Bisbee and beyond
My dog and I have been on the road for eighteen days. The weather is cool, foggy, and quite beautiful.
The first day out from Santa Fe, New Mexico, I drove to Bisbee, Arizona. I found Bisbee unique and magical. A huge open-pit copper mine encroaches on its eastern edge and mountains of tailings surround the site for miles, but the town itself is picturesque and quite impossible to imagine. The downtown of two and three-story brick Victorian warehouses is surrounded by a series of makeshift homes clinging precariously to the cliffs of two converging canyons. Stair-steps cut into the cliffs appear and disappear in blind turns between the houses and run all the way up the canyon walls. While giving one the impression of being on an island in the Mediterranean, it is a hole in the ground in the middle of some of the hottest desert in North America. It is the kind of architecture dreams are made of. The people of the town seem open and friendly though far too familiar with each others’ business, being only about 500 people. I met one genuine artist there; a woman by the name of Sam who paints like a man and loves the place.
Dixie and I stayed in a hotel that seemed ready to tumble off the cliff (not a straight floor in the place) operated by a woman who did not wish to be bothered. During dinner I overheard a conversation about the encroachment of Californians that I’d heard almost word-for-word 20 years ago in Santa Fe. The next morning, after several conversations (an actor just moved from Tucson - a local just returned from the Amazon) the heat of the day set in. By the time I reached Phoenix it was over 100. The next day,117.
I had planned to spend more time in Arizona with a stop in Palm Desert, California, but it was so impossibly hot that I changed plans and drove two hard days to get off the scorching desert floor. We landed for a time at a campground in the Los Padres mountains north of Los Angeles. There was a stream running through the site and when Dixie laid eyes on it she lost her mind, plunging in and out of the water, running madly about on a terror. She found a boyfriend, went feral for a bit and came out of the experience with ticks and an elevated sense of herself, which has rapidly disappeared since last night’s bath.
I have been working my way slowly up the California coast, stopping at a number of small beaches only accessible by foot.
……….
We spent last weekend in San Francisco with Howard and Joyce. It was a tough visit for Dixie, since Joyce has allergies and we had to keep her at Howard’s studio. Despite all that, they were gracious as always.
My first hour with them was an adjustment after days by myself on the road. Howard is a fine painter and Joyce is the top sales person for a large art publishing house. Their new condo is absolutely beautiful, with no expense spared to make it so. It is an accomplishment to be proud of. Near the summit of Potrero Hill, they live with a view that is quite transcendent, though their hearts and minds are planted firmly in this world.
On Friday, I made a surprise visit to my gallery. Mel E was on the phone in his office while his dreadful little assistant ignored me obtusely as she always does. I stood in the center of the cavernous room, my heart pounding in my chest. Unable to catch my breath, I turned and left without a word. Later I picked up my prints at Andrea S’s Gallery. I found myself very comfortable with her, rambling on about my disappointment and disgust with the business. “I’m just burnt out, Andrea. I can’t do it anymore.” Soon after those two visits, Howard and I had the conversation for which I had come to San Francisco.
In Bisbee I had been in a gallery that handled the paintings of a man who obviously had copied Howard’s work (the tendrils, broken rectangles, and shaped canvases, even palettes). The director had bragged about having sold 90 of his paintings last year. Upon seeing some of Howard’s new work I said, “This is head and shoulders above anything that copy-artist in Arizona could possibly imagine, but if you were to put this work in that space they wouldn’t be able to sell it.”
He replied, “Yes, I know. Isn’t it amazing. I have come to the conclusion that, as a general rule, people have mediocre taste and look for things that validate those tastes. You can be too good.”
“I know you’ll understand this.” I said “What we as painters have to offer is that ‘Oh Yes!’ experience when we surprise ourselves with breakthroughs and revelations. Those inspired moments are the lynchpins of all artistic experience and the only reason it has value. I always thought when I achieved that level of expertise where I could consistently elevate the dialog to find those moments, then I would be rewarded in the real world. Instead, I am finding the opposite might be true and I cannot describe the almost crippling disappointment I feel.” This was the first time I’d acknowledged the toll the last few years have taken.
Later that night I lay in the dark, lost in an oversized mattress amidst a forest of pillows, listening as the sounds of the city drifted up and through the open bedroom window. In the darkness, memories of my last month in Santa Fe rolled over me with the surprising force of consecutive lightening strikes from a dangerous, too close storm.
