Mission Accomplished
House on Red Corner · 2005-09-24
Steph woke me up at ten this morning, asking me if I wanted to sell my paintings today. Now, it wasn’t just something out of the blue, that crawled up her back and prompted her to ask me that this morning. OUr nextdoor neighbors had told us at the beginning of the week that there was going to be a block wide stoop sale, saturday and sunday. They suggested that I might want to set out my artwork and sell it. So that was what prompted the wake up call.
I set the paintings out and stood on the sidewalk waking up with my coffee while the neighbors kids both talked at me, simultaneously. While this was happening outside, inside I was getting more and more anxious. Anxious about having to talk to strangers about my artwork. There is probably nothing in the world which I would rather do less. Fortunately, I had another option. Football practice.
It all worked out great. Steph stood around gossiping with the neighbors while people looked at my art and bought comicbooks from the guy down the street. I got to think about chasing a ball around a patch of grass and not even realize that total strangers were looking at my artwork and judging it, liking it, hating it. I know that there needs to be some sort of feedback in the loop between creator/performer and audience. It just completely wipes me out to have to get that feedback in person.
Immediately after football practice ended, I began to wonder how Steph was going to get the heavy plywood pieces inside. When I finally got through the subway system (by the way, how come the Metrocard vending machines are not used to provide updated system changes?) and got hoome, the paintings were all inside and Steph was sitting there with EJ and her friend Jen. Jen is Canadian and eight months pregnant. These two hearty women with babies lugging my paintings up the stairs, what a mental image. Not only did she bring the paintings back inside, she had sold one of them! Great!
EJ ate steak tonight.