WILD GOOSEBERRIES

At an informal gallery meeting held on a clear sunny afternoon at the Big Cheese Bar & Grille, several of us discussed over a sandwich and a glass or two of Beaujolais whether to adopt a theme for Scattershot Gallery's upcoming show. As usual, we sat around a table by the front window, where the eatery’s name was part of a sign that fanned out like a sunrise across the glass, through which busy traffic on Bardstown Road was visible. Orders taken and drinks having arrived, we engaged in the usual small talk and banter about art, food, and politics. I enjoyed the give-and-take. It made me feel young.

Did you read the article about Jeff Koons in Art News?

You mean the one about his stainless-steel balloon animals with mirror finish? I think he rips people off.

 I really think he’s innovative.

It’s all been done before. Why can’t he do something original?

Well, he’s influencing others.

Do we want to influence others or make our own statements about what we feel?

Our food came, and we began to eat.

Then Renee Griffith, who painted abstract landscapes by dragging a palette knife across the canvas, brought up the reason for our informal gathering. “I think our upcoming show should have a theme, and that theme should be food,” she said, her dark curls escaping from a headband.

That she had discussed this idea previously with Gustav Swimm was made clear when he instantly seconded the motion. “We’ll call the show ‘Delectable Arts,’” the always disheveled sculptor said.

My disdain for gimmickry was well known in the gallery. My friends and I had nurtured this gallery steadfastly for decades to promote local art and artists, not this food nonsense. The elegantly attired Larsens, who were my age and should have been my allies, however, were also in favor of the food theme.

Gladys, a ceramics artist who made nonfunctional sculptural pottery, said, “Good P.R. for restaurants and our gallery alike.”

“Win-win,” agreed her balding husband Glenn, a librarian and photographer, who digitized his black and white photographs, took them apart on a computer, and then put them not quite back together again.

 “If it’s food that you wish to discuss,” I said, “consider the Croque Monsieur sandwich I ordered. Croque, of course, means ‘to crunch.’ It’s made with Emmental from Switzerland. Some claim it originated as a bar snack in a Parisian café. Others—”

“For god’s sake, Audrey, it’s just a ham and cheese sandwich,” Renee interrupted, her gold loop earrings bouncing indignantly.

“And your proposal is just a joke, too, right?”

“Of course not. What people eat nowadays is a controversial news topic,” Renee said.

At this point, the aroma of toasting bread and melting butter that always filled the place grew stronger and more luscious as the owner, a sizable man in his fifties with a gray moustache, brought a sandwich to the table and sat it in front of me.

“Brian, you wouldn’t want to take part in all this food theme show foolishness, would you?” I asked.

“Hell, yes.”

“See there. The show will be timely,” Gustav said.

“It’s a cliché,” I replied, looking at him in his bill-less cap, wrinkled shirt, and jeans. He hadn’t always seemed so avant-garde. When applying for gallery membership, for instance, he presented several skillful drawings and paintings. But once a member, he took a new direction. In his first work, sculptured flowers grew out of a dumpster. In another, he piled up wood chips in a circle on the gallery floor, like a little volcano, with an American flag stuck on top. Oddly enough, he said he worked for a tech company developing software. But really nobody understood what he did.

 “Theme shows never work,” I said. “I mean, who does a theme show? Did Michelangelo ever do a theme show? Would Leonardo have agreed to be in a theme show? I don’t think so.”

“Well, I think the rest of the gallery will love it,” Renee said, and of course she was right.

                                                            *

Over my lone dissent, it was agreed that members would create works related to food, then partner with a local chef, who in turn would create a special dish inspired by the art.

“I shall make a cake,” Gustav announced.

The gallery would hold an opening for the city’s finest chefs on a Monday night, when many restaurants closed. Participating restaurants would feature the art-related dishes on their menus. The show would run for six embarrassing weeks.

This decision typified the newer members. Our gallery had changed over the years. The women of my generation took care of grandchildren, sick parents, or their own health and still had time to paint and organize public functions or an art gallery. But now they’d been replaced by younger working women, men, and fresh-out-of-college kids. We did have a few members who were not so young. But they painted bizarre portraits and never spoke up when some absurd idea was floated before the group. I was the only one who did.

