Sold the big one, the 70x100 with the net mark, and I cried in the car park
A woman came to the studio on Saturday, spent maybe twenty minutes in front of the biggest cyanotype I have, the 70x100 with the net dragged across it, and then said she wanted it for her hallway. I wrapped it in the paper I always use and she carried it out herself.
Then I sat in the car for a while before I could drive. Not sadness exactly. That piece was on the wall behind me for eleven months, through two winters, and I had got used to turning round and finding it there. Now there is a pale rectangle where it hung, and the wall looks undressed.
I have sold work before. This one was different, I think because I had almost stopped believing it was any good. It came out of a morning when nothing worked, the solution was old, the sun went in, and I nearly rinsed the paper and started again. I did not. I hung it up to dry out of habit and it was the best thing I made all year.
Anyway. The car park behind the studio smells of diesel and there was a man loading tiles into a van beside me, and I just sat there with the empty tube on the passenger seat.
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Eleven months on the wall behind you is a long time. You stop seeing a piece as a thing you made and start seeing it as part of the room. A pale rectangle is a real thing, not a sentimental one.
I had a welded piece sit in my shop for a year once, walked past it every morning. When it went out the door I felt the same and didn't have a word for it. Nice that she carried it out herself, though. Anyone who carries a 70x100 out under their own arm wanted it.
The welder gets it. I had a big coil-built face piece sat on my shelf for almost a year, it was basically furniture by the end, and when it sold I spent a week looking at the gap like something had died. Weird thing is I don't miss the good ones half as much as the awkward ones.
The carrying it out herself part is the best detail in the whole post, honestly. Someone who hires a van doesn't love it yet.
The awkward ones. Yes, that is exactly it and I had not put it into words before. The ones that fought me the whole way, I think I keep looking at them because I am still not sure they are finished. The good ones let go of me. The difficult ones never do.
And you are right about the van. She held it by the edges with both hands and went sideways through the door, and I thought, good, it will be looked after.
A year of walking past it every morning, that is a different kind of intimacy than mine. You had it in your hands, in the shop, in the work. Mine just hung there quietly behind me and I only noticed it when it was gone.
And yes, she carried it out under her own arm, into her car, and she was careful with it in a way that told me she already knew where it would go. That helped more than I expected.