Art
T
oday, as I sit at my desk,
I am surrounded by ghostly
forms—sculpted figures
enshrouded in protective
plastic, their faces, arms,
hands, and fingers visible but hazily
veiled, as if floating just beneath
a watery surface, their bodies
suspended, souls asphyxiated. They
can’t breathe. Neither can I, not yet.
their glazed eyes scanning,
assessing, sizing us up. We stared
them down in turn, shining our
flashlights on them whenever they
came too close. There was no law
enforcement in sight and none could
be expected anytime soon. A friend
guarding a neighbor’s business
declared loudly that looters
would be shot on sight.
Through the dust in the air and the
sporadic noise of power tools, I try
to complete calls with artists,
clients, structural engineers and
contractors. Between emails and
texts, I urge the drywallers on, rolling
up my sleeves in frustration at times,
grabbing a spatula to demonstrate
how much more quickly holes and
gouges in walls can be mended and
filled—if one is sufficiently motivated.
I’m motivated. Each day that the
gallery is closed is more income lost,
more expense incurred.
What we found inside the gallery
broke my heart. Sculptures were
fallen, scattered and toppled
everywhere, some of them in pieces.
An elegant hand, snapped off and
missing a finger, lay in a corner
beneath a tipped table. The bicep
of a female nude looked as if
someone had taken a baseball bat
to it. Glass table tops and pedestals
were broken; paintings clung to
walls, precariously askew. Frames
of those that had fallen were nicked,
gouged. There was a gaping hole in
a painted figure’s hip. These pieces
are our children, the precious
creations of our artists, the progeny
they’ve labored so hard