Two Little Whos

"One of the best things about paintings is their silence - which prompts reflection and random reverie." -Mark Stevens

"Jean, the door to the storage room is jammed."
"Are you sure?"
-brief pause while our protagonists go the locale of said door-
"Hannah. This is the gallery. The storage room is over here."
"Oh. No wonder the combination didn't work."

Day nine. It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm doing a couple extra hours since Cynthia will be in New Jersey on Friday. It would seem that the doors in Brodie are all conspiring against me. It didn't help that I had absolutely no idea where the storage room was in the first place and spent a solid five minutes wandering around looking for a door with a combination lock. I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever planned Brodie was either addicted to Tetris or just deeply sadistic. The main point is that Brodie makes absolutely no architectural sense.

Jean and I are in the photography room, taking pictures of the collection.

"These are 1000 watt bulbs. Holy mother."

The process is pretty basic. There's a table covered with grey paper (neutral background), with heavy-duty lamps on either side. The camera screws in to this interesting elevator-esque contraption which essentially operates as a manual zoom. I simply line up the print and snap a picture. Unfortunately, this basic task has me standing on a chair in my socks, surrounded by very toasty lamps, and sweating profusely.

Poor day to wear a fashion belt. "Jean, the worst part of this is, I know if I take my belt off at any point during the day, I'm just going to have a ring of sweat around my middle. Which is both funny and gross."

Several of the prints were of our own dear Brodie, featuring students looking all chipper and college-y.

"Oh man. These are from the seventies. Look at that hair!"

The longer I looked at the photographs (i.e. the more pictures I had to take of them), the more I was struck by the thought that these cheery-faced students were my age when these pictures were taken. And now they are most certainly not. This seems like a fairly obvious statement, but to once again realize, oh hey, this doesn't last forever, is always startling.

I think that's another reason I love art. It never really ages. Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine with growing older, but it's nice to know that art will remain constant. Well, art and frickin' Brodie.