Monday, February 27, 2006

Lessons from the Studio

Hands raw from compressed and vine charcoal, gummy kneads and conte...I wonder of life lessons. Can I glean what's true in the world from what renders true on the page?

The figure forms before us; open blinds, errant hairs, cellulite be damned. Her preferential stance is an arched neck, strong thighs and splayed hands. Her face, permanently fixed in a scowl. We're meant to draw her weight, her effort, her insides out. We're intimate, eyes to soul, until her timer beeps twice.

She's traded for a man my father's age as the clock strikes four. I am the only one immature enough to smirk when he scratches his ass mid-pose.

The professor implores us, take each section learned and fit them together like interconnecting puzzle pieces. We're to build from one to the next, never fully forgetting the last, though it's impossible. She says everything we'll ever need to know in life, we'll know at the end of our stay in the eighth floor studio. In here, the lights buzz, fixtures are smeared grey and we're all students once more.

My fingernails are dirty, jeans spattered with ink. Across the room, a regal speech writer has a deep smudge from nose to ear.

So much escapes me when I look for it. Life lessons, what could they be? Striving for beauty is striving for truth, perhaps. Learning to see instead of assuming what we know. Finding the aesthetic in the weird, the ugly, the ordinary.

Smearing a beloved sketch when asked only to draw an inferior one in its place seems as though it teaches nothing at all.

The models shifts into an energetic gesture at the professor's urging, spread-eagle on a chair, pointed fiercely at me.

I'm beginning to see. Perspective, inner energy, the importance of averting one's gaze from another's genitals...

One can learn so much about life from within the art studio.

3 comments:

David Tellez said...

The thing you forgot to mention was if they had any weird hair patterns...guess I'm just as immature!

Sharon Spotbottom said...

Hey K, Thanks for checking out Sharon.
Cool stories and artwork. And you're an Aussie!!
cool.

K said...

No weird hair patterns yet, but I'm sure the tides will turn on that--it's just a matter of time :)