Eight weeks before, David P, an old friend and now gallery director, having heard that I was leaving town and knowing I did not have representation in Santa Fe, arranged an interview with Rita N, the owner of the gallery where he worked. David, Rita, and I visited for two hours at my studio. She spoke at length about her spiritual work, a thing she seemed genuinely connected with, and discussed with understanding the difficulties of the business. For my part, I stayed open and curious. We were interviewing each other and for each of us the interview went well.
‘Yes,’ I thought with surprise as she drove away, ‘I might actually enjoy working with her.’ She had been charming and direct and, though I had never much cared for the predominantly mediocre tastes of her gallery, many of my friends had shown with her in the past and done well. And I had always wanted to work with David. It seemed important that, if possible, I not leave town without a local dealer.
“I’ve not seen enough of this new work to make an informed decision.” she had said. We agreed that I would continue painting for the next month while my work-study students packed for the move. On the last day, with the rooms empty and the walls pristine, I would do a presentation of all the work I had done.
So I spent the last month madly painting as Amy and Weston disassembled all the portions of my life and placed them in labeled boxes left scattered about me on the studio floor. There was no time for contemplation as, between those hours of submersion in the focused process of painting, the demands of the move compelled me from project to project. The movers arrived and in one ferocious ten hour surge all the chaos disappeared behind the metal doors of a storage locker two blocks to the east. As I put the finishing touches on the new paintings and prepared them for hanging, walls were patched and windows cleaned.
At 2 AM I had been scrubbing sinks and toilets, but now, at 8 AM, I stood at the center of a large empty white room, its walls as pristine as any museum’s, and gazed at the twenty or so paintings hung carefully about. A pot of coffee brewed on the kitchen countertop next to bottles of wine and paper cups (later in the day I would be hosting an open house; a farewell to friends) when the phone rang.
It was David, his naturally tense voice edged with apology. “Stan, I’m so sorry, but I’ve overslept. I have to open the gallery and won’t be able to make the meeting.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, David. I was looking forward to seeing you.”
“Well, Rita will be there soon. So, how goes the move? How do the new paintings look? I hope all goes well with your meeting this morning. Will I see you before you leave?”
Five minutes later he called back. The nervousness in his voice had taken a tick upwards. “Stan, I’ve bad news. Rita can’t make it either.”
On my part, a stunned silence ensued as I absorbed this information and my mind raced to register its implications.
David was saying, “….. forgot all about it. This is her day off and …..”.
“What do you mean?” I interrupted. “Do you mean she’s not coming at all?”
“Well, she forgot all about it, Stan, and this is her day off.”
“Not at all?” I asked again. Perhaps I hadn’t understood.
“No.” David said. “She lives twenty miles out of town and this is her day off. She had a rough week and she says she needs to rest.”
“Does she realize that this is it?” I asked, searching still for clarity. “There’s no rescheduling. I’m out of here tomorrow. Does she understand this?”
“Yes, I told her. I told her you’d be disappointed. But this is her day off and she’s had a rough week. She’s not coming into town.”
David was saying, “I’m sorry, Stan, but you know I can’t tell Rita what to do. She’s decided she …” when the implications of his words overtook me.
“Do you realize how FUCKED that is?” I interrupted, and with the explosive uttering of that profanity my anger broke loose. “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked to make this happen?”
“Stan, I don’t know what to say …”
“And now you have the audacity to blow me off? HOW DARE YOU!”
“I’ll be right over.” David said as he turned on his dime. “I’ll be right there. Just a few minutes late.”
“David,” I said, unmollified, “You don’t have any say in who shows in Rita’s gallery, do you?”
“No. No, I don’t. You know I don’t.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, David. You know I love you but, tell me, what goddamn good does it do me then for you to come?”
During the course of this conversation I had moved from the light filled studio into the small bedroom. Naked without its furniture, no morning light ever entering its windows, I stood in its darkest corner as I heard David saying, “….. don’t know what to tell you …” and, trembling with indignation I said quietly, “Fuck you, David.” and hung up.
I stood there in the sudden silence, the phone dangling from my hand, vibrating like a just struck cast iron bell.
For an hour I seethed, guttural cries of outrage and pain echoing about the hollow chamber which had once been my studio. Its emptiness now seemed a monument to this, my ultimate failure, illustrated so clearly by this last blow, this ignorant and thoughtless act of cruelty. The graphically strong paintings which, in the last month, had taken on such importance now appeared frail and of no consequence. ‘One cannot care enough to make others care.’ I thought. ‘What a horrid lesson; to learn that no power resides in these paintings when others may simply choose to ignore them.’ As the morning passed in silence the inevitability of this cruel thing Rita had done took root in my consciousness to become a metaphor for my last 25 years in Santa Fe. I asked myself, ‘What have I done to deserve such terrible disrespect and contemptuous refusal from these dealers?’
