Sorry I've been away for a while but the doctors now say I'm safe to be on the streets again. While I was gone I prepared the following. It's not complete and a little weird but it is high art. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Here goes...
I stepped off the glideway onto the pavement in front of Burble and Gleep’s Art Showroom near Juno Station’s transport center. Smitty had convinced the owners to display his latest work and I had promised to come by and have a look.
Now, Smitty was an artistic dreamer who put more aspiration than perspiration into his work and while he had a small clique of devoted fans they were mostly fringers; people who balanced on the edge of sanity and cleanliness. This suited Smitty just fine, for any praise was good praise, but his true dream was to “give birth to the next new wave in art” and “hold the worlds in awe.” He had in fact come close once with a style he called Nova Nouveau which on the evening of its premier was well received. That night Smitty was the toast of the local art world, rubbing elbows and other bits of anatomy with the crème de la crème. By morning however, after they had slept it off, the noses and proboscises of the critics were back in the air sniffing derision. When I saw him the next day and suggested he was an “overnight sensation” he didn’t laugh.
As I entered the double doors of the gallery I was immediately confronted by the mass of pink feathers and refracted light that was Turgula Gleep, a broad, stocky, toad-like woman who had the fashion sense of a dazed flamingo that had been rolled in a bin of rhinestones.
“Dahling!” she shrilled. I swear her voice could cut polyglass. “We haven’t seen you in ages. What brings you to us today?”
“Just here to see Smitty’s stuff. Is Glipso around?” I asked hopefully.
Turgula pursed here wide lips and gave a disappointed look. “Oh, the old fuddy is here somewhere. Check the back.”
With a private sigh of relief I left her and picked my way toward the back of the cluttered gallery. Glipso and Turgula’s tastes were said by most people to be eclectic, but “eclectic” is just a polite way of saying “haphazard.” You could find anything from ancient iconography to ultramodern plasmatic dioramas in Burble and Gleep’s. There was even some offworld stuff. Like the Turgorian scent painting I wandered too close to. After my nose forgave me and my vision cleared, I rose from the floor and managed to stagger the remaining few meters to the gallery’s storeroom where I found the gallery’s other owner, Glipso Burble.
Glipso had once been an artist himself in his younger days. But at the height of his popularity he created a series of paintings depicting various barricades and roadblocks which he called “Obstruct Expressionism.” During the subsequent riot a mob of people broke into his studio and plucked the bristles from all his brushes. Glipso was forced at palette point to promise never to paint again. Can’t say as I blame them.
As I entered the storeroom Glipso was overseeing the maneuvering of a large display piece by two very large workers…
And that's where I stopped. The room was spinning and I had to go lie down. Ooooh it's happening again...
I'm Karl Fogsen. Thanks for reading.
