the mid-60's. At the time I'd been having a wonderful time with color, painting big abstracts of dancers in acrylics and enamels, which I thought were very avant garde. Dressed in my spiffy new Emma Peel style trouser suit I picked up my portfolios and headed off to the best art galleries in the city with the absolute certainty my paintings would soon be the next big thing. I was due for a surprise.

I went to half a dozen galleries that day walking from one place to another as each of the very polite owners or managers essentially said, "Oh, that's very nice work but not quite the style we're looking for at the moment. Why don't you try so and so on Sowhatsit Street. Your work looks very much like something they'd hang."



























The very last gallery I walked into was a huge, silent space where all the enormous canvasses were painted gray except for one that was gray with green spots. There were big metal objects looking like nothing I'd seen before spaced far apart around the room. I must have passed a motion sensor because once I got to the middle all of a sudden the machines whirred to life. Chains slithered around on the floor, blades swirled and slashed, wires whipped around on metal balls and there was a lot of general banging and clanging from every direction. I looked for a way out but it just wasn't safe to go back to the door.

Finally, a well dressed 40ish man strolled out from a back room somewhere, touched a button on the wall as he passed and the clatter stopped. I already knew by then what the story would be at this gallery too but I was too proud to just excuse myself out of the place so I showed him my paintings. He stroked his chin, arched his eyebrows and told me I really should go to the Green Park Gallery - that it would be just the place for my work. So I asked him directions and off I went.


























The Green Park Gallery turned out to be the grassy area between the sidewalk and the wall of London's Green Park. Paintings, sculptures and oddly dressed people filled the narrow space that stretched a mile or at least as far as I could see. Hmpff. I think I was getting the idea by then that there are a lot of artists in the world each with their own unique vision that isn't quite cool enough for hard core art galleries. There was a lot of very good work on display and a lot of bad stuff too but mostly I saw people even more determined than me to sell their stuff.

Most amazing of all were the guys doing perfect replicas of some very famous old paintings in chalk - on the pavement. I saw VanGogh's 'Sunflowers' and Michaelangelo's 'God and Adam' from the Sistine Chapel. Yow. It sounds silly to be impressed by such a thing now that we're all older and sophisticated but it was a big surprise to me and also very daunting. Quite frankly, I was depressed.

That evening found me down at the Thames Embankment looking at the moonlit Palace of Westminster and Big Ben across the river. The traffic flowed by on London Bridge as the dark water flowed by me. I was overwhelmed by how ancient and carefully made everything was. Generations of masons had worked on these buildings while living in squalor themselves on streets now burned, bombed and gone. Who did I think I was I wondered in that moment of revelation as I got ready to sling all my paintings into the water.


































Then I heard a quiet 'Ahem' from somewhere close behind me. When I turned to see who was interrupting I saw a tall, long beaked, formally dressed Crow. It seemed he knew me, although I didn't recognize him when he told me we'd met once long ago and he'd been keeping an eye on me ever since. His next words were, 'Well, today was a lot of fun, what do you plan for tomorrow's entertainment?'

I knew then it was time to find a job, maybe take some more drawing classes, make some friends, travel around Europe, see the great public galleries, museums, churches, palaces, castles, parks, seasides.. There was a lot to do and there are advantages to being an outsider. Crow and I have been friends ever since.

:)