While I never considered myself the grand dame of the gallery, as a founding member I was not without influence. But most of the younger ones would do anything to “bring out their own unique style and vision.” An art that would reflect wide cultural and ethnic interests, they said.

Renee, who knows everyone in town, volunteered to curate. She soon talked four of the city’s top chefs into participating. Thrilled that for once no one was asking them for a food donation, the chefs not only agreed but also encouraged other chefs. With the theme show rolling, I wanted to show that I was being supportive. I surprised Renee and Gustav by volunteering to handle the reception invitations.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I would try to create a food painting.

                                                            *

The wet painting in the studio was mocking me.

I formed a rectangle with my hands to isolate sections and see if one part worked better than another. If I had been painting a traditional landscape or a still life, I’d know if it was right or wrong. But this so-called food painting was different.

I put it aside and decided to work on something else.

I began painting from photographs which lay on a table in front of me. Some were of rising new buildings, others of decaying old ones. One grainy shot that I’d reprinted from the newspaper showed a hundred-year-old building that once had housed a uniform rental company and was about to be demolished. The two-story brick building had a mostly glass facade. But in the photo, it was set at an angle to the camera, revealing the barren side where two other buildings had already been torn down. Something about this one and others caught during the process of building up or falling apart made me feel in touch with their ghosts, their spirits. But I couldn’t capture that on canvas.

Back to food. At sixty-five, I was trying to do something like the young artists in our co-op, but I didn’t know how. The pierced, tattooed members in our gallery generally worked large with Sharpie markers, motor oil, and burnt bits of bacon, black on white, white on black, black on black. They painted on anything they could find—old CDs, clothes, walls. They mounted painted objects to canvas, as if painted on a canvas, or created shadows with tree branches.

But I couldn’t just drag the brush across the canvas trying to be as outrageous as possible, smearing anything from ketchup to cow dung, shaving cream to blood. Was it Picasso who advocated going back and painting like a child? That advice made no sense to me. I saw no merit in painting like a three-year-old. On the other end of the scale, photo-realism perplexed me. Why would anyone want to paint something resembling a giant photograph? But with that, at least, I knew what I was looking at.

What was I looking at now?

A carrot. A big orange stringy carrot. All by itself, in the middle of the canvas. I added black and white smears on the edges of the canvas. Choosing a ragged brush from the jar of almost ruined ones, I dipped it into a container of thinned green paint, then threw the brush loaded with paint against the large carrot painting to create slashes, dots, and drips. I watched as it dribbled to the bottom. Maybe I should turn it sideways and watch drips start turning in other directions. I stood back and looked at it. I put it the other way. Perhaps a little splatter of red would help. I squinted, isolating sections with my hands. I put the canvas down on the floor so it wouldn’t drip anymore and hoped it would look better tomorrow.

But it didn’t.

In no way did it resemble food. I couldn’t submit that for the theme show. But by now I was determined not to sit this one out. I searched my stock of paintings for anything that related and—voila—an old but lovely painting of gooseberries in a bowl. Only I needed to know I’d submitted an old painting.

                                                            *

 Work on the food show proceeded. Gallery members brought in their food-inspired pieces. They prepared name tags. When the invitations for the reception arrived, they were perfect, and the other members loved them. Membership required everyone to work in the gallery on a regular basis. While some members shirked their duties, I was always first to sign up for my two monthly shifts at the desk. That was where I sat on the afternoon of the opening while others fiddled around, straightening the paintings and sweeping invisible bits from the floor.

About three hours before the opening, Gustav, who’d been secretive about his cake sculpture, finally brought it in and put it on the large pedestal he had reserved for himself. When Renee went to pick up some last-minute supplies, I was left alone. I walked around Gustav’s piece. He’d sculpted a four-layer chocolate cake with herbs on top and placed leaves, twigs, sticks, and seed pods around the bottom edge. In his artist’s statement, he mentioned using natural materials—earth, peat, and potting soil. It was earthy. Too earthy for me. Almost manure.

By the time Renee and several other members returned, an unpleasant odor had spread through the gallery. As soon as Gustav’s cake was identified as the offending culprit, everyone

scurried around the gallery's little kitchen and restroom looking for an antidote. After doses of baking soda, coffee, and air freshener were applied, the offending odor gradually dissipated and everyone seemed relieved.  

