Chapter 5: Poor Maven

“WE’RE SO GLAD you made it here!” Mom said. “I heard they were shooting a scene from the movie up there and the highway was blocked off.”

“It was done before we left and traffic was moving again. It was backed up more than an hour in each direction, though. It’ll probably be slow going there all afternoon,” I said as I hugged my mother. Dad already had Toni in his arms and was swinging her around. Kat was hugging my girlfriends and finally got to me as Mom moved to greet everyone else.

“Happy birthday, big brother,” she said.

“What? I’ve advanced from big dork to big brother?”

“Yeah. Well. You know, it’s hard for a dork to call someone else a dork.”

“Now, who’s been calling you a dork?” I demanded.

“Me. I’m doing all the same dorky things you did.” She lowered her voice so only I could hear her. “And I’ve got a girlfriend as pretty as yours, too.”

“Hmm. How did I already know that?”

“Yeah, I know, right?”

We all ended up talking at once. Mom and Dad had arrived in Stratford after the big break up, so they knew Beth was no longer with us. They were really happy to see the rest of us together, though. I think they had a hidden fantasy that I’d marry Patricia and make Toni their real granddaughter. I don’t think we’d have treated them any differently, though. Toni thought of them as Gamma and Gampa, names that I felt would stick, even though she was speaking so well she could have said Grandma and Grandpa just fine. It kind of went with her recent habit of calling me Daddy. I wondered if Patricia had encouraged that.

It was Saturday night and Dad made my favorite beef stroganoff. I found out Kat had made the German chocolate cake. She’d done a good job of it, too. There were cards from all the family, including nice cards that Naomi and Deborah had sent.

“I had to quit the job up in Huntertown,” Dad was explaining. “Doctor said the commute was making me sick. I know people commute longer than that in Chicago, but I did what he said and I’m feeling better now.”

“Have you found work closer?” I asked.

“Yes. Doesn’t pay quite as well, but it’s a good job. I’m doing wiring and electrical troubleshooting for a farm equipment company. Not too strenuous, and steady work,” Dad said. He still looked older to me than I always thought he was.

After dinner, Mom asked me to go for a little walk so she could show me where they planned to build an educational wing on the church. I grabbed my camera, thinking that was what she really wanted. It wasn’t.

“I’m worried about Katherine,” she said as soon as we were out of earshot from the house.

“What’s wrong with Kat? She looks just fine.”

“I think her friendship with Julie might be more than just friendship,” Mom sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

I think Mom must have been the only person in the county who didn’t know that. It must have come as a real surprise to find out that her daughter’s sleepovers with her best friend weren’t entirely sleeping.

“Um ... Mom, why do you need to do anything?”

“Well, it’s not right. She should be talking about boys and begging us to let her date. Your father thinks she’s just the best girl in the world and no problem like her sisters were.”

“I agree with Dad. Mom, you have to tell me if you think my life is not right. I know my family is different than pretty much everyone else I’ve ever known. It’s certainly different than I was raised to believe. But you’ve never hesitated to welcome my girlfriends. I know you love Patricia and Toni, but you have to know that my girlfriends love each other as much as they love me.”

“I suspected Ronda and Christine were more than just two girls sharing a boy. But I thought when Christine left and broke up with you, that was the end of it. Do you mean the girls...? With each other?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Oh. Perhaps the world has moved faster than I have. I know that artists and actors and sports people all have a different view of morality than my traditional view. I accepted that when you started dating multiple girls. And you know it’s not just Patricia and Toni we love. We love Ronda and Anna just as much and welcome you all into our home. Is that what we should be doing with Kat and Julie?”

“They love each other,” I said. “They’re in high school. Who knows what will happen when they get out in the big wide world. They might not last. But even if they don’t, that’s no guarantee that Kat will ever want a boyfriend again. I think Brian disappointed her.”

“So, I should just adapt and accept that my daughter might simply love women instead of men?” Mom said.

“I think you should expand that into a plural,” I said. “Daughters. Have you ever heard Naomi talk about a guy? I’m not sure but what she also prefers women.”