By noon, though I was still shaken like a man recently beaten about the head, I found myself no longer willing to bring myself to anger. Over the course of the afternoon a steady flow of friends and acquaintances made their way up the stairs and stood about, wine cups in hand, their eyes occasionally searching the room for chairs that were not there. As the story of Rita’s behavior circulated, useless words of consolation and support, varying only in tone and timber, were repeated.
“There must be some good reason she would do this, Stan.” Gail P spoke placatingly. “No one could be that cruel and inconsiderate without reason. Are you sure David wasn’t covering up for something more serious?” she asked.
“I wish he were,” I replied “but no, I don’t think so.”
“Unbelievable!” Timothy N, my artist friend, ranted as he acted out his own anger.
Projecting his own difficult experiences upon the situation he exclaimed, “To hell with her, Stan. She has a crappy gallery anyway. You’re better than her. Your better off without her. Who the hell does she think she is anyway? All these dealers are out of their minds. You can’t trust any of them.”
“Not all dealers are out of their minds, Timothy.” I said, finding his tone decidedly unhelpful. “I have to ask myself if Rita has been trapped as well, drawn somehow into my own scenario of what to expect out of dealers.”
“Your being way too generous.” he said, and I had to agree.
Ron P offered reasonably, “The work looks great, Stan. Its too bad you couldn’t get some other dealer here to see it before taking it down.”
“Who would I call at this late hour?” I asked helplessly. “It’s Impossible, Ron. Besides, I just don’t have the strength to go through this again.”
“Its too late.” I added sadly. “Its just too late.”
David P called late in the day. “Have you heard from Rita?”
“No.” I said.
“Can I come tomorrow and see what you’ve done?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“But I’d like to see what you’ve done, Stan, and talk.”
“There’s no time, David. The work needs to come down first thing in the morning. It’s final inspection tomorrow. I leave the next day.”
“Can I come at 8 AM? If I come will you be there?”
And so David came the next morning. A trash bag filled with paper cups and empty wine bottles lay half full in the center of the room. The kitchen counter top was still littered with yesterday’s debris.
“Has she called?” he asked.
“No, she hasn’t.”
“Damn, what’s wrong with her?” he said, frustration in his voice. “I’ve told her she needs to call you.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Several times yesterday I told her.”
A moment later he added, “I’ve given her my notice.”
“David, don’t throw your job away over this.”
“I can’t be a party to this kind of behavior, Stan.”
“You have a good job with her. Don’t throw it away over this. You have to watch out for your own future.”
“I have to live with myself.”
“David, not for me.”
For the next hour we talked, he in the only folding chair and me atop the cooler; a sad long talk about our years in Santa Fe and the courage and cowardice with which we had each lived them. I distractedly wandered about the room as, out of obligation, he looked at each painting and tried halfheartedly to discuss them. Hearing no response from me he soon gave up. ‘Its too late for that, David.’ I thought as I looked out the window to the street below where I noticed Mary, his wife, asleep in the passenger seat of their parked car. An early morning for her as well.
“It’s OK, David.” I said as my eyes scanned the deep blue morning sky to the Sandia range, 50 miles south. “This is not between you and me. We’re good.”
The paintings had been loaded into the bed of my pickup truck. The holes where they had been hung were patched and painted and the cement floors had been mopped one last time. The final inspection had been successfully completed. I had spent the night on Timothy and Trisha’s couch where my suitcases now awaited me. As I drove to the storage shed with this one last load of paintings, my cell phone rang. “Stan,” Rita’s voice spoke too close to my ear. “This is Rita. Do you have a moment to talk?”
Surprised, I replied nervously, “I don’t think I have anything to say to you.”
“Well,” she went lightly on, “David told me how upset you are and I just wanted to apologize for not making our meeting. Last week was just so hectic and our appointment simply slipped my mind. And then I was tired and it was …..”
‘This is not an apology.’ I thought, and hung up.
Moments later the phone rang again. ‘Shit, I don’t want to do this.’ I thought. But as the phone rang a second, third, and fourth time I thought, ‘All right then. Let’s get this over with.’
“Hello” I said as I pulled my truck to the curb.
“This is Rita.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I want to apologize.”
Silence as I waited.
“I was thoughtless, Stan. There is no excuse for my behavior. I owe you an apology.”
“Yes.” I said and thought to myself, ‘For what, woman? Say it out loud. Show me you understand.’ Rita went on.
“I know what I did was wrong. There’s no excuse for it. But I didn’t intend to hurt you, Stan. It’s just that I had forgotten and then I really needed a day off and …..”
