Wabi sabi

The UK's growth in wall-space does not keep pace with the production of new art, particularly with so few new houses being built. Each framing shop turns out enough pictures to keep them in business, but where are they going? And what about all the artists producing pictures in art colleges, night classes or for fun? Where do all these works go?

Some artists leave their work on street corners in the hope that someone adopts them. It's easier to leave paintings for street-cleaners than having to throw them away yourself. So many paintings that will never hang, the worm-casts of talent. So many people who've put in their 10,000 hours but can't make a living.

There's one life model in who works for a number of art studios here, and has appeared on some internationally-successful online videos. Kirsty might be the most drawn and painted woman in history. There is a story that she was in Thailand, wandering through Chang Mai, and a shopkeeper grabbed her, insisted she came into his shop. Above the drinks fridge was a picture he had painted of Kirsty.

Think about how many pictures of Kirsty have been abandoned. Some of them are left on street corners. She was once delighted to be shown a derelict hotel which had been turned into an exhibition about her. And on the Downs, in a particular patch of woodland, pictures of her have been hidden, a grove dedicated to her muse. The rain soaks the pictures, fungus consumes them, the colours fade and disappear, but Kirsty approves. It is better than landfill.

Background

This was another piece written for my regular writing group. In the discussion after I read it, one of the other writers said that she and her husband use their life drawings to light the fire.

I did once do the calculation about how frame shops stay in business. It’s the sort of thing I’d had to calculate in my physics degree. Given that the number of pictures being hung is not increasing substantially, then for the system to be in equilibrium, all the newly-framed pictures must be going somewhere.

I’d love to know more about this, but I figure that asking anyone would make me seem weird, so I wrote this story instead.

Recommendations

I was recently searching for something on Spotify and one of the suggestions was a podcast called ODB: A Son Unique. I listened to the first episode and consumed the whole series in a couple of days.

The podcast tells the story of Russell Jones aka Ason Unique aka Ol' Dirty Bastard. ODB was a talented rapper who had a reputation as a clown. He was one of the most varied MCs ever, who made a style of his unpredictability. His death in 2004 at the age of 36 was a tragedy, and followed years of police harrassment.

What I loved most about this series was its engagement with ODB's spiritual beliefs. He was a member of the Five Percent Nation, a radical offshoot of the Nation of Islam. The series does a great job of explaining Russell Jones' contradictions and why he was so loved.

In 2005, Michael Aggers wrote a strange and beautiful piece in the New Yorker's Wrong Number Department section called Not Dirty about another man called Russell Jones and how his life intersected with his namesake.