“Oh, my. Do you think so? I really must think about how I talk to them. I don’t want to be a judgmental preacher. I do so well when dealing with others. I should be able to accept my own family for who they are as well.”

“At least with Kat dating Julie, you don’t need to worry about her getting pregnant,” I chuckled. Mom gasped.

“That was mean,” she finally laughed.

“You know, speaking of people who are different, there have been a couple of times I’ve nearly sent a friend of mine to see you. I thought you might want to adopt her. She hasn’t had the kind of love you foster in our family,” I said.

“Anytime you want me to meet your friends, I’m always happy to.”

“I know, Mom. You see Dora has a little problem. She’s a guy.”

“Why do you refer to him as she?”

“That’s what she prefers. She’s been taking some hormones that cause her breasts to grow, her voice to heighten a little, and her beard to slow down. As a boy, she was gay. I guess, biologically she still is. I was just thinking that if you really want a daughter who likes boys, her family disowned her. She just didn’t fit with her Baptist preacher father’s view of the world.”

“Oh my. That was very sneaky of you,” Mom said. “Nate, understand this and understand it clearly. I will never disown you or your sister. Any of them. I will always accept as part of my family, the people you love and take as your family. I will weep with you when you have losses. I will laugh with you when you have joy. I will welcome you and yours into my whole heart. I pledge this to you on my faith.”

“Oh, Mom, you’re the best ever.”

We got back home on Sunday and all scrambled to get ready for another week. Ronda started classes the next day and we were all out of the house first thing in the morning.

Tuesday, I was in the photo lab and had a line of students waiting for IDs at ten o’clock. The lines had died down some, but it was amazing how many students hadn’t gotten around to getting their ID yet. Technically, the ID program was voluntary this year. Students were already finding the benefits of the program.

“Nate, as soon as you have a break, I’d like to talk to you,” Professor Hyatt said. In addition to being my supervisor on work study I’d accepted him as my advisor.

“What’s up, Prof?”

“Do you have plans for Intersession yet?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Are you game for some travel?”

“Sure. What’s available?”

“An opportunity to study Portraiture with Josh Logan at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,” Prof said.

“Melbourne? As in Australia?”

“The same. Josh Logan is a top portrait photographer and has photographed the Queen, several princes, and Australian government officials. We just got approval for the intersession and, get this, when he accepted the position, he specifically requested that you be offered a slot,” Hyatt said.

“He requested me? How on earth could he even know I exist?”

“Well, it seems he is acquainted with a certain artist in Melbourne who never passes an opportunity to show people the portrait you took of her last year.”

“Who ... Dale McKenzie? She recommended me to him?”

“I guess your reputation has expanded beyond the US and Canada.”

“Where do I sign up?”

“I’ll have the forms for you on Thursday. Get a passport.”

“I got it! Whoo! Yes!”

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my family about this opportunity.

“We need to check with the State Department to find out if any vaccines are required for travel to Australia, above what we just normally have,” Ronda said. “This is incredible. What a great opportunity.”

“Who wants to go along?” I asked.

“Uh ... None of us have the first three weeks of January off,” Anna said. “Ronda got three weeks different in September, but she starts the same time my classes start in January—the day after the holiday. I guess Patricia and Toni could go.”

“I don’t think so on this one,” Patricia said. “I’d want more people along to help out with Toni. I mean, with Nate in class all day, it would be just me and Toni alone in a foreign country. Nope.”

“Well, crap. Maybe I shouldn’t take this,” I said. When I first got enthused, I imagined the whole family enjoying a change in culture and scenery for a while. Our first really international trip. No one else could go.

“Absolutely not!” Ronda said. “You need to take that opportunity. Besides, if Dale recommended you, maybe she’s waiting to show you some intimate details of Australia.”

“I just ... To be honest, I feel like such a rube. The idea of traveling alone to another country is a little daunting.”

“You’re up for it,” Anna said. “Of course, if you wanted a sophisticated travel partner who would also be a great model for you to practice on, I’ll bet Adrienne would like to go.”

That was a thought. Well, I guess the first step would be to make the application and see how much this whole adventure would cost.

