I SPENT THE next day getting my studio in order. The three paintings I’d submitted to the show were already over at the gallery, so there was nothing for me to do before the show. That left me with a lot of time to obsess over the thought of people seeing my work and being critical of it. I know what I said to Andrew Neumann. I know I shouldn’t be concerned about what other people think about me, and to a large extent, I’m not. But there is this small voice in the back of my head that yearns for approval. It’s never going away, and I just have to deal with it.
The nature of art is to challenge people. If it doesn’t challenge, even a little, it becomes banal and insipid. I’d painted a lot of insipid paintings. In the end, I’ve usually painted over them, or stuffed them into the back of the studio, hidden from prying eyes. On the occasion that I’ve actually sold an insipid piece, I’ve felt unsatisfied, like I was an impostor.
That’s how I always felt before a show: like an impostor. I was aware of my abilities and training, so I knew I would be fine once the show started. However, with eight hours to kill, I had to decide whether to do more volunteering or drink more coffee and worry. I opted for the latter.
After two pots of coffee and several hours of puttering around in my apartment, I headed back to the gallery. I walked, mostly because I didn’t currently own a car. Also, it’s good for my health. I’d recently been slacking on the workout routine, and walking places felt like a stopgap replacement for my daily run.
I dressed casually for the show. Just jeans and a T-shirt, with a denim jacket for the nippy weather. There was a time when I got dressed up for art openings. But as people’s fashion priorities changed, I realized I hated dressing up. It just wasn’t part of my persona.
As an artist, you were expected to have a persona when dealing with people. Like a cartoon, or a character in a sitcom, you’d wear the same (or similar) clothes all the time, and you had some kind of trademark quirk about you. Maybe you always smoked a cigar, or you rolled your sleeves up, or you farted on your paintings—the stupider, the better. I don’t know anyone who actually farts on their paintings, so if you want to use that as a trademark, go for it.
Me, I sometimes got blood on my paintings. Long story, but at my first big art show, I was shot, leaving my blood spattered across a dozen paintings. Surprisingly, they all sold, and for a lot of money, too. So, blood became my trademark. Since then, it’s usually just a bloody thumbprint. I may have to switch to red paint going forward, since blood is considered a biohazard when shipping packages, and I hate filling out customs forms. Also, I think I might be running out of blood.
At the gallery, it looked like everything came together. It all looked fantastic—kilometers beyond where it was yesterday. All the art got sorted properly, and everyone got their shit worked out. In addition, the paintings were clean, hung with care against a properly contrasting wall, and each piece had a transparent label affixed beside the work. Sometimes the smallest details made everything better.
By 8:00 p.m., a tremendous crowd had filled all the chairs and most of the floor space of the gallery. I like to think it was because we have a vibrant art community in town. Though it might have been that nothing else was going on that evening. K-W isn’t exactly the big city. People looked for any excuse to do something.
I grabbed some free coffee, but eventually people started buying me drinks. To seem a little more hip, I accepted a glass of wine and carried it around with me. I hung out with a couple of the other local artists. We occasionally did shows together, and we often hung out over drinks, griping about how little artists got paid. We weren’t much closer than that, though. Sometimes I helped water people’s plants while they were away.
Eddie Sutcliffe was on my left. Eddie was a muscly ex-biker dude who made welded sculptures out of scrap metal. Some were quite large, and he had one purchased by the town of Elora, which used it as the centerpiece in a community park. His mid-century abstract style was pretty cool. Recently, he’d started making smaller, more accessible works, but nothing that would fit on a table.
To his left, across from me, was Mikki. Mikki Ibis was a painter and photographer. We didn’t hang out much, but she supposedly lived a very bohemian lifestyle. As in, she lived like a squatter in an old broken-down warehouse loft and drove a VW bug dressed up like something from Road Warrior. She painted a lot of similar stuff to me, but was much more successful at it. Maybe I needed to move into a drainage culvert or something.
Bull Wiarton was to my right. This bearded redhead was bigger than Eddie. Strong too. Probably strong. With that kind of bulk to carry around, this guy needed to be strong. Ironically, all his paintings were these delicate oil landscapes of cute houses. It was as if Hagar the Horrible brutally murdered Thomas Kincade and wore his skin.
