A Prize for Each Age Group

 

 

Bill and I were at Kroger last night and saw this, a coloring contest table for Black History month, and it just seemed so sweet and worn-out and beautiful I had to take a photo.  It was like one of our art shows without being one and that's kind of what I want all of them to be.  We do art shows at Thunder-Sky, Inc. every other month and many times I really don't know why, except because we have to, and then that reason makes you feel kind of dumb, as if you are not in control of making art shows, it's just one of those things like concussions or bankruptcy.  And then I see a good example of what we are after every once in a while, as in this photo above:  sloppy, makeshift, but full of meaning beyond its purpose, an accidental momentary impulse to find a way to make meaning beyond what something is, and beyond the joke or the irony of trying to tell yourself what it isn't, and you're all of a sudden in this space of forgiveness and grace without having to go to church or listen to some ass-hole motivational speaker.  You are no longer judgmental or even capable of a snide comment.  You are in a state of mind that allows things to get in without the usual struggle.  I think that's what I'm always searching for when I go to art shows or when I try to make art shows.  That sense of losing your mind and your intentions and being awed.  This shit here awes me for some reason, like William Carlos Williams' little red wheelbarrow.  So much depends on this somehow.  The tableau feels unfinished, the tablecloth is terribly yellow, that Xeroxed woman's face is sad and hopeful somehow at the same time.  It's a contest so somebody's going to win something.  In fact there's a prize for each age group.  And of course there's all that black history and melancholy beige linoleum and that fluorescent sheen all grocery stores have after about 9 pm.  The loneliness of buying groceries kind of permeates the atmosphere, and here's this table of crayons abandoned but still vibrating from something I can't really articulate.  Which is good.  Not being able to articulate is the point.  That's about all you got in this world.