My Image Strategies class was really making me think. Photographs are rarely seen in isolation. You don’t just walk into a room and see a single wall with a single photograph on it. Even in a gallery or a museum, your photos are, at the very least, surrounded by other images. In other circumstances, you are displayed within a family environment with furniture and mementos, in a book with text and other images, or in my case, in a studio with the camera set up, viewing station, and an entire attic full of props and costumes.

The class was helping me focus on my photography as a part of something bigger, and to develop a strategy for displaying it for sale and for viewing. I took some time on Friday to visit Hal Zefford Gallery. Oddly enough, Anna had done all the contact work with him and placed two of my photos in his gallery—both of which sold and had been replaced with others. I’d never met the man and had never been in his gallery. It was a nice place on Michigan Avenue north of the river. In fact, I’d passed it several times going to Pizzeria Uno.

It was a really nice gallery. I thought maybe I should have worn better clothes. This was like being in Hollywood. The gallery was divided into rooms for different kinds of art. It was almost like a museum in one area with original artwork by Cassatt, Monet, and Chagall, and sculpture by Rodin. It was a spacious room and even though there were a lot of art pieces, they didn’t look crowded at all. The next gallery I went into was serigraph prints. These were all more modern, I think. Picasso, Andy Warhol, Peter Max, and Leroy Neiman. There was one artist I fell in love with immediately. He was a French guy named James Coignard. There was just something about his prints that I found irresistible. I felt he had a strong anti-war message in his prints and I loved the print called POW. It just sent shivers down my spine.

The first thing I realized was that I didn’t spend enough time in galleries and looking at art of different media. The paintings in the originals gallery were oil and watercolor. They had a completely different feel to them than the serigraphs and mixed media pieces. The Coignard print featured nonsense letters in lines like it was correspondence and barbed wire across the top. There was white yarn woven through the image.

I finally made it to the photography chamber. There were some great photos in this room. Some famous like Ansel Adams and Elliott Erwitt. Some not so famous like ... me. A guy came up to me in a nice suit and tie. He was very soft-spoken as if we were in a library.

“I’ve been waiting to talk to you until you reached this room. I can see you’re a photographer. What interests you? Is there anything I can help find for you? We have several other artists in our files that are not on display,” he said.

I guess the camera under my arm was a dead giveaway as to me being a photographer. I hoped I didn’t look too scruffy to be seen in this gallery. I decided to play the student card.

“I’m a student at Columbia and frankly a class I’m taking has me focused on how photographs are displayed. I thought I’d come to a place I knew sold photo artwork and take a look at how you display it.” I didn’t mention my own artwork was on the wall.

“I’m so glad you’re studying this. So many young artists don’t pay attention to how people will see their artwork. Let me explain our philosophy. Feel free to photograph the layout if you’d like.”

From there, the man who identified himself as Hal Zefford took me on a tour through the entire gallery, telling me how the display of artwork differed from the display of photos and the display of sculpture. I learned almost as much from the talk by Mr. Zefford as I had in the class so far.

“Now, Nate, how are you going to get more dynamic views for your photos?” he asked.

“I didn’t realize you knew who I was,” I laughed. I’d given him my name, but he didn’t give any sign of recognition until now. “I guess that is the question I’m really considering in this whole class. I’ve been artistic about the composition of my photos, but I’ve never considered how they are displayed.”

“The size of your photos gives you some edge, but you can see by looking around the room that unlike your State Fair entries of a couple of years ago, you don’t have the only large prints in the gallery.”

“You know about my State Fair entries?” I asked.

“I go to the Fair every year to scout out future photographers. When your associate, Miss Marx, brought your photos and asked me to display you, I was very pleased. I believe we’ve sold two off the wall and four from your catalog so far. One of the things you might consider is swapping out your images so we don’t have the same thing on display all the time. As you know, we don’t usually frame photos for display, but you do a good job of matting them.”

“What about color?” I asked.

“Really? Most people consider the real art to be in black and white. On the other hand, a color print would stand out in the gallery if it has some unique artistic merit. I’ll look at what you have.”

I left the gallery with some ideas and headed for the studio.

After a slow start to the fall, things were beginning to heat up in the studio. Anna’s promotional idea of offering a student discount with an ID was beginning to pay off. I had two appointments on Saturday for the portrait/Attic Allure package. Cassie was set to help me Saturday morning, but I had no assistant set for the afternoon. Theresa had called to say she just couldn’t work this fall because she was on campus at Urbana-Champaign. Leanne was focused on the makeup work we were planning for later in the year and Min was excited to try an actual performance.

The props closet hadn’t been tended to since we got set up after Stratford and it was beginning to look more like a junk room. I really needed to hire another assistant and had no idea where to start looking.

We met Sherry Stone at nine-thirty Saturday morning. She was a freshman and was excited to send a couple pictures of how grown up she was to her parents. I immediately ruled out any nude work. She was only eighteen and the older I got, the less excited I was about taking pictures of younger girls. She was an absolutely fresh-faced charmer of a girl and I made the immediate decision to take her black and white portrait with the 4x5. I’d explained to her that black and white photos were included in her $30 package, but I could take color for an added fee. She declined and said she might want extra copies of her Attic Allure photo, but she was fine with everything in black and white.

As I set up and posed her for her portrait, I got to know her a little more. I recognized her from having taken her photo for her student ID, so I asked her how her classes were going and what she was majoring in.

“I’m not absolutely sure about my major emphasis, but it will be something in the music field. I play four instruments and sing, so I need to decide which will be my emphasis and which will be a minor. But I really want to compose. Isn’t that like an actor saying, ‘but I really want to direct?’” she giggled.

“That gives me some ideas for your Attic Allure photo,” I said.

I took the portrait, changed the tilt of her head and depth of her smile a little and took a second. I was sure that was all I’d need.

“Cassie, we need fencing gear and a sheet of music. One of those pirate style blouses,” I said. I found an old-fashioned ship deck background and Sherry helped hold it in place as I got it anchored to the supports. The drop was labeled HMS Pinafore, and I recalled hearing about an opera by that name.

Cassie brought the necessary props and I led Sherry behind the privacy screen.

“Attic Allure shots are typically sexy glamour pictures,” I explained. “It’s up to you, though, to decide how sexy you want to be.”

“I want to give it to my parents, so I don’t think I should be naked!” she said, and then giggled some more.

“I agree. This blouse, though, you would need to wear braless or the bra will show. When I print the photo, though, I’ll make sure we don’t show anything your parents shouldn’t see. Fair enough?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. How does it go?”

“Let me help you. I think we’ll want to touch up your makeup a little, too.”

I started unbuttoning her blouse and she just stood there waiting, and occasionally giggling.

“I always imagined the first time I let a boy take my blouse off, we’d be in the midst of a passionate embrace and getting ready to make love,” she said. I pulled the blouse off and reached around her to unfasten her bra.

“I never have sex in the studio,” I said. “Your virtue is safe with me. I will say, though, that the boy you choose will be in for a real treat.” I passed my hands lightly over her boobs and her nipples sprang to attention.

“Oh, wow! That tingled.”

“It’s supposed to,” I said as I pulled the blouse over her head and brushed against her nipples again as I straightened it. “Let’s take a look at your makeup now.”

I got Sherry’s makeup adjusted so it was just a touch more dramatic, without distorting her features. It was very much a sexy Sherry Stone. I led her to the backdrop and fluffed her hair out so it looked a little wild.

“Now, hold your left hand in a curve to your left shoulder. Sword in your right hand, extended. Not too far. Think of it as close quarters fighting.”

“I’ve never been a fighter,” she giggled some more.

“Neither have I, but I think this will look right.”

I looked at the sheet of music. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it looked complicated. Borrowing from Leslie’s idea last January, I stuck the music on the sword so I could see the music.

“Oh, I like it!” Sherry exclaimed. “I’m conquering another bit of music!”

“Perhaps your own composition.” I moved up to her after looking through the ground glass and shifted the position of her sword slightly. “It needs to be high enough that when I crop to make sure your pretty nipples are out of the picture, the music is still in.”