Ringing…
Ringing
I remember that it was a pretty crappy day from the start – the weather had that annoying alternation between rain and sunshine that no one could dress to accommodate. I was inside most of the day because of the sense of refuge you fell when it’s pouring outside, and you are on the inside…. I just liked being in and watching the rain fall on all the unfortunates who had no umbrellas. The ground was sodden, and my mother called. Her incessantly irritating voice had been ringing throughout the house since morning, and not it was aimed at me! The words meandered around the corners of the hallways, went over the table, flew through the door, and slammed into my ears on the veranda. “Damn. What did she want now?
Forced to follow my aunt to the shop down the lane, I was walking outside in that after-rain burst of sunshine that comes with a streaking rainbow in the sky you keep looking up at. The wet air made me smell everything more…. Guess it wasn’t that bad to leave the house… The trees were still wet, and every so often, the leaves would shake and play the sly trick of releasing little water bombs on me below, fooling me into thinking that it had started to rain again until I realized that it wasn’t so.
We arrived at the shop, and the dampened air made the place smell musty. It was a bit hard to breathe inside the crowded place – each breath took more effort, and it felt like there wasn’t enough air to go around. The botched concrete floor in the shop was a sign of poor craftsmanship; it was uneven throughout, and had scattered, little potholes that held small pools of some brownish, polluted-looking solution. A patron in the shop was obviously disgruntled and proceeded to yell at the owner behind the counter. The displeased customer was tall, slender woman with a slightly elongated and short, natural hair. Her voice was unusually loud, and sounded strange coming out of her mouth. She spoke over the owner of the shop and made her point clear that –
Pandemonium broke loose… my ear had that ringing sound soldiers get when a grenade or something that loud goes off too close. The world around me broke into chaos – bodies were shuffling around, the little potholes spilled their brownish waters as people pushed and heaved – but all the noise around me was muted by that deafening ring inside my ear drum. I began to cry, looking around for a familiar face; I found my aunt’s meaty, slightly-wrinkled one with open hands telling me to “come.” She snatched me up, tucked me in her bosom – my face lay in that safe haven where a mother rests her child’s face as she clutched that back of its head to protect it from danger. Just then, several more gunshots rang off behind us, further down the lane, several feet from the shop…
Review of Hunter’s Gallery
Review of Hunter Photo Exhibit
When I first walked into the gallery, I was surprised by its size and emptiness. At first, I supposed the gallery to be a display of amateur artists’ paintings, but as I found out from the lady in charge at the front desk, that was not so. Consequently, I started to scrutinize the paintings more closely. I started to look for something connecting each set of pictures from each artist. What I noticed was that there is a general template that is represented differently on the canvas by each artist.
The first exhibit is a set of two paintings by Wolfgang Tillmans in which both paintings have their focal point skewed a little bit right from the center. It appears that the objects surrounding this focal point are people being swirled around and slowly falling into this “ditch.” One picture is red, and the other is blue. The red one appears more grim and claims more “victims,” i.e. – there are more objects swirling around the outside and down into the central abyss. The blue photo seems lighthearted and possibly represents the less-traveled path in life; its “winners” are much fewer, and there is no feeling of “doom.
The set following Wolfgang Tillmans’ is by Curtis Mitchell. In this exhibit, the two photos contrast when it comes to mood. The first photo emanates a feeling of finality; the objects in the photo are caught in a red conflagration, and cannot escape. The conflagration is slowly consuming each, and the situation appears hopeless. Conversely, the second painting shows escape. The objects appear to be “souls” ascending from some form of a pit. The choice to use purple may go as far as to symbolize bravery – a purple heart. These “souls” are rising from above what was keeping them down – oppression, discrimination, poverty, etc.
Albeit all the paintings in the gallery are great pieces, there is one that intrigues me more than any other. It is the fifth painting in Marco Breuer’s exhibit, and it is untitled. The piece features a white sheet of glossy paper with lone blue circle about an inch southwest of the center. The blue circle houses a black blotch on its inside that touches the outer perimeter of the circle; the blue is also “leaking” out of the circle, but only so much… it is like a small shadow casted by this circle. The painting fascinates me the most because my mind goes into many, varying directions when I try to interpret what the painting could mean. One direction suggests that the blue circle is a person who has something trapped on the inside, and cannot seem to reach out enough to get that bottled-up thing out; the small blue “leakage” shows the person’s futile effort to open up. Yet, another direction claims that the clean canvas is a world for this circle to explore, and that the shadow casted southwest of the circle shows the circle is progressing upward, northeast. However, in this direction there is no account for the black blotch!
The gallery at Hunter is a short and sweet experience. The room is smaller than what one would expect, but that makes it all the better; you get to experience the art without the annoyance of and the eventual boredom from having to walk too much. Anyone with fifteen to twenty minutes on his/her hands should definitely take a look at the exhibit, and spend some time pondering the meaning behind the paintings and what they represent.
Describing Cliche Images Without the Cliches
Can you guess what each image is describing?
The Almighty
Almost like a God on this day, it is omnipresent. Once it grabs you, it wrings you out, leaving you dry of any will power to carry on – you become weak. This God-like leech encumbers me, and it will not budge. Damn this, damn this! Each breath is harder. I can’t take it anymore… I think I am suffocating.
Sovereign and Her Empire
Thunder snapped, and the Sea obeyed his orders. The vastness that was once pleasing to the eyes is now a mad, unrelenting world. It churned and foamed, churned and foamed as if it were told to be angry… And, all this while, the Thunder snapped, and the Sea obeyed – a ruler and his mad world, now, both ruled us.
This Is as Natural as It Gets
The box is closing in evenly from all sides; the motion occurs in harmony because the process is natural. Everything around me is amplified, as if my senses reached their peak right before they were ready to fall off. Inside, everything is out of sync… wear and tear have taken their toll, and none of my parts function as well as they used to. Like every other system, this one has done its time… and its parts have retired.
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