Art Gallery

One of my favorite things I have written

Visiting the art gallery was just an afterthought. My orchestra’s performance at the high school fine arts night had just finished, and I decided that while I was still at the school, I might as well look at the creations of my peers and some pieces I had put on display.

I first went to see my drawings: a block of rosin to make your bow sticky when you need to play a stringed instrument, a judgemental pianist, a violinist living in his moment, a boy sitting next to the girl he likes but hasn’t yet told, a smiling kid being hoisted up into the air by a girl slightly shorter than him, a girl at a reunion with one of her family members, and a cellist who had just finished a concert with his friends and was now enjoying the afterparty. I drew them all because they were my friends, people I cared about, people I was lucky enough to get to know.

But in my drawings, you only see the faces. You don’t see the piano or the out-of-tune cellist receiving the facial rebuke. You don’t see the rest of the string quartet or all of the rehearsals and practice leading up to the moment of performance. You don’t see the girl laughing and holding her hand over her face shyly next to the boy she likes back. You don’t see the bold energy of the girl hefting the boy as a joyful show of strength. You don’t see the dear family member of the girl. You don’t see the party or the strengthened bonds the cellist felt that night. Instead, you may just notice a few dull imperfections: a mouth placed slightly too low, an eye that has been misshapen, an uneven jawline, a lack of rosiness in all of their cheeks despite the joy they felt.

As I skimmed my eyes across the other walls, I only saw drawings and paintings more skillfully crafted than mine. Why do my drawings deserve to be up here on this board, distracting the eyes away from drawings more worthy?

I quickly walked through the room, hastily examining the details of every drawing that had been created, trying to taste it all as quickly as possible so that I could leave, satisfied with my “appreciation” of the arts.

But then I stopped. I started from the beginning again. I walked back to the first table, full of sculptures of stuffed animals that had been created by a dedicated artist. When I first looked at it, I only saw a collection of ceramic bowls and animals, but as I examined the selection closer, I noticed details that I may have seen but never appreciated. The bowls were perfectly shaped, holding miniature paintings on the inside. One held tiny jellyfish, another was full of beautiful flowers, and the others were painted with their own, personal, unique characters. One of the animals had a cavity in its chest with a small mouth coming, an adorable rendition of the monster from The Thing. How was I so unconscious on my first viewing? I came to an art gallery to appreciate art, yet there I was, looking at it but not seeing, tasting everything but consuming nothing.

I continued onwards, now taking a closer look into everything I had skimmed past before. A drawing of a girl’s room now reveals itself to be a shelter, a place where she locked herself in during quarantine and spent her time drawing and expressing herself, finding deeper meaning in everything around her. A drawing of a young girl bundled in a large winter coat is found to have swimming goggles on her face to protect her eyes from the upcoming snowball fight. A drawing of a skeleton in front of bright colors revealed its comedic nature: the skeleton is happy. It’s holding a flower, it has a colorful object between its ribs, a soul, a personality.

But then came the questions, one for each unfinished, unseen story. In this beautiful, seemingly perfectly crafted drawing of a circle of hands, why were they all grabbing each other at the wrist or at the sleeve? And why were they all holding each other slightly differently? Why were this girl’s hands positioned slightly above her eyes and slightly below her mouth? Why was this musician, floating in space, wearing a sad mask, surrounded by glowing red Chinese characters, stuck in this desolate void? What were the multicolored eyes embedded in a wall of flesh all looking at? The questions kept pouring on and on, so many ideas, so many meanings, all confined into a small room, a room of impossibly deep thoughts and emotions.

I never got an answer to most of my questions. I became tired, and my legs no longer desired to stand and let my eyes look onward. I needed to go home and complete my chores.

As I got in my car to drive away, I put a song recommendation from a friend on the car speakers. It was named “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa”, performed by Vanessa Russell, brushed on a cello with two bows and propelled with her voice.

Before driving, I tried to find an answer to at least one of my questions with Google so that I may at least truly understand one work of art today. Saint Teresa of Avila was a nun who lived back in the mid-1500s, and her ecstasy was the mystical grace she received when her heart was pierced by an angel’s arrow of divine love. The love of God inflamed Teresa, which allowed her to be struck and her passion to be fully kindled.

As I drove away, I heard the rain softly padding down around me. I heard the warmth of the cello surrounded by the resonance of its plucking. Then, I felt it stretching and pulling, the crunch of reality pushing in on itself and stretching into the divine life of this woman of God. The Latin chant of the cellist blended into the voice of the cello, alternating smoothly between the two and warmly filling the car. And then, English:

“I must sing this so that God might show me the way. As I was singing, a rapture enveloped me and I was nearly carried away. This was the first time the Lord had granted me this grace of ecstasy. And I heard these words: now, you do not converse with men, but with angels.”

I was embraced by the waves of heaven emanating from the wooden instrument and left to resonate in space. Perfect intervals of vibrations singing out into space, divine and pure.

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I never actually finished listening to The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. I got home, and, distracted by the needs of the normal, mundane, living world, I set off to complete whatever tasks I needed to continue existing.

Sitting here, writing this, I am left with a realization. To visit an art gallery, when fully appreciated, is to glimpse into infinity. It is to be struck by a divine arrow, not of God, but of Art and Beauty. So many ideas, so much time, so much effort, all easily squeezed into a tiny room, a world of unknowable thoughts and emotions, a world of ecstasy that brings us away from the numbness of daily life. Hundreds of hours would not be enough time to fully appreciate and understand everything those walls held.

The visit to the art gallery left me trying to comprehend the breadth of the Infinity of Knowledge, the incomprehensible emotion of the world of ecstasy, and the untouchable purity of the world of the divine. Now, all I am left with is a feeling of numbness like the hollow, nearly empty shell experiences that I am.

I was not struck by that arrow. It scratched me the slightest bit, but it only passed through my rib cage with no solid object to block its path, leaving me alive to go home and do the living work that needed to be done, unaware of the angels all around me that I could commune with.