“If there’s no excuse then stop making them.” I said with irritation.
“OK” she replied, disarmed. And another silence settled as I refused to prompt her.
Rita began again.
“I told David to explain the situation and if he didn’t properly apologize, as I thought he had …..”
“Don’t bring David into this. This is between you and me.”
“But I told him to explain my situation and it seems he didn’t …..”
“It’s not his job to do your dirty work. David and I are good. He made the effort to call me back and then to come over. He made the effort, Rita. You didn’t.”
‘And David’s threat of resignation is the only reason we’re talking right now.’ I thought, as another silence followed. I’d had enough of this obfuscation.
The sun beat down comfortingly upon my closed eyelids as I waited, without hope, for Rita’s next words. For one brief moment I expected her to hang up, but instead she spoke again.
“Stan, I promised you another look at your work. We had an appointment and I stood you up because it was inconvenient for me. I was rude and inconsiderate but, please believe me, I didn’t intend to hurt you.”
‘These are only words.’ I thought. ‘These words are cheap. They have no value. This is not nearly enough.’
“Stan,” she hesitantly went on, “I can only imagine how hard you worked. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Rita, its too late for this.” I said. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want this to be hanging between us.” she replied, and in the tone of her voice I heard the spiritualist I had so liked the month before reappear.
‘So this is how it will be.’ I thought. ‘We will discuss as equals this ugly matter.’ and at that moment a profound calm descended. The sun, flooding through the truck windows, warmed the steering wheel, my lap, and the left side of my face. I turned off the engine and, in the ensuing quiet, the phone, pressed against my ear, commanded all my attention. My nervousness and anger melted away. What remained was a terrible clarity as sharp and dangerous as the bright noonday desert light.
“Rita,” I said, “I can’t recall ever being treated this badly. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.”
“That’s not true and you know it. You knew what you were doing. You just didn’t care.”
“But I do.”
“You had every chance to call and make another appointment. Why didn’t you call?”
“Well, David told me you were angry. I wanted to give you time to cool down.”
“Rita, you didn’t call because you didn’t want to disturb your day off. No matter what I had done, it was not going to be important enough to get you out of bed. You didn’t call because you didn’t want to reschedule.”
Silence.
“You had the morning to make it right. You had 3 hours to call, then put on some clothes and come to the studio. You knew this was your only opportunity to see these paintings. You knew that last month you’d encouraged me to do all this work. You knew that to now stand me up would be the worst kind of insult. But you did it anyway. Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking. You just didn’t care.”
“Stan, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to deal with your anger.”
“I’m not angry with you. After a short time, I wasn’t angry with you yesterday. I’m terribly hurt and disappointed, and confused. What could I have done to deserve this treatment from you?”
“You know, Rita, I had an open house in the afternoon and everyone there knew what had happened. I wasn’t walking around calling you ugly names. I wasn’t speaking badly of you. I was simply stunned that you could be so cruel.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“But you did. Rita, last month, when we had that long visit, I found myself genuinely liking you. I actually thought you would make a good person to work with.”
“I felt the same towards you, Stan.”
“Then you pull this shit. Why did you turn around and treat me with such disrespect?”
“I didn’t mean to. If I could take it back I would.”
” ….. Rita, I don’t know what else to say. Why are you calling me now? What do you want from me?”
“I want you to forgive me.”
“Forgive you?”
“Yes, I want your forgiveness.”
I could not find a handhold on the face of this cliff suddenly put before me.
“I don’t know how you can ask that of me.”
“Stan, I don’t want you to leave with this between us.”
“Rita, this comes at the worst possible time. I can’t deal with this …..”
“I like you, Stan. I respect you. I want us to be friends.”
“But we aren’t friends, Rita. A friend would never treat a friend the way you’ve treated me.”
“But I like you, Stan. This is poison. I don’t want this hanging between us.”
“You know, this is a difficult time for me.” I replied cautiously. “I’ve given up my studio and I’m walking away from the only home I’ve known for 25 years. I feel as if nothing I’ve done has made a damn bit of difference to this community. I’ve never felt more vulnerable in my life. At one time I thought it was enough just to do the work well; that the work would bring an audience along in its wake and in that way I would have success. But every scrap of attention I’ve gotten in this town I’ve had to fight for. I’ve never had an ally I could count on. I’ve failed. And now, just at my lowest point, as I’m on my way out of town, you carelessly stab me in the back. You did it as if it were nothing. Just a flick of the wrist.”
“This was not my intention.”
