I took an Art class at the University of Minnesota back in 2000. It was held in an old paint factory that reeked of turpentine and Paris blue. The teacher had us draw things. I hated to draw things, so took photographs of things that looked like what we were supposed to draw and turned those in instead. The teacher appreciated my devil-may-care attitude, so gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted in class, or in the entire building for that matter. Naturally, I gravitated towards performance art.
One morning I came very early, before sunrise, and hung 32 cheap umbrellas upside down with fish line from the studio girders. The teacher couldn't stop laughing when he saw it; but some busybody from the Dean's office was alerted to this brolly brouhaha of mine and decided there was a chance someone could poke their eye out on one of the sharp ends of an umbrella rib, so I had to yank each umbrella down and hand it off to a stoical janitor.
A week or two later I once again stealthily entered the Art building before the sun made its appearance. This time I blew up a hundred plus balloons and laid them on the cement steps leading from the first to the second floor. As sleepy students trickled in they initially tried to avoid stepping on the balloons, but then got tired of pirouetting and started stomping on them. This created a booming reverberation that someone took for gunfire. Soon the campus police had the building surrounded, and my Art teacher had to do some fast talking to keep me from being tossed in the hoosegow for terrorist activities.
You'd think this would cool my jets, artistically speaking. Not a chance.
Towards the end of the semester the teacher, whose good name I regretfully cannot remember, offered me a small side room on the first floor to exhibit some of my stranger whims if I so wished. It was painted dark purple, about the size of a broom closet. I accepted his challenge, immediately going to the Goodwill Store to purchase the largest glass fishbowl I could find. I swiped a cheesy pedestal from the basement, painted it black, put the bowl on it in the purple exhibition room, and filled the bowl with two gallons of cheap vodka. Then stuck a long straw into the bowl and hung a sign on the pedestal reading: 'NO UNDERAGE SIPPING.'
I had to replenish the bowl every other day, after carefully netting out all the dead flies (I'm sure they had a spiritedly happy demise.) The Art faculty began commenting on how cheerful yet inattentive their students were for Finals that semester.
I enjoyed taking that class, though it's debatable if I actually learned anything in it -- except perhaps to refrain from placing hundreds of inflated balloons on busy public stairways.
That artistic vagary lives still in me today. My last two goldfish died this morning, so I emptied the light green plastic sled I had kept filled with water for them. Then I went over to Fresh Market for 3 gallons of vinegar and a package of six ping pong balls. Now the light green pool is full of vinegar, with the white ping pong balls blown by the breeze into a huddle on the side.
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| My vinegar pool, with ping pong balls |
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| Readers are becoming passionate about my new book of poetry . . . |
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