What I Want You to See

by Catherine Linka

  “Fine,” I say. “So what does inspire you?”

  Kevin reaches for his phone and taps the screen. “It’s a sculpture called Kinetic Rain. I saw it when I was thirteen and we were going through the Shanghai airport. I couldn’t stop watching it, so we almost missed our plane to Beijing.”

  “China? Wow. I’ve never been out of California.”

  “Dad was working on a hydroelectric plant, and I got to tag along.”

  The October sun is brilliant, but Kevin shields the screen so I can see the video. In a huge atrium, copper-colored raindrops the size of my hand slowly descend from the ceiling. I watch as they rise and fall, perfectly synchronized, moving as a wave, then a waterfall, then curve into a wing, and twist into a helix before they retreat into the ceiling. “How do they do that?” I murmur. “There must be a thousand of them.”

  “Twelve hundred actually.”

  Kevin plays the video again, pointing out the grid in the ceiling and the thin cables that raise and lower the raindrops. “A motor operates each drop, and all the motors operate off a computer program.”

  We move forward with the line.

  “So this is why you came to CALINVA: to create kinetic sculpture?”

  “Yep.”

  “But you must need to know a lot about motors and programming. How will you learn that when they don’t teach it at CALINVA?”

  “That’s why I’m at Caltech.”

  I peer at him. “I’ve obviously missed something.”

  “I wrangled a special deal. Engineering major at Caltech, art minor at CALINVA.”

  “No wonder you’re so normal.”

  “Normal. Ow. That hurts.”

  “No. It’s a compliment! You don’t get caught up in all the drama. Krell calls your work pedestrian and you don’t—”

  “Wait. Do you mean Krell doesn’t like my painting?”

  His face is so earnest that for a moment, I’m thrown, but then he bursts out laughing.

  We’ve inched our way to the front of the line, and Kevin nods at the menu board. “I’ll have two fish and three beef.”

  “Five? You’re having five tacos? The bet was for one.”

  “Have you seen how small they are? They’re like two bites.”

  “Yeah, okay, you’re right.” I reach for my wallet, but he stops me.

  “I’m paying.”

  “But I lost the bet.”

  “Yeah, but you admitted you were wrong and that was what I really wanted.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Walker.”

  “My pleasure, Ms. Reyes.”

  We put in our order and I grab a handful of napkins, then we move to the pickup window.

  “You know, dealing with the whole Krell-CALINVA thing is not as hard for me, because I’m not talented the way you and Bryian are,” Kevin says, very matter-of-fact.

  His cutting himself down shocks me. “You’re talented!”

  “No, I’m inventive. That’s different. And the art world doesn’t see kinetic sculpture the way they do other art. Chances are, my work will never be installed in a top gallery or museum. At best, it’ll be in a science museum or a corporate headquarters or a shopping mall in Dubai. So it doesn’t matter if Krell doesn’t like my stuff, because I expect him to dislike it.”

  There’s so much to process here, I don’t really know where to start. “I think you’re wrong about the art world not valuing kinetic sculpture.”

  “Did you see any at the Broad?”

  “No, but—”

  “What about at MOCA?” and he points to the Museum of Contemporary Art down the street.

  “No,” I admit. “But there’s that sculpture at the LA County Museum of Art—the one with the racetracks and tiny cars.”

  “One sculpture out of three museums. What does that tell you?”

  I frown.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “The shopping malls in Dubai are incredible.”

  “You’ve been to Dubai?”

  “Spring break two years ago.”

  I can’t resist teasing him. “How was the food?”

  “Unbelievable. The ghuzi—they roast lamb with pistachios and rice—” He looks at me barely holding it in. “What? I like good food.”

  The man at the window calls out our number and Kevin grabs our order. The paper plate he hands me sags under the weight of my tacos. The tortillas are laid out like yellow flower petals piled with meat and beans. Bright white slices of radish and green limes dot the plate. “I’m glad you insisted we wait,” I tell him.

