Alfred slapped himself on the forehead and said, “Duh.”
I winced, but the other kids laughed along with Alfred. I figured if “sucks” is now an everyday word, maybe “dummy” is now a term of endearment.
Aleesha’s phone moved across her table seemingly of its own accord. She picked it up. Her thumbs tap-danced on its surface.
“Aleesha. Your phone is supposed to be off.”
“It is off. I’m just answering a text.”
“When I say off, that means off for talking and off for texting.”
“I can text and still listen to you.”
“I’m sure you can. But I can’t talk while you text.”
“Well, that’s a you problem, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “I consider it an asset rather than a problem.”
I removed two bubble-wrapped objects from the box and placed them on the table. I took the empty box and walked to each potting station and had the students put their cell phones in the box.
“You can have them back when the class is over.”
“This really sucks,” said Aleesha.
“You’re right.”
She smiled for the first time. It looked good on her.
“I am?” she said.
“Yes. You said my skill is making pots, and you were right. But I also have another skill—forging pots.”
That got their attention.
A muscular guy wearing a T-shirt with an iguana image narrowed his eyes and asked what I meant by forging.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Bruce.”
“I assume you’re an art major.”
“Yeah.”
“What does forging mean to you?”
“Like copying someone else’s work.”
“Exactly. That’s what I do.”
“That’s illegal.”
“You all know Manet’s painting Olympia?”
They nodded.
“Then you probably know it’s a redo of Titian’s The Venus of Urbino.”
“No,” said the bearded Hispanic guy, “it’s not a redo. It’s an appropriation. And Manet’s version was later appropriated by Yasumasa Morimura, who inserted himself as Olympia.”
“And your name is?”
“Raúl Zamoria.”
“Morimura’s Olympia is my favorite painting,” Alfred gushed.
“Of course it is,” said Aleesha.
Alfred reddened and lowered his head.
Raúl said, “Art history is simply the evolution of appropriation. Appropriation is creativity in context. Forgery is neither.”
I made a mental note not to get into an art-history discussion with Raúl.
I unwrapped the first object I’d brought in the box, a black-on-white olla with a swirl-patterned exterior and a rare bulbous neck. The students gathered around the table in admiration, asking if it was real, how old it was, where it was from, and what it was worth.
I told them it was genuine, from Tularosa, probably from the eleventh century, and worth about four thousand dollars.
“Can I hold it?” asked Albert.
“Only if you can afford to pay me four thousand if you drop it.”
The class laughed.
“I’ll take a chance.” He turned to Aleesha, who was looking at the pot over his shoulder. “Would you give me some room, please?”
“What? You think I’m going to push you?”
Bruce said, “Give the guy some room.”
Aleesha shrugged and moved aside.
Alfred cradled the pot softly in his hands then held it to his cheek before gently returning it to the table.
“You’ll make a good mommy,” said Aleesha. I winced, but everyone else laughed.
I unwrapped the second pot.
“Wow,” said the gawky kid. “You have two of them.”
“I didn’t get your name yet.”
“Nathan.”
“Examine the two pots carefully, Nathan, and tell me if anything strikes you as unusual.”
He bent over and eyed them from varying perspectives. “They just look like old pots. I don’t see anything unique about either one.”
“That’s what he wants you to notice,” said Raúl. “The two are identical. One of them is a copy. He forged it.”
They stared at me. Their new teacher—the short guy who couldn’t talk if they were texting—could make an exact copy of a thousand-year-old pot. Some of them had grudging admiration in their eyes.
The frail white student at the back of the group said, “Copying that pot is disrespectful.”
“Your name, please?”
“Apache.”
“Did you ever hear the expression ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’?”
“That doesn’t give you the right to copy work from another culture.” He had a reedy voice and jumpy eyes. “You should have included a trigger warning in the description of this class.”
“Is that like cautioning you to get out of the way of Roy Rogers’s horse?”
No one laughed. Too young, I guess, to know who Roy Rogers was.
“A trigger warning is a statement in the course announcement listing any materials or topics that might trigger an adverse reaction from a student.”
“Like I said, I’m not a teacher. I don’t know about these things. I didn’t write the course announcement. And even if I did, how would I know what might trigger an adverse reaction from any of you?”
“It’s not that hard,” Apache said, “if you’re empathetic. But obviously you aren’t, because you disrespect other cultures.”
“No. I copy these pots precisely because I respect them and the people who made them. I keep their traditions alive. That’s what this course is about. The traditions of the ancients—how they made their pottery, how they decorated it, how they used it.”
Bruce seemed interested in the exchange, so I asked him what kind of art he made.
“Metal sculptures.”
“Would you object to me copying one of them?”
“Give me an A for this course, and you can copy anything you want.”
Everyone laughed except Apache.
