She walked out one morning and the whole sky was alive with fists of cloud that caught and burnt in the sea’s reflection. Behind her, the house trapped the glare and lit prisms of purple polymer from within. She stood there like a god in Her own land and let it all wash over: the warmth, the light, the wind.
Her work was completed. It was imperfect in all its myriad ways. Some sections didn’t fit, others were self-absorbed. Parts of it repeated just so.
She went through the final walkthrough. Down a hallway, to the left, and then, by some miracle, she was right back where she began. She turned and walked again, through rooms seemingly too large for the house, past others with vast matte walls making full use of negative space. It was like walking through the rays of an alien star.
Her first artwork to gain any real attention was a typewriter in which each letter, pressed, sent up a spike of metal to pierce the finger. It became a cult object and travelled the literary underworld in the hands of indie presses and nightshift workers riddled with amphetamines.
After that she became a vehicle for art, sucked into the underground scene then spat out into business design. She crafted company emblems and large stone sculptures to suit contradicting demands from general managers with grey offices. Her artistic spirit failed to survive under the weight of newfound income.
One client wanted a sculpture in a lawyer’s office. It had to be rectangular, grey, a plaque at the bottom, something out of 2001 after having passed through several cycles of corporate training. She hid a timer inside the piece to start a chemical reaction after a year, to dissolve and reveal a mural, graffiti copied from a downtown back alley with several tasteful sexual references added at her discretion. The office lost some clients, and she lost her reputation. Her manager at the time, Margaret, who was in her mid-fifties, screamed and filed a restraining order.
The underground scene rejected her because she’d sold out, which to them was unforgivable. Even after producing the most extreme artworks, catered for the community, she’d just become another kind of sellout. She felt out of place in the basement clubs, surrounded by young faces who knew her story.
She felt inspired by these interconnected scenes in her life, one situation flowing into another to create an entirely different outcome. She used an alias to show off fluorescent Rube Goldberg machines in small rooms under a black light, where intricate moving parts would fan smoke into patterns above everybody’s heads. One such contraption sent a paddle-like wheel down a wire ramp, turning as it went, generating a charge that lit up a sequence of LEDs that matched the dreamy music pouring out of nearby speakers.
So many objects each with their own story worked together to create something new. She wanted that for herself. A return to form.
Walking down the street one night, after a string of successful shows, she could see the surfaces rushing past as the world had hollowed itself to reveal a new medium: No ideas but in things. What separated a thing from a person? What made someone whole, a mysterious force, a soul, emerging from the inside out? Objects placed just so, the right objects, could evoke something new.
She ducked through a doorway into a Japanese nail salon. There were girls in there on endless rotation shopping for something deeper, for them, than God. Along the walls were fern-fronds and tiger-stripes inset with jewel after jewel. She browsed, left, and passed a customer who had sent the lone employee out back for a kitschy holy grail. Enticing: on the countertop were luscious sweeping shades, silver framed with bubblegum lenses. Into her pocket they went. On the street she picked at her cuticles, looked both ways. She put the glasses on and saw herself in the window of a passing car like a bird of paradise on a dollar store hologram.
She wanted an artwork she could live in, a work in which she could drift from room to room in her own time. And so, the house was born. Inhabitance.
She bought an anonymous mansion on a private island in the Florida Keys. Her manager, Maurice, balked at the idea: “Are you even serious?” He was bald, with the whole Foucault look going on. His cologne was supposed to be something exotic but instead smelt faintly of vomit, the effect of which always made her gag. They were in his Manhattan penthouse, a property funded by a bit of crypto money and a bit of oil. Select works of Egon Schiele decorated the walls.
“Entirely.”
“What about not being sincere?”
“Can’t I be serious but insincere in my art? Seriously insincere.”
“You want it to be shit? Artifice on artifice?”
“It’s an experiment. I’ll see how it turns out.”
“You always overcook it.” On which he didn’t elaborate but meant she had her funding.
Weeks later, she drove down past the McDonalds’ litter and spring breakers one humid day. She hired a rusted boat to tow all her belongings to the island. The captain wore a blue bandana with white pirate ships like little clouds lost in the greasy storm of his hair.
The island smelt of vanilla and lime. There was a pool with a deck area. The water in the pool lit up the perfect shade of sapphire, and was shaded by giant versions of the umbrella’s found in a dive bar Martini. There were lawn flamingos pre-installed between the sheltering trees. The garage was full of inflatables and housed a quad bike with flames wrapped across it. Its engine wouldn’t start.
She cleaned out the wardrobes and cupboards. In future, clients would be able to rent the house out, live inside it for weeks at a time to get the full experience. For now, to remove herself, remove any lingering taste of the outside world, she wore only grey sweaters and track pants, ate only soy milk, cereal, and protein bars, topped up with supplements. It was bland with a side of boredom. Creative energies filled the humid air.
Work started on the house. Walls were removed and replaced with sheets of acrylic. Her Goldberg machines were cannibalised and repurposed into murals and sculptures. The kitschy sunglasses were hung with others like them in lieu of a chandelier. She thought about setting up an elaborate Ballardian crash to obtain the specific tint of a taillight from a 1975 Thunderbird. An old man a few blocks in from the coast owned one in creamy turquoise. The staging of the crash included the rain splashed contrast of the streets at night, the burning sodium lamps along the freeway, and the breeze stirring the palms. She could taste it, the gravel between her teeth. It was too much. She opted to order the taillight online, watch it have its own adventures through the ’tracking’ window of her computer. She was oddly proud when it spent months circling a part of rural Germany and never arrived.
Moments and objects collected over the months and her collage emerged.
Walking through the halls of plastic and pink reflection: she was here. She was alone. Inhabitance beat around her, its many veins, tributaries, and cells created a womb. Perspective changed with each step. Outside, a storm brewed off the coast. Light poured from above, the same tangible quality as the clouds and the water, which all churned together like mixing paints. Inhabitance enticed her back.
She rang her manager one morning, her feet in the ocean, her half-eaten breakfast at her side. “It’s complete.”
He and a select few from the gallery flew out in dark suits, chartered a boat, and arrived in the evening hours with cocktails in hand.
She wore a flowing red dress and smiled when she saw them.
“Could you describe it to us,” one of the men asked. “The overall effect of it.”
“It’s a personal piece. I hope, walking through it, you’ll get a sense of me. I’m so glad it’s finally finished, that I’m finally finished.”
“So, it’s a representation of your internal spirit, your soul?”
“In a literal sense, yes.”
2021