  Most of the benches are taken in the little plaza next to the Broad, so we perch on a concrete planter and balance our plates on our laps. We dig into our food, not talking except with our eyes.

  Sauce drips down my chin. I wish I could feel the way Kevin does about Krell. I wish I could be immune to his attacks and just paint. But Kevin’s not on a scholarship, so he can afford to relax.

  He grins as he swipes slivers of lettuce off his cheek.

  I’d hoped the trip to the Broad would inspire me, but when I get back to the house, I face off with a blank canvas. The more I stare at it, the bigger and whiter and emptier it looks, so I shove it in the closet and pull out a smaller canvas board.

  I’ve avoided painting since Krell reamed me the other day, but tomorrow he expects us to show up to class with a painting that doesn’t have to be finished, but it has to be started.

  I flip through my latest sketchbook, looking for ideas, but nothing grabs me. Then I dig one from high school out of the closet and sigh when I see CALINVA doodled all over the back.

  I leaf through my drawings from last fall, shaking my head at how juvenile most of them look. A few pages later, I’m into sketches from last spring and can barely stand to look at them. Mom’s fragile hand curled on her blanket. Mom floating in a cloud of dreams. The beach where I waded in and scattered her ashes.

  I can’t paint any of these. I might as well strip naked in front of the class.

  The rest of the pages are throwaways from last summer when my hands were almost too cramped from cleaning to hold a pencil. Frayed scraps remain of pages I tore out: pen-and-ink drawings I did at the hipster dog park in Silverlake and sold for twenty dollars apiece to overly proud rescue-dog owners.

  By eight o’clock, panic’s a monkey biting my shoulders. What am I going to do? I can’t show up empty-handed to Krell’s class and score another black mark for the girl who should never have gotten the Zoich in the first place.

  The walls feel like they’re pressing in, and I have to escape. I step onto the porch and the cool night air lures me down the steps. The broken sidewalks here trip me up even in daylight, so I walk down the middle of the street. Dead leaves crunch under my feet, but the sycamores are still thick overhead.

  The houses are mostly bungalows with dried cornstalks lashed to their porches and peeling picket fences. Lights are on in most of the windows, and I slow when I glimpse a family moving behind the shades. They might be happy or they might be sad, but tonight those kids have a mom or a dad or maybe they’re extra lucky and have both.

  I’m almost to the corner of Mission Street when a Metro train clatters past the ice-cream place. Inside the store, people are lined up at the counter, bright as Popsicles, while outside on the unlit patio, a woman sits at a café table. Light from the window falls on the front half of her body, carving it out of the darkness. It could be a scene painted by Caravaggio if she wasn’t sharing her cone with a tame white rat.

  I can’t believe it’s Julie, because it feels like a weird coincidence that she’s all the way down in South Pasadena, but then again I don’t know where she sleeps. I turn to go back to the house, and I hear Mom’s voice in my head. It’s not a coincidence, it’s a sign.

  I roll my eyes at the heavens. Seriously, Mom? But a half block later I dig out my phone and pull up the pic of Julie. Her smile arrests me. What is it about her?

  God bless you! I’m Julie. I have cancer. Please help.

  I
stare at her sign and her smile and the way she stands so straight, her head held high, and I can’t make all the pieces work. I know without question she’s sick, and probably in pain, so how is it possible that this woman who lives on the street exudes a presence in this shot I can only describe as radiant?

  I feel a stirring in my gut. I need to paint her.

  The feeling floods me, but I fight it off. Bring a portrait into Krell’s class? Collin Krell who just sold a portrait for over a million dollars sight unseen?

  Yeah, right. Not unless I want my ass handed to me.

  I keep scrolling as I trudge back up the steps of the house and find a shot of the electric plant. Benita Newsom assigned us a study on color schemes for Color & Theory, so even though a part of me thinks that bringing Krell an urban landscape isn’t a great idea, the painting could satisfy both him and Newsom, and I can’t show up tomorrow with nothing.

