My grandfather will be eighty years old this St. Patrick's day. He still goes to the barber shop every Wednesday and Saturday morning to tell jokes, talk politics, and the Age of Grace under the apostle Paul. He also cuts hair.
One Saturday morning last Fall I walked in to say hello, after a few minutes of conversation he handed me six boxes of ink pens. They were cheaply made, brittle, and red. He told me to take them to school and hand them out to my schoolmates.
I took them to school but I never handed them out. I melted the pen tops in a mound with a heat gun.
I really want them to have a second chance as art. I have used them in at least six different works trying to see if they belonged. So far they have not, they still sit in the studio. I look at them and think about them every day wondering what they want.
If you keep asking someone what they want and they refuse to answer, do you eventually take silence as an answer? Are they perfectly content just as they are?
What do images want? Sometimes they want nothing.
