ArchivedLogs:Media

Media
Dramatis Personae Steve, Tag	2016-05-27 "It's /yours/, you're /good/ at it, and it's beautiful."
Location <NYC> Chimaera Arts - Brooklyn
This is just one of the many abandoned warehouses in DUMBO, and like many of them it has recently changed hands. /Unlike/ most of those, however, it does not have some corporate developer's sign out front promising a transformation into luxury condominiums or a boutique shopping center or the latest concept restaurant. Instead it's marked by a piece of weathered but wildly colorful plywood propped up on a stack of broken pallets, which reads "Chimaera Art Space!" above "chimaera.org" in smaller letters. The warehouse is moderately large and decorated with graffiti art in various styles--some of it recognizable as the work of renowned local street artists. A pair of monstrous scrap metal sculptures, perhaps still works in progress, flank the entrance. The building itself has undergone significant renovation recently, complete with wiring, plumbing, and a modular partitioning system. The grounds, too, have been cleaned up, ramshackle fences torn down and rusting detritus removed in favor of reclaimed (and brilliantly repainted) outdoor furniture ringing an impressively engineered firepit. It's a balmy spring afternoon, cloudy and breezy but quite warm. Flowering weeds of every color have exploded from the numerous and extensive cracks in the pavement surrounding the warehouse. Tag is perched on an ancient, creaky step ladder outside the building near its back wall, lazily shaking a can of spray paint. Everything he wears, from purple paisley bandana to sky blue t-shirt to wide-legged black jeans to hot pink sneakers and matching gardening gloves, is splattered with paint. "We got air brushes inside, too. Way more precise, but way less portable. These are what most of us use." He waggles the spray can. "Well, I only use them when I'm in the mood, mostly I use. You know. /Me./ But this is good for getting a feel for the medium, anyway." Nearby, looking up at the somewhat random collection of figures and shapes and scribbles painted on the wall, Steve is in his most chewed up black t-shirt and blue jeans, adorned now with minute spots of paint. His left forearm is lightly bandaged, the white gauze likewise adorned with paint. The shield on his back has been radically transformed: a red A inscribed in -- but not quite contained by -- a circle the same color on a field of black, around by concentric bands rainbow colors. He also holds a spray can, with which he has just finished inscribing the whimsical curving outline of a red nautilus on the wall. "The lack of friction takes some getting used to." He flashes a smile at Tag. "But it's kind of liberating, too. I like it." "So you're a pencils-and-ink kinda guy, mostly right?" Tag hops down from his ladder and studies the nautilus. "Clean, sharp lines, lots of movement. I'm into it." His grin is bright and fey as he drags the ladder closer to the wall and mounts it again, though he remains standing this time as he, too, goes to work. His strokes are bold and practiced: a line of bright blue paint, sharp and slightly curved, interrupted by a single jag at nearly right angle to it. Once he adds another line extending down and away and not quite parallel to the first, it becomes obvious that the jag is a fin. A dorsal fin. "Thank you." Steve steps back to give Tag more space. "I learned to draw with pencils -- had to use the burnt ends of sticks when we were really desperately poor. Ink, later, but I didn't really have time to learn to use it right until recently. Now I'm experimenting with all kinds of paints, markers, you name it. Do you have a favorite medium?" His smile spreads wider as he watches Tag work. "Shark. /Blue/ shark." Tag completes the elogated tail fin of the mako in