“But there you have it, intended or no. All you’ve done is remind me how cruel this place can be and how little I matter. Now you ask me to forgive you, like that’s simply there for me to grant. I can’t.”
Pleadingly she asked, “What can I do to make this right?”
“Nothing. It’s too late. There’s nothing you can do.”
“There has to be.”
“You had your chance. Now its literally too late. The paintings are in my truck. This is my last trip to storage. From here I leave town. What are you going to do, Rita, run down here and pretend to look at them in my dark storage shed? Represent me because you feel guilty? Of course not. It’s too late to make this right.”
“But I don’t want us to part like this.”
“Rita, you hurt me as badly as I’ve ever been hurt, and you did it because you just didn’t care. And now you care only because of the consequences to yourself.”
A small, strangled cry of frustration and grief came from the phone.
“Ah, God!” she said, her words strangled, dreading every moment of this. “At times like this I hate this business.”
“I understand.” I said reasonably. “But don’t kid yourself. This isn’t about the differences between artists and dealers. This is about people treating each other respectfully.”
I had said all this with such calm and uncompromising clarity that now all I wanted was for this conversation to end. ‘Let her walk away.’ I thought. ‘Neither of us need more of this.’
“Look, Rita, you don’t need my absolution. You’ll do just fine without it. You’ll hang up the phone and go about your life like nothing’s happened. And if there’s a lesson for you in this then, that’s terrific. Take it to heart and don’t ever do this sort of thing to anyone else ever again. But don’t ask me to accept your apology. There are some things you can’t take back. Sometimes there are consequences.”
“Isn’t there anything, Stan? Just tell me what I can do.”
“Its too late.” I said. ”If you want forgiveness, look to yourself. I don’t forgive you, Rita. You don’t deserve it.”
“But, Stan, ….”
“What? What, Rita? What is there left to say?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Then goodbye.”
I sat there for a time in the warmth of the truck, my eyes closed to the sun. For months I had been traveling through treacherous waters, my calloused hands upon the oars of a clumsy boat. I had forced it, by sheer will, through rapids, clinging seaweed, and difficult tides to this moment. All resistance had suddenly disappeared and, released, I drifted effortlessly out onto the smooth mirrored surface of a still lake. In no direction could I see a shore.
Eighteen days later, I lay in the darkened bedroom of my friend’s house, sirens sounding in the city about me, and realized, much to my surprise, the substantial personal price I have paid for my belief in the power of art in the world. I have exercised tremendous faith in art’s ability to rescue me from my own personal demons. What if I’ve been wrong? All my life I have stayed focused on becoming a painter of substance. What if painting has no power to transform but is only a metaphor, a shadow of the real thing? What do I do with that?
I am at a turning point. I have no idea if I have been a great success or a total and utter failure. I don’t know how to measure it. There have been such monumental successes, the film being only the most obvious and public of them, yet I find myself at this strange crossroad asking this most basic of questions, “If a tree falls in the forest…..?”
……….
We spent Tuesday night in a redwoods grove. I love the fact that they call them groves; makes me feel like a hobbit.
……….
Wednesday night I crashed on Damian and Kelly’s couch in Arcata. That afternoon, while waiting for Damian to get off work, I drove several miles, then hiked a short distance over a sand dune to discover one of the most spectacular beaches I have ever seen. An infinity of sand stretched off in each direction, eventually disappearing into moist atmospheres. Surf sliced the shore in progressively layered and constantly moving tears upon the water. Cool winds tossed my hair and blew my jacket open like a kite. The gearing in my head went ‘click’ ‘click’ as tumblers fell into place. An hour later, as I climbed the hill back to the truck, a large group of cottages appeared across the road and my heart jumped. If I could, I would gladly stay here a month.
So I drove around the neighborhood, talked with some residents and found all these cottages were owned by a lumber company and, “No, not a chance I could get one for just a month.” Still, it’s a place to which I might return.
It was terrific seeing Damian and meeting Kelly for the first time. For several years Damian was my studio assistant while he attended The College of Santa Fe. Now he has become a Rastafarian potter and my friend, a good man with a great laugh. The three of us spent the evening over beers, sitting at their rough kitchen table in their tiny house, a wood-burning stove warming the room. They are living their lives as exuberantly as a young couple with few resources can. Bless them both.
Since Arcata, I have kept to the coast, the sound of the surf a healing tonic to my sore spirit. I am staying an extra day in a hotel overlooking a beach in northern Oregon. Last night I fell into a dreamless sleep listening to the persistent murmur of the gentle surf filtering through the open patio door of my second-story room.
stanberning 'about art' (the book)