  Back inside, I start to sketch the pipes and cables and decide to play with a tetrad color scheme, using orange as the dominant color with accents of red and purple. The muscles in my shoulders tighten as I prep my palette and mix the paint, and even though I try stretching and windmilling my arms, they won’t loosen up.

  The official title of Krell’s class is Painting Strategies 101, but every few weeks he likes to borrow a practice from the upper-level classes—group critique.

  I’m in my usual Monday-morning stupor, but it only takes a few seconds after I see the chairs rearranged into a circle for me to realize I totally forgot group crit is today.

  Please, please, please do not call on me, I think as I rush for the empty seat next to Kevin.

  “Ready to examine your peers’ work formally, philosophically, and historically?”

  Kevin’s so chipper, I feel like smacking him with my travel mug. “I’m ready as long as someone else’s painting is picked apart,” I say.

  “The point is not to pick a painting apart, but to conduct a deep inquiry that unearths a dialectic.”

  I glare at him.

  The chairs are in a circle, because we, the students, are supposed to do all the talking. Still, Krell’s seated at the front of the room like he’s the king or the head inquisitor.

  He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. “Tito and Reyes.”

  My stomach does a death spiral. Eighteen other people Krell could have chosen today, but he had to pick me.

  “Stay cool,” Kevin whispers.

  Across from me, Bryian sits next to Bernadette, combing his fingers through the leather fringe hanging off the sleeve of her jacket.

  “Our mandate in group critique is to understand a person’s work as deeply as possible,” Krell reminds us. “Mr. Tito will begin by describing the piece he’s showing us today.”

  David Tito puts a shimmery gray abstract up on the easel. “I was inspired by Thomas Nagel’s essay on consciousness ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ The painting is my attempt to express what I can never experience: the world through sonar or echolocation.”

  The painting is layers of almost invisible shadows and zigzag lines, pockets of dark, and pinpricks of light.

  My skin feels like pinpricks of light are boring through my sweater. Holy…I can’t believe I have to follow this.

  Bernadette throws up her hand, shaking Bryian’s off. “The artist’s color palette of gray, black, silver, and white reduces the world to shadow and bursts of light.”

  She goes to take a breath, and Bryian leaps in. “Yes, and by negating our color experience, the artist challenges us to visually experience the unknowable.”

  Several people nod in agreement, but Bernadette scowls at Bryian. Hmm. Trouble in paradise.

  I flip through my portfolio case in my head. The way to nail group crit is to show a piece with lots of detail or symbolism or a political stance so everyone can find at least one thing to say about it in the forty minutes it’s under discussion.

  Now Kevin joins the conversation about David Tito’s canvas with a riff on the physics of echolocation, which I can’t even begin to understand. Then the rest of the class adds comments about bats and sonar and how humans can or cannot grasp the experience of bat-ness and the limits of human sensory experience.

  And the whole time, Krell sketches quietly in a notebook, looking up every so often to see who’s speaking.

  Shit, shit, shit, I think, watching the minutes tick by. I haven’t brought anything good enough to show. I’ve got the painting I did last night, and some charcoal sketches, but nothing as polished or provocative as what they’re discussing now.

  Finally, Krell thanks David for creating a rich opportunity for discourse. David removes his painting from the easel, and Krell says, “Ms. Reyes, you’re up.”

  I pull the canvas out of my portfolio, and as soon as I set the painting of the power plant on the easel up front, I know I’m in trouble, because the room is absolutely silent.

  “I, um, am exploring the interplay of color, shadow, and texture.” I babble on about repeating shapes, flat surfaces, and the texture of decay, wishing I could shut up, but I can’t until at least one person says something.

  I glance at Krell, and from the way his mouth puckers, things are going downhill fast.

  Then Kevin raises his hand, and I’m so grateful I silently vow to be his friend forever.

  “Mr. Walker. Does Ms. Reyes’s canvas remind you of a notable American author, perhaps not Edgar Allan Poe, but John Dos Passos or Upton Sinclair?”

  I suck in a breath and dig my fists into my pockets.

