By Kate Watters
Last summer we suffered a large water leak that went unsuspected until a catastrophically expensive water bill showed up in our mailbox. Much later we discovered dampness in our crawlspace, where I stored my old art portfolios.
The “greatest hits” of my entire artistic life were in various states of moldy ruin.
As I sifted through the devastation, I saw vivid images of a developing person and pieces of my old selves falling away.
Portrait of my sister Kara taken from her school photo
Inspired by Picasso’s drawing of Igor Stravinsky, I tapped into my right brain and let my hand on the page guide the pen. Many of those contour drawings the likeness is preserved despite the wandering line. My sister is looking down, shy but half-smiling, with her small, buoyant breasts exposed, shedding her teen self for that of a young woman. I did these portraits while hiding out in Mrs. Turek’s high school art classroom, where she let many of “her little hot dogs” go wild with so many mediums, listening to music, complaining about other teachers and the status quo. She threw kindling on my small artistic fire.
The nude pastels from my first year in college were smudged from live models that posed during classes with Professor Vaino Kola. He was a short, strong Finish man in his 50’s with a close-trimmed beard and sparkling blue eyes who taught me as much about politics and American history as he did about art. Vaino had a thick accent and a stark sense of humor, like the landscape of his childhood---which he continued to paint on large canvases. I remember his commentary like Obi-Wan Kenobi whispering, “Use the Force.” The year after I graduated I visited him in his retirement on a rocky island in Maine. We went to an informal figure drawing session one evening, and where several quick, loose and playful conte crayon images emerged.
The images from my first photography class in college are all of naked friends and family members who I convinced to pose nude for the sake of art. When my sister visited, we broke into the 150-year-old administration building that had an impressive curving wooden staircase. She disrobed and I wrapped her lower torso in a white sheet. After printing the negatives in the darkroom I made a collage of her image with no arms, a play on modern-day Venus. My roommate, Jessica took her clothes off in her mother’s Boston brownstone filled with Saturday morning light. In the photo she is holding her Siamese cat across her full breasts, both with heads thrown back. I remember the defiance I felt when my conservative professor critiqued my intimate pairing of human nudity with an animal.
The best were of Guy, who was one of the only 30-something black, gay male students at our small, private liberal arts college. He wrote stories that blew everyone away. His body appeared to have been chiseled from the trunk of a tree or sculpted from clay. His skin played off of the wood grain in the campus church pews and my antique shipping trunk, lit by angled winter sunlight. I recall Guy’s giddiness stripping down in the face of God, unfettered by what the rest of the world thought.
When I moved West, I inherited my dad’s Nikon F camera and took it down the Colorado River with me for the first time. Still setting up makeshift darkrooms in closets, I paired my negatives of waterfalls from Elves Chasm with the arch of Guy’s back. At that time I was exploring an entirely new frontier, both literally and figuratively.
The self-portrait from that same time in charcoal is of my face staring directly ahead with one side in dark shadow, the other in light with my visible eye wide and staring unflinchingly ahead.
I did not lose any great art in this moldy debacle. What I lost is the map I created to myself. As I toss each ruined piece, I see the person I was when I carefully explored each medium. The subject matter reveals the people who ushered me along my visual path—my trusted cadre who were unafraid to be experimental alongside me.
By losing this work I might not be able to revisit those moments again with such raw clarity. The memories are lodged deep within our psyches, the imprint of who we are today.
Now with the slate wiped clean it is time to begin a new chapter of exploration. The future is bright and blank like the empty canvas.