And it was a weekend of 'Abbot and Costello' moments for certain.
I arrived Sat in the early afternoon to the artshow to find the parking lot of where the show was held absolutely jam packed - first day too, no less! (This bodes well, me thinked) (...thunked...?) I found perhaps the last spot to park off in the way-back-and-beyond (I think cows graze there) and felt lucky at that! Then I walked to the waterfront to meet up with an old school chum at a local eatery (of which I got the name wrong of in my confusional state of mind mainly due to not knowing the area well.....thank all the new age tech for cell phones, is what I say! ) And after chowing down on a fine repast, we went off to see the show. It was so crowded, you had to perform a rather slow and delicate shuffle to maneuver your way from painting to painting. Not the most optimum for viewing pleasure but certainly a great stat for the art show itself. I had to shuffle walk around almost the whole of the venue's perimeter before coming across my own work.
Now, imagine, if you will, my complete bafflement when I finally found my painting and saw that it was not the painting I thought had been accepted.
Did someone make a mistake? Did I make a mistake? I was left with the same feeling I had way back at the age of 11 when after winning my first competition "Art in the Parks", had my work displayed at the Vancouver Art Gallery upside down. A kind of 'gee I'm happy to see it here but it's all wrong" ....I was really discombobulated.
Anytopsyturveyshakemyworldway, I eventually found out that it was the right painting, my confusion lay in the original submission process when a tag was labelled wrongly and I believed attached to the other painting submitted, thereby making me think it was the one accepted when it wasn't. (Great spinning eyeballs, are you following along with this? I think I'm even more confused now after writing that down....)
Yes well....now the 'strange twists of fate' part......on Sunday when I went to pick up the painting after the show close, I went through the well orchestrated but slow process of retrieval. The Artists are sent to a far room in the complex, where they must produce the identifying paperwork to get their piece (or pieces, as the case may be) They are then escorted to the work with an attendant who makes sure all papers are copacetic and away you go tra la la. However when I went to my painting I happened to notice a red sticker on the tag. A RED sticker means SOLD. This caused another discombobulation and the attendant didn't seem to have any idea if it was true or not so I was further escorted to another room where the sales desk was. They, d'accord, did not have the master checklist there of sold items so they didn't know either. Meanwhile (back in the original room) the art show folks were trying to locate me believing I had passed through and collected my work already before the person who bought it could actually claim it. (ok, no seriously, I'm feeling dizzy) So what you had going on was a rather crazy circular chase with me as the target. Eventually, we all managed to get straightened out; I met the buyer, we were all smiles and they told me; and this is the part I alluded to originally: "I bought it because it reminds me of my daughter and she has red hair."
The painting that I had believed was accepted had black hair, so if that painting actually had been the one accepted, and NOT the one that really was, I would not have sold a piece.
We're not done yet. Today when I left for home, I got a call from a good friend who lives in Ukee who had just sailed their sailboat down to winter moorage in Nanaimo. Could I pick them up on my way back to Ukee? Absolutemente, I replied, where are you going to be?
This, yet again, is where things went awry. At the tourist center he said. I'll find you I answered and away I went. It's about a 2 hour jaunt to Nanaimo from Victoria and I'm not really well versed in navigating that city. OF COURSE I got all turned around when I arrived there and even with phoning my friend, further mis-direction happened due to him sending me in the opposite way than I needed to go. AND he told me the wrong street name which his map had....but not the city street in reality. I drove here, I drove there. I finally just followed my instinct and found him.
It is a minor miracle I am here to tell the tale.
So there you go.....Abbott and Costello Go To an Art show And Pick Up a Friend........my life is a sitcom.
 |
| ANNUNCIATION - SOLD |
 |
| REVELATION |
* Abbott and Costello were a comedy duo from the 40's who were on early radio and movies. They had this routine that had one of them reading out the names of the players on a Baseball team line-up. It was quite hilarious because, as is so evident, with names like "Who",
"What" and "Idunno", confusion was great. That's where the title comes from.
No comments:
Post a Comment