  “No, can’t say that it does.” Kevin says it so lightly it’s as if Krell’s sarcasm went completely over his head. “I was going to say that the tetrad color scheme prompts the viewer to reconsider the aesthetics of the rusted pipes.”

  Krell sits back in his chair and drags a hand through his hair. “Yes, it’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  My knees lock. “Pretty” is the ultimate condemnation. It means pastel landscapes sold at craft fairs to women who want to match the color of their guest bedroom.

  “Pretty” is so mediocre it’s worse than bad.

  Bernadette and Bryian exchange a smile, and clearly the rest of my classmates are embarrassed for me, because Kevin’s the only one looking up. His lips move. It will be okay.

  Then, just when I think it can’t get any worse, Krell stands and begins to circle the room. “Questioning. Provoking. Agitating. CALINVA’s mission is carved into its very walls.”

  I know that what comes out of his mouth next will eviscerate me, and I grip the easel as the blood drains from my head.

  “This piece, this pretty little craft project, is insignificant and utterly forgettable. ART should never be insignificant. It should never be forgettable!”

  At last, Krell stops and looks from me to the rest of the class, and I brace myself for him to make an example of me.

  “Ms. Reyes,” he says, “until you risk failure, until you face the fear that there’s nothing uniquely creative floating in the intracranial recesses of your mind, until you express your ideas in a way that is not literal but entirely unexpected so our experience of art is altered—until then, your paintings will be a waste of paint and canvas.”

  I can’t feel the floor beneath my feet. I lift my painting off the easel and say, “Thank you, Professor Krell,” in a voice so strained it’s hoarse.

  I take my seat. It’s my own fault, I think, shoving the canvas into my portfolio case. But obviously Krell enjoyed humiliating me.

  He dismisses class early, and people start to leave, but Kevin hovers over me.

  “Krell hates me,” I mutter.

  “He doesn’t hate you,” Kevin says.

  “Right, he doesn’t hate me, he hates my paintings. But what does that matter when he’s going to fail me?”

  “Listen, I know you’re upset, but it’s going to be okay.”

  “Really?” I snap. “Easy for you to say. If you fail this class, you can get on your bike and ride back t
o Caltech. Your life isn’t over.”

  Kevin jerks like I hit him. “I guess that’s what it looks like,” he says, and backs away.

  Now I’ve done it. One of the few people I trusted to be my friend…

  I turn toward the wall as if I’m getting something out of my bag, because I can’t stop the tears welling in my eyes. How could I forget group crit was today?

  This titanic disaster was my fault, but Krell didn’t have to take me down in front of everyone.

  I’m angry. Angry at myself. At Krell. At CALINVA for bringing me here, where apparently I don’t belong.

  I wipe my eyes and go to stand up when Krell says, “Ms. Reyes, a moment.”

  He’s waited until everyone else has left, so what he’s going to say must be even more awful than what he said in class.

  I stand by my chair, because I need distance between us. Krell closes his notebook.

  “I was surprised you chose to submit that particular piece for group crit,” he says. “It looks more like an exercise for Color and Theory than an assignment for my class.”

  I don’t even know what to say, I’m so pathetically transparent.

  Krell doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Clearly, you are struggling. I advise you to find a contemporary painter you connect with, someone whose work resonates with you on an emotional or intellectual level, and study it closely.”

  My throat’s so tight I barely hear myself say, “So you want me to read about the artist and his work?”

  “No, ignore what the theorists and critics say about them. Get yourself to a gallery or museum, find a piece that speaks to you, and transcribe it.”

  I squint at Krell. I’ve never heard the term, so I don’t know what “transcribe” means, but I’m way too embarrassed to ask. “Okay?”

  “Hmm. You’re confused. The point is to think deeply about what the artist is saying and the nonconforming way they’ve chosen to say it.”

  I nod, still baffled, but trying to hide it in the face of his growing frustration.

  Krell takes a moment, before saying in an embarrassingly patient voice, “You don’t know what ‘transcribe’ means.”