Canvas Smolders
Sandy Kinnee
March 2021
A Fizzled Poem
Claes Oldenburg taught me to triage artworks.
He would work on a piece.
Then, turn his back on it, let it dry.
He would walk away, put it out of his head.
Time would pass,
enough for him to disconnect,
to judge
what he had done over a period of time objectively.
This let him perform triage.
From the accumulated artworks
Claes sorted them into two stacks and a pile.
One stack is made of pieces that are incomplete,
but hold potential, beg more work.
The other stack is for works
deemed successful and complete.
The pile was reserved for the shredded failures,
pieces that had fizzled.
Some things do not work out.
That is natural.
The Warmth of Art
As we nursed our coffee we
Noted the changing weather
Before you know it,
The temperature will drop and we will
Warm ourselves with the fireplace
Burning art does not keep us warm long.
A drawing or watercolor is at best useful
For igniting stretchers and frames
Which throw off some heat
Canvas smolders
A good wooden easel burns longer.
Paint brushes as kindling?
We will freeze if left to Art to keep us warm.
Burning books is no better.
Especially poetry books too thin to warm
the hands that
write them
On the Use of Art Books
When receiving large prints shipped on tubes, I would lay the artwork face down on the floor and flatten the tubular paper by stacking art books for weight. Generally it worked quite well. Sometimes I would have to spray a fine mist of water onto the back of the artwork to soften the paper and help it forget being confined to a shipping tube.
The other night while sitting on the edge of the mattress, the bed frame broke and I landed on the floor. I lifted the bed to find one leg bent and unrepairable. It was night and time for bed. As it could not be fixed I stacked four art books where the leg had been, exactly leveling the mattress.
Gauguin, Monet, Renoir, and Manet gave us a good night’s sleep.
A New Bedframe
Tonight we will sleep without the aid
Of Renoir, Monet, Gauguin, and Manet
We have a new bedframe
I stood the mattress on its side
switched the broken bed frame
for a sturdy new one
Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Gauguin
Came out from under the bed
And were shelved back
In the bookcase
Next to Toulouse Lautrec
who was not needed
For three long nights and days
The four artists held the mattress up,
parallel to the floor
Van Gogh could have substituted for Renoir
As their books were equal in mass
Vincent could not, however,
be relied upon to be stable
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