The watercolorist opened a box to reveal
the shredded remains of unsuccessful
portrayals. I use these in the pieces hanging
here she explained, pointing at framed
compositions, her reattached fragments
bleeding into dismembered memory, tears
healing into new forms, like scars that resemble
objects from happier times. She had gathered
and forced dried grass to grow again behind
glass, to coexist with soothing bits of feathers,
snippets of horse hair. She pushed wet ochre
along to marry cerulean, deposited a landscape
in pastels, a patchwork of recognizable depictions
from death, loss, and the ground. Other artists
passed by her exhibit gathering ideas, and
assurance, smiling smug inspiration at the shards
in her crate. They were a fusion of persuasions,
backgrounds, and perspective on the festival's
field, swirling ideology into clear blue tempera
temperaments. The wind was present too,
an intangible palette knife, cutting and blending
postulation, blowing the insecure and unfounded
like torn and contained paper, depicting in gusts
each and every artist as particle before they could
steal away to their studios, their clay, their canvas,
their glass to blend another day's creative gloat
into another afternoon's hopeful sale, or the one
extraordinary invitation to solo away
from the constant mixing of disparate media