We were talking about this new artist co-op that was starting up, and whether anyone was interested in joining it. No one was; each of the others had a space in a studio building, and no one was eager to join another collective which took membership fees and a percentage of your sales. We switched to a discussion about possibly going up north to paint, like the Group of Seven, however no one but me and Eddie enjoyed going camping. And none of us had enough money to stay at a fancy northern resort for an entire week while we painted trees. Plus, you had to do it in the fall for the best results, and who plans that far in advance?
Bull had been mostly quiet, but then chimed in. “Has anyone seen Adrian?”
Adrian Gomez was another artist in the group. Mostly known for graffiti and mural work around town, he was going to be the fourth artist doing the demonstration.
“Haven’t seen him,” said Mikki.
“He was coming,” said Eddie. “He called me earlier in the week. He’s got three pieces in this show.”
“I haven’t spoken to him in over a year,” I said. “Not since the last time we did a show here. I saw his paintings, though. They’re pretty great.”
“They’re not even new,” said Bull. “I think he’s phoning it in this year. Pretty sure he had some family troubles.”
“Money troubles, too,” said Mikki.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said. “I hope he’s okay.”
“Are you talking about Gomez?” A voice chimed in behind me. It came out of nowhere and surprised me like a sudden unwanted fart. I turned and realized the comparison was apt, since the source of the voice was an asshole.
Donald Sandburn. Ugh, this guy. Sandburn was a city councillor involved in the arts and culture scene. But it was all a scam. He was more interested in lining his own pockets than promoting the arts. Sandburn voted against a half-dozen measures which would have benefited artists in the city. These included grants to local arts organizations and rules that would streamline artist submissions to the city. And he helped scrap an important program called Gallery Without Walls, which was a series of pop-up displays in unrented downtown storefronts. As an artist, I disagreed with his voting record. Also, he smelled bad (no, he didn’t).
He was wearing a grey suit with a boring black tie, as if he wanted to drive home the point that he was uninspiring. Even his greying comb-over hinted at his disregard for aesthetics.
The moment the other artists recognized him, the group dissipated, leaving me standing there with a full glass of wine, wondering if there was a place to drop it so I could go eat some complementary cheese.
“Do I smell?” Sandburn joked at me, since there was no one else.
I wrinkled my nose. “A little.”
“You should treat people better, Mr. Virtue.”
“Oh, you know me?”
“I know all about the famous Zack Virtue. Your name comes up a lot during City Hall meetings.”
“It does?” I was a little surprised by this.
“Arts, tourism … police reform. Oh yeah, you come up a lot.”
“Well … good. I like to know I’m wanted.”
“Oh, you’re not wanted around here, Virtue. You’re lucky you have so many friends.”
“Yeah, sure. Everyone wants to be your friend until you ask whether a hotdog is a ravioli.”
“If it were up to me—”
“It’s not, by the way.”
“—you’d be kicked out of this city.”
“Like you could do that.”
Sandburn smiled. “As I said, if it were up to me.”
“Luckily, I live in Kitchener. I only come up here for the overpriced parking.”
“Yet you have such a strong tie to places in Waterloo. You think you’d be nicer to city councillors.”
“Why? Because they do so much for the arts?”
“You take a lot of things for granted. Like this gallery.”
“Like this gallery? What do you mean by that? I don’t work here.”
“But you have so many friends here, Virtue. You have so much invested.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Maybe one day we stop giving money to this gallery. Maybe we increase the rent on this city-owned building. Maybe we pull their business license.”
“But why? Over me? That sounds stupid. You sound stupid.”
Sandburn looked around and smiled, thinking of the possibilities. “I always thought this building would be great for a business accelerator space. We could charge an obscene amount of rent, lure tons of new high-tech businesses to the area.”
“All because I was mean to you?”
“Get over yourself, Virtue. I don’t like you, but you mean nothing to me in the grand scheme of things.”
“Oh, now you’ve hurt my feelings. Excuse me while I go eat cheese.”
I left Sandburn and headed for the cheese table. Perhaps I did have some influence over how things got done around here, but not in any meaningful way. Everyone else knew Sandburn was a jerk, and everyone else knew not to trust him, especially when it came to the gallery. He’d been wanting to move the gallery to a different space for years now. Kept saying how derelict the building was, how unsafe. That it needed extensive renovations. He wasn’t wrong. But it was an all-too-convenient excuse to close the gallery down for good.
That he was suggesting he’d do it because of me was intriguing. Almost flattering.