I think back to 1983 and the New Jersey Emerging Artist Show at the Newark Museum. I entered “The Craftsman”, and it was a big effort for me. I had to build a roof rack out of 2x4s on top of my 1978 Volkswagen Diesel Rabbit. I had heavy rope going under the car to hold the platform in place. In order to protect the painting, I framed it with 1×3 pine, which made it a bit clumsy, but it would be safe going to an from Newark. It was a bright and sunny Tuesday in late spring. I drove 30 miles of highway and on to the rather treacherous streets of Newark, paying to park just across the street and unloading the first and only painting I would ever submit to a jury. I was thrilled and yet scared of what might occur, how would they, a jury, react to this rather autobiographical work. I carried it in through the front door, explained myself to security and was directed to the stairs and the appropriate office. Up on the third floor, I followed the dark hallway to what to my surprise was a rather mundane working office with stacks of paper and rubber stamps on the desks. It was very average, not the kind of “artistic” environment that I expected, but no matter. I had worked in theatre; I knew what back stages looked like. Mundane was good. Mundane was what real professional art locations were really about, or so I choose to tell myself. I walked into the office, a big room with six or so well lived in desks, but only one of which was currently occupied, the one directly in front. The neon lights were all on, but it did not feel bright.

The women in the office was holding a phone to her ear, but not speaking. She was staring up, looking rather disinterested and probably on hold of some sort. I was carrying my painting in a large, homemade cardboard packaging that had the show submission form clearly and correctly attached to the top right side of the front of the container, as per the extensive submission instructions. I must have been hard to miss as I carried this large box through the door because she noticed me quickly enough. She looked over and stared just long enough for me to think she was saying to herself “Geez, another one”. She pulled the mouthpiece up, keeping the earpiece glued to side of her head and told me to put the box up against the wall out in other hallway, around the corner from where I came in. I nodded dutifully and carried the package back out the door and around the corner to what was and even darker, short little hallway. The floor was dusty and dirty, filthy really, and yet there was a stack of cleaning supplies and old file boxes only a few feet away. Did she really want me to leave my painting here? There were no other art works or any thing else of “value” out there. This was a hallway to nowhere, partially a storage space and partly a drafty echo chamber, with pealing paint and yellowing marks on the walls left by that old kind of cellophane tape that hadn’t been used anywhere in decades.

I paused for a moment with a fear that was new to me. This was my work, my painting, my Craftsman. I previously admitted that it was autobiographical, but I didn’t know how much it was till then. This was a portrait of the real me, the young man deep down inside. I had grown attached to this work in a way I not done so with a painting before. And now I needed to leave it, leave him, behind, and trust I would see him again. I put the package down at a careful distance from both the hallway corner and the cleaning supplies. I briefly pulled aside my carefully constructed panel board that was protecting the front of the canvas. I checked the canvas, the framing, and the rest of the packaging. I had to assure myself he was still there. And it was almost as if I need to reassure him that being left in this awful place was okay, it was for our greater good.

Looking back in the office, the woman was still on hold and was now impatiently tapping her long colorful nails on the desk. I asked her, “do you need to take a look at my painting”… as if I were fulfilling some sort of logistical mandate. I wanted her to see my friend, I wanted her to take responsibility for him. I wanted someone in that place to acknowledge that this inanimate object, this oil on canvas image that come to mean so much to me, would be safe here in the hallway. She didn’t look at me, but she did answer, saying “no that’s ok, just leave it there”.   While it wasn’t the answer I was looking for, her response did give me a moment of comfort. It was human interaction that I told me she knew it was there, and I was leaving.

I walked off back down the first dark hallway toward that stairs. I had a strange sense of loss and aloneness, which was appropriate because I had left something special behind, trusting its safety to strangers. Sure I knew I would get the painting back, but this was now more than just a painting to me, it was a piece of me. It would be years before I truly came to understand what I felt that day. It all came back to me the first time I dropped of my 2 1/2 your old son at preschool. He cried as he was lovingly pried away from me because it was parent’s time to go. I cried the moment I sat down in the car, knowing that he was out there without me. For the first time as parents, neither Jane nor I were with him every moment. The tim
e had come to begin learning how to let go. The echo of that day 14 years earlier at the Newark Museum could not have been clearer.

Three weeks after dropping the painting off, I received a letter saying that I had not been selected for the show, and that I had 10 days in which to come and pick up my work. The next morning I refitted my homemade roof rack to the Volkswagen and made the 30-mile journey to Newark. The packaging looked like it had hardly been opened. Either they took great care in re-wrapping it, or they never took much of a look at it. It didn’t matter, I was glad it was only slightly exposed to the world. And because it was not in the show, I would not face the choice of entertaining a offer to buy. I was glad to have my Craftsman back. My statement to myself about who I was, was back where he belonged.