Art

Every year I look forward to "Art in the Square", the annual art festival Southlake, Texas.  Although I've had no time to write or even read lately, I made time for this, because every year I find a new artist that blows my mind.

This year it was actually two artists, the McDonalds, Sheryl and her husband Jimmy.  One could not walk by without noticing the colorful mannequins lounging around their booth.

As I stepped closer to appreciate the whimsy, I realized I was not looking simply at a painted mannequin.  It was actually perfectly decoupaged with hundreds of photographs.  Getting photographs to smoothly cover a human-shaped object is no easy feat.

But then I looked closer, and realized these were not simply colorful photographs.  They were photographs of paintings.  And what's more, they were all wildly different and yet seemed to me to have been from a single source.

In fact they were.  They were all Jimmy's paintings.  Twenty years-worth.  Photographed, printed on acid-free paper, and painstakingly arranged to balance color, subject, and composition over every inch of 'Ruby'. 

There was even at least one joke in the piece, a picture of a painting of a feather plastered to Ruby's inner thigh.

I used to appreciate art for how it made me feel.  Art like this frankly makes me feel lazy and inadequate, but I absolutely appreciate it.  So now I'm forced to change my mind.  I appreciate art that makes me look closer, look longer, and make discoveries.

I suppose I'm growing up.