I held my fake aloft. “The only way any of you are going to get an A in this course is if you learn to do this. But to satisfy Apache, you’ll have to get the permission of the potter whose work you copy.”
“Why should we have to get permission?” asked Apache. “You didn’t have permission to make that copy.”
“Actually, I did.”
I put down the fake and picked up the original. “I received permission from the woman who made this one.”
“How could you get permission from a potter who lived in the eleventh century?” asked Raúl.
“Her spirit gave it to me.”
“Whoa,” said Alfred.
“Sweeeet,” said Nathan.
Aleesha rolled her eyes and said, “Right.”
I told them to show up on Thursday dressed in old clothes. We were taking a field trip to dig clay.
4
My class was scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays from two to four.
Milton Shorter was waiting for me after the first session.
Shorter was both name and description. He was four inches shorter than me. That and his delicate features and easy smile made him seem childlike.
His handshake was warm but weak. “I don’t have time right now to give you a guided tour of the entire department, but I’ll give you the nickel tour of this hall.”
It started with his office, big desk with a view of the mountains out the window. A silver coffee table with fossil designs etched onto its surface. View of an art gallery on a small television screen. Some paintings with pale diaphanous images. I had seen some
like them but couldn’t remember the artist’s name.
We went from Milton’s big office to the small metals studio and the aqueous-media studio, which were between the pottery studio and my office.
“It used to be the slide library,” he said of my office, “but all the images are digital these days, so we converted it to an office for adjuncts.”
The slide collection must have been tiny. The room was about four by six with a metal desk and a beat-up ladder-back chair.
He made a sweeping gesture worthy of pointing out the Grand Canyon, the effect of which was blunted somewhat when he banged his knuckles against the doorframe.
“It’s all yours for four hours a week,” he said. “I’ve reserved it for you one hour before and one hour after each of your class meetings. You might want to use the hour before as prep time and the hour after for office hours in case any student needs to meet with you. The department requires adjuncts to keep two office hours each week. And the bottom-right drawer is also yours.”
Wow. Four hours and a drawer.
I decided to use the hour prior to the class for office hours and one after as travel time to Dos Hermanas.
I’ve been making pots for over twenty years. I didn’t need any prep time.
I stayed in the office that afternoon so as not to offend my new boss. He brought me a blank ID card programmed to open the pottery studio, a green spiral-bound grade book and a red pencil. I put the ID card in my wallet and the grade book and pencil in my drawer.
I don’t know what he expected me to do with the pencil. I was teaching my students to make pots. There would be no papers to grade.
Maybe I could pencil a red-letter grade on the side of their pots.
Claustrophobia set in when I closed the door. When I opened it, agoraphobia replaced the claustrophobia. I’m not usually nervous about being in public, but the office was so small that it was like being in a display case. And I was the display.
Which reminded me of Susannah dragging me last year to a traveling show of the work of Duane Hanson, an American sculptor known for his startlingly realistic figures. Unlike the sculptures we expect in museums—idealized bodies such as the Venus de Milo or Michelangelo’s David—Hanson fabricates people you would be more likely to encounter on the crosstown bus.
They are creepily real, right down to every eyelash and freckle. Perhaps you’ve seen his famous one titled Tourists—a couple on vacation, overweight, unattractive and badly dressed. She in stretch pants, a scarf over her head, an oil slick of sunblock on her arms. He in Bermuda shorts, a camera around his neck, flip-flops on gnarled feet.
Susannah makes me nervous because she gets so close to the art that I fear she may be reprimanded by the guard. I violate ARPA with impunity (and a shovel and piece of rebar), but I’m otherwise a rule-following sort of fellow. As Susannah and I moved from one piece to the next, I avoided eye contact with a museum guard stationed in the corner. Although I didn’t look directly at him, he was in my peripheral vision, and I could tell he was staring at us.
I distanced myself slightly from Susannah. Let him scold her, I thought. She’s the one who keeps leaning into the pieces as if she’s about to touch them.
The closer we got to the guard, the harder it was for me to keep up the pretense that I hadn’t noticed him. So when we reached the piece immediately next to him, I turned and smiled at him.
He glared back at me.
I swallowed. “Nice exhibit,” I squeaked.
He continued glaring.
Then there was laughter.
Not from the guard. From Susannah.
“You’re talking to an artwork, Hubie.”
“I know that. I was just trying to be funny.”
“Right.” She moved to the first piece on the next wall.
I continued to stare at the guard. He was totally lifelike. Like one of those buskers downtown who dress up as Elvis or George Washington and stand motionless hoping passersby will drop a dollar in the box at their feet.