Convinced that nothing else could possibly go wrong, the other members went home to put on their party clothing, leaving me to mind the gallery on my own.

Forty-five minutes before the chefs were to arrive and make their selections a tall man with a thick Gallic accent stepped in and introduced himself as chef Marcel Aubergine, of Cafe Cosse de Pois. With the chef of such an exclusive restaurant standing right in front of me, I envisioned exquisite food, impeccable service, and music by Vivaldi.

“Please allow me to show you around, chef.”

Naturally, I tried to nudge Aubergine toward my “Wild Gooseberries” painting. But wait. He was stopping at—no—Gustav’s horrid cake sculpture.

“What’s this?” Aubergine asked.

“Chef,” I said, “it's made of dirt.”

Aubergine circled the cake, viewing it from every angle. “How unusual.” He started to read Gustav’s absurd artist’s statement, but I grasped his arm firmly and led him away.

“Let me show you something you’ll find more appetizing.”

“I am in ze hurry. This one will do. I tell my pastry chef to make cake from coffee ground. Leetle joke. Dirt? Ground, eh?”

“Sorry, that one’s already taken. You’ll like this one better.”

I steered him to “Wild Gooseberries,” which I’d painted to look like an old master, dark with mysterious light illuminating the berries. I especially loved how a little spot of water reflected off one. I’d put it in an ornate gold frame, whose intricacies suggested old world style.

“Wild gooseberries are usually green. But as you can see, sometimes it has red variants and deep purple berries,” I said.

“Oui,” Aubergine murmured. “Duck and gooseberries—a match made in heaven. Rather traditional, but with this I think I can do something.”

Once I’d gotten the chef out of the gallery, I tagged his choice.

Other members arrived with hors d'oeuvres: mini goat cheese tarts, puff pastries filled with country ham mixture, and an apple tarte Tatin. We ate with our fingers, since nobody thought to bring forks. I had been too busy for anything more than chips and salsa, but I put them in lovely ceramic containers. Someone donated an exquisite pistachio liqueur, which we sipped from tiny plastic shot glasses while exchanging bon mots. The food and wine made the opening pass quickly. By evening’s end, “sold” tags appeared on almost every piece of art.

“Can’t wait to hear what you two come up with for next year’s theme,” I said.

But Renee and Gustav were too caught up in themselves to notice. Her abstract painting of raw seafood on rice would hang in a local sushi bar, while Gustav’s infamous cake surprisingly went the Big Cheese Bar & Grille. Whereas, I would bask in glory at Cafe Cosse de Pois, enjoying my painting while feasting on the chef’s crispy duck breast on a bed of wild rice with gooseberry sauce and sweet peaches.

We were finishing the clean-up when I overheard Gustav saying, “I’m so relieved they didn't pair me with Aubergine.”

“Why?” Renee asked.

“His stuffy, overdone restaurant is so outré—and almost empty the last time I went there.”

“You’re right, Gustav. No one goes there anymore.”

I put this down to petty jealousy and envy.

 The food show was only up for two weeks. Then the chefs took the art and began creating their culinary masterpieces while the public buzz was still strong. After six weeks, those guests who had bought the pieces could take them home. I was so excited that my work would be in that lovely restaurant. The others would have to see that excellent traditional art always wins. Once again I heard Vivaldi. 

The gallery was empty when I arrived to take down my painting and wrap it for delivery to Chef Aubergine. I couldn't help but admire the luminescent glow of the berries and the rich colors in the background. As I carried the painting to the gallery prep area where we keep paint and other supplies, I decided to phone the restaurant and see if they were open. The phone rang until a recorded message said it had been disconnected.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Renee and Gustav were right. I banged on the counter over and over. Damn, damn, damn.

I stopped banging only when I heard a small splat and found in the middle of “Wild Gooseberries” a tiny neon blue paint can, with an open lid. 

“Oh my god,” said Gustav, who had come in and was standing behind me.

He stared at the painting. “How rad.”

I turned and there was Renee.

“What a fantastic statement, Audrey,” she said.

© 2024 Rick Neumayer

“Wild Gooseberries” will appear in the forthcoming THREE FOGGY MORNINGS: Stories by Rick Neumayer. If you liked this one, I’d love to hear from you.