On the Precipice, Stewart Finds a Home

The years in art school did little to settle the outrageous wanderlust that lay in Stewart, between the settled crevices of time-honored repetition and the soul-crushing exposure of mass criticism. Art School, in many ways had shown to him the cruel analytical nature of the world, though a fiery keyhole. It was just a glimpse, but the heat generated off of the toxic emotions affected him on a level he was all too conscious of.

Uncle Andy, as Stewart used to refer to his old babysitter, was the only family member at his exhibitions and he'd speak with him candidly, behind jutting bronze statues that all too metaphorically spoke volumes regarding the fathomable distance between them.

Andy and Stewart sipped their cocktails, wondering when the time was right to apologize for each's own behavior.

Andy for "corrupting" Stewart, by showing him a world he could never really be a part of. For Stewart it was running away, leaving Andy with the burden and the job of explaining to Mr. and Mrs. Kunderman (because they both still referred to them as the Kundermans, despite the strict biological ties that existed.) that Stewart ran away, to pursue the sort of career that Andy knew he was capable.

They stood there, eyes fixed on the surrounding artwork, halfway mocking the overall lack of possibility that someone might come along and break this trance they seemed to have found themselves in.

Word came by way of Mr. Smithe, Stewart's Art teacher and lone cheerleader in the vast and discouraging halls of Hamberg Hall.

"Stewart's shown a lot of promise during the past two terms, we'll see if it translates into a sale. Good Evening."

He brushed passed with slithery grace, onto the next student, to heap false praises upon.

Hamberg Hall, with it's surrounding annexes, resembled a high-ceillinged sarcoughagus, an inordinately large mausoleum where students walked with hands behind their backs, letting the hollow clacks of their footwear ring out, reflecting the dignity with which they placed on the establishment.


Students would walk through the halls and look back on the struggle to get in, proving a point enough to impress Mr. Smithe and his pack of ravenous Huns. They would get ideas this way, alone in the marbled hall, feeling the rise in sound, falling back down upon them, casting sonorous reverb until the vibrations created sparks inside cerebellums, and they'd calmly walk down the line, breezing passed the Ornithology wing, (a haven for bird-like people, literally, for their body types resembled overgrown sparrows)through to the individual drawing rooms.

One had to continuously prove oneself in order to maintain a residency at the school, and students were constantly dropping out, making last minute pilgrimages to Amsterdam, The Hague, walk-abouts in Australia, sport fishing in Cuba, anything but face the notion that their time was up, and the whole notion of 'talent' at least as far as they were concerned was an elaborate lie strung together with lace, wire and a vast hallway of emptiness.

The sound of the clacking hit Stewart as the ice cubes in his drink clanked as he put his hand on Andy's shoulder, put his head down, and apologized.

"Look, I'm not going to stare at the piece of shit works of my peers all night and pretend that this silence between us doesn't mean anything. I know I ran away and left you with the job of explaining this to "The Kundermans". I know that getting into this place probably wouldn't have happened if you hadn'tve been there all along. I know all that, and I'm sorry."

He held that gaze out for several minutes, until Andy, whose eyes began to tear up, bit his lower lip, lifted his eyes from the rotund copper statue he'd pretended to stare at for what seemed to him like an eternity, and gathered a response.

"It. It was me who showed you another way to live. I didn't want my own lifestyle to dictate yours, I just knew you had these talents, and it may not have been the most appropriate time for this, but your here now, the Kundermans are nowhere to be found, they left you afterall."

He stared up at the tribute to Miro as mobile, and stood on this last point as if on a precipice.

"Running away was a slap to my face, and I'm not going to pretend that it didn't make me regret everything I showed you, it felt fucking ungrateful at the time. But now, after everything, seeing you here with all of your determination just makes me grateful that you’re here, and at Hamberg Hall, one of the best Art Schools on the East Coast!"

Andy didn't know that Stewart was on the way out. He'd started out efficiently enough, creating proficient recreations of classic still life arrangements like the light bulb on a steel-brushed table, but painting, especially vague recreations of inanimate objects, he found demeaning. He'd had visions of self-written operas, of buckets of red paint swimming on mtoherly hips, hourglass shapes pressed against the paint, and rolling on the canvas;fleshy rollers on bone-white canvases. He pictured screaming rage and spit. He wanted canvases to look like entrails turned inside-out, illuminating the rage found in digestive tracts. He wanted the ugliest parts of science to be mixed with a thrashing humanity.

But recreating light bulb arrangements wasn't in the cards. As much as his professors would lecture on about 'learning to walk before learning how to fly', a metaphor he came to detest and after waking from dreams of larvae ripped apart to make a point on the machinations of nature, and how mixing them can be deadly one morning he had been given an ultimatum: to either faithfully follow the trajectory of their curriculum, or leave, and find solace in the gritty poverty of the East Village.

The sinking feeling that the gig was up came to him as he was basking the glow of reconciliation with Andy. Around the statues, mobiles and panoramas of Hamberg Hall, they now laughed, Andy's arm over Stewarts.