I wondered how hard it is to hold a pose and appear to be a statue. My picture-frame-size office seemed like a good place to find out. I looked around. The hall was empty. I took a deep breath and held it. I struck what I thought of as a pose—hands clasped on the desk, head slightly tilted, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
I had been holding my pose and my breath for perhaps fifteen seconds when I heard the footsteps. Had someone been watching my ridiculous performance?
Then I saw her from the corner of my eye. I decided to avoid embarrassment by just ignoring her. What did I care if she saw me lost in thought? Or if she thought I was posing? Let her just pass by.
But she didn’t pass by. She eased toward me warily, wide-eyed, bent at the waist.
I looked up quickly and said, “Hello.”
“Aaack,” she chirped, and jumped back. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry.”
“What the devil were you doing?”
“Sorry,” I repeated. “It was stupid of me. I felt weird in this small space, like being on display. So I was trying to see if I could look like a Duane Hanson sculpture. You know who he is?”
“Of course I do. I teach him.”
“Duane Hanson is one of your students?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I discuss his work in my classes. I teach 3-D.”
“Do you use those glasses with one green lens and one red one like in the movie theaters?”
She suddenly became quite stern. “Who are you, and what are you doing in the adjunct office?”
“I am an adjunct. I’m teaching ART 2330 this semester.”
“The one where the students are supposed to learn how the Anasazi made pottery?”
“Right.”
“Well, I wish you luck. The reason they hired an adjunct is neither of the pottery professors was willing to teach it.”
It seemed suddenly cold in my office. “Why not?”
“Afraid of being politically incorrect, I suspect. Hell, that’s what art is all about. If you don’t offend people, you aren’t making art. But the Tweedle Twins can’t grasp that.”
“The Tweedle Twins?”
“That’s what I call them—Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber. Their real names are Melvin Armstrong and Junior Prather, and they look nothing alike except for the beards. But creatively, they’re clones. The Smith Brothers, except they make coffee cups instead of cough drops.”
“I gather you aren’t fond of their work.”
“Their work belongs in Dollar General, not art galleries. I suppose I should introduce myself—I’m Helga Ólafsdóttir.”
Of course I didn’t know about those marks over the o’s. I learned about them later. But I could hear them even then, although it was not an accent I could name.
She was tall and sinewy with pale blue eyes. Her hair fell loosely to the middle of her back, gray strands mixed with flaxen. Her handshake was firm.
“I’m Hubie Schuze.”
“Oh my God! You’re the guy who sent Freddie Blass to prison.”
And I was so naive as to believe no one would remember.
“I didn’t send him to prison. A judge did that.”
“Yes, but you’re the one who proved he murdered Gerstner.”
“It wasn’t anything personal. I actually liked Freddie.”
“Don’t apologize. What I know about Gerstner, he probably got what he deserved. Too bad Freddie had to go to prison. He was a good department head.”
“What about Milton Shorter, the new department head?”
“Acting head. He doesn’t have the job yet, and I hope he never does.”
“Why?”
“He’s compulsive. The first thing he did on becoming acting head was develop a calendar of when everything is due—course requests, annual activity reports, syllab
i, midterm grades, attendance reports, final grades, committee minutes, et cetera. And he sends notes at the end of each month summarizing which things you turned in on time and which ones were late or not done. Artists don’t function well under bean counters. Of course, Milt is no longer an artist. But that shouldn’t mean the rest of us have to be as organized as he is.” She shrugged in resignation. “He must think he’s going to remain head. He ordered a big desk.”
“He seems nice.”
“He’s good at that. It’s how he manipulates people. Right now, he’s in campaign mode. He wants your vote for him as department head.”
“I don’t think adjuncts have a vote.”
“You don’t know this department.”
“You’re right,” I said, and seized on that comment to change the topic. “I don’t know much about art, but—”
“I know, I know,” she said, exasperated. “You know what you like. I hate when people say that, because they do not know what they like. You have to understand art before you are entitled to an opinion. Even your own.”
“Interesting point. But that wasn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say I don’t understand the terminology in the department. For example, what is aqueous media? It sounds like underwater television stations.”
She had an easy laugh. “It’s watercolor. But the Gnome doesn’t like that word because it sounds like something children can do. And they can. Better than she can, in fact.”
First the Tweedle Twins and now the Gnome. I wondered what derogatory nickname she would hang on me.
“I take it the Gnome is the watercolor teacher.”
“In title, yes. But she is no teacher. She wants to teach painting, but Wiezga won’t allow it.”
“Jack Wiezga? I thought he retired.”
“Yes. Five years ago.”
“And he still decides who teaches painting?”
“Remember what I just told you? Welcome to the art department, where adjuncts vote and retired people control who teaches. Here’s my advice—say little and pay attention to which way the wind is blowing. Any questions?”
“Yes. Small metals sounds like the ones you get if you fail to win gold, silver or bronze. But I suppose that isn’t what the small metals studio is for.”
The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey Page 3