The Captain's Sculpture, parts 176 - 179

 

176. I had to answer this question in a self-incriminating way, because I did indeed pay a fee to submit my image to the museum.

177. Even if a picture was rejected one still had to pay the 25-dollar fee. Thousands of people wanted to be in the show, but only about a hundred things were accepted, so it was a big fund raising event for the institution.

178. Many artists submitted as many as ten things only to have them all rejected, so I was quite proud that I was going to be in the show and it not going to cost me very much.

179. For my wife this fee to be is the show was a complete explanation for an inexplicable event, and since it was only 25 dollars, that was the end of it for her, and she forgot all about it.

The Captain's Sculpture, parts 172 - 175

 

172. She said, “You should call them and see if there isn’t a clerical error.”

173. She did not make this suggestion in any attempt to hurt my feelings, I think she was genuinely concerned to spare me from what she imagined would be unavoidable embarrassment.

174. I showed her my acceptance letter, and it was obvious that they had indeed somehow managed to include my thing in the show, but then another obvious explanation presented itself.

 

175. “Did you pay money to be in the show?” she wanted to know.

The Captain's Sculpture, parts 168 - 171

 

168. It is painful for me now to recount what happened next, but how can I avoid it. I had to face up to the task of explaining to my wife that one of the things I had been making in the garage was going to be in a museum.

 

169. For a long time she had accepted the fact that one part of our two-stall garage was now my plaster workshop, and she did not complain about it as long as I kept her car covered with a tarp when I was working.

170. If she was forced to mention my hobby she always called it simply, “That stupid stuff,” but she said it in a good-natured way, so I did not take offense.

171. The idea that something I had made could possible be hung up in a museum however, struck my wife as an impossibility and the only explanation she could think of was that the museum had made a mistake.

The Captain's Sculpture, parts 164 - 167

 

164. I thought that what might happen now was that I would have to go to the opening of the exhibition, take credit for the thing I made, and be discovered to be a person who knew nothing at all about art, art history, modern art, or even my own painting.

165. As usual,Mrs. Festini’s painting was rejected, even though it was obviously the best thing she had ever done, and she had spent many months suffering over it.

166. She did not mind however, since her things had always been rejected year after year, except for here first attempt, years ago when she was only 15, and had the benefit of not knowing anything.

167. My plaster cast of a square of sidewalk, covered over with splatters of multi-colored acrylic paint, was not only accepted into the show, but I was awarded a prize.

The Captain's Sculpture, parts 160 - 163

 

160. At first it was with a feeling of behaving as it I was not myself, even more that that, as if I was acting the part of someone the opposite of myself, but later I came to adopt this new personality, and feel comfortable with it.

161. A month went by, and I received my reply from the museum about my painting submission. My painting had been accepted into the show.

162. I should have been happy with this result, but I was not. I had fully expected my painting to be rejected, and I will tell you the reason straight out, although it makes me ashamed to say it.

 

163. I felt that it was a fraud, and that I was a fraud to even have submitted it to the show.

The Captain's Sculpture, parts 156 - 159

 

156. The art term for what Agnes had asked me to do was ‘abstract expressionism,” also known as action painting. I looked at various examples of this style, and then proceeded to apply the idea to my plaster cast. 

 

157. I did not think too much of the result, but Mrs. Festini was so impressed with what my sidewalk square looked like with paint slopped all over it, that she insisted I photograph it and submit it for an annual show she always placed work in at the museum in Detroit.

158. When I photographed it however, it did not look like sculpture at all, but only like a painting, so we agreed that I would submit it as a painting, and meanwhile, I attached hooks on the back of the thing, so it could be easily hung up on a wall.

159. But, I asked myself, “Why would anyone want to include in an exhibition a completely pointless conglomeration of meaningless unrelated ideas”. I had no idea. 

The Captain's Sculpture, parts 152 - 155

 

152. I am the kind of man who has spent his entire live trying to avoid getting food on my clothes.

153. I was the kind of child whose face was often cleaned in public, by my mother using saliva and a handkerchief.

154. I lived that kind of a life where the event of ketchup escaping from a hamburger, and falling on a clean shirt was considered a disaster.

155. If ketchup falls on your shirt, there is nothing to do but go back home immediately and change your clothes. Therefore, at 65 years of age, there was never a moment when I had not been on edge, not to make a mess.