It’s open to all Port Derrum artists, but invariably, it ends up being the same crew every week.
Elly’s son, Jackson, who’s only a backyard and a flight of stairs away, sleeps soundly on the baby monitor next to her workstation, which show-cases her latest venture in Glitterland. She’s made a glitter Rorschach inkblot.
I quite like it. The shape shifts as you walk past, the light catching the shimmery pieces in sequence, so that it seems almost animated.
"Does the shape have any meaning?" I ask. "Like, if I say it's a donkey instead of a toaster, I'm a sociopath or something?"
"You think I'm clever enough to create art that does psychometric testing?"
"Yes."
Elly raises her eyebrows, then offers me a grin of the quality last seen on Himmler. "Doyou think it's a donkey and not a toaster?"
"I'm...not telling you."
She rolls out a laugh in a way that is universally understood to be specific to evil geniuses, then gestures towards Jeanette, who announced at the beginning of the evening she was trying something new. "If we're going to do any amateur psycho-analysis, it needs to be onthat."
Jeanette's something new is buttock butter dishes. She smooths clay over the round cheeks that form the lid of the dish, and leans into the movement, her eyes closed and a smile on her face.
"You having a good time there, Jeanette?" I ask.
"I am having the loveliest sensory moment."
The dishes are an extension of her Ladies at Leisure pottery figurine series, all of which have generously proportioned bottoms. "It's like running your hands over actual women's buttocks. So – beautifully – sleek and – silky." She says each word with a push of her hands.
After a moment, she opens her eyes and laughs, then asks if anyone else would like a go.
We all would. Of course we want a sensory moment with simulated female buttocks.
Well, most of us. Carlos would like to read us the poem he's just finished.
"It's called 'God isn't'.
I read it on the wall and you have backyard limbs spread in supplication
Singing that Texas Chainsaw Massacre lite motif
On the turn.
I can't imagine what one would see in revolution
Curtained puppet shows early on a sexy Sunday morning
Revealing your rust above the flapping and clapping
Of your two-dimensional crowds."
Jeanette claps the backs of her hands together to avoid splattering the clay on her palms, Elly snaps her fingers as per poetry-reading etiquette, and Lutek and I clap in the conventional manner because we just aren't that cool.
"It's actually not bad," says Elly. "I have absolutely no idea what it's about, but it sounds confusing enough for it to be good poetry."
Jeanette nods at her like she hasn't given a compliment so backhanded it left knuckle-shaped indentations.
"Is it...about early morning children's TV shows?" asks Lutek.
"It's about a squeaky rotary washing line, isn't it?" I venture.
Carlos stares at me for several seconds. Then he throws his hands up in the air. "Damnation." He pulls a silver cigarette lighter out of his jacket pocket, flicks it open, sets fire to the piece of paper and drops it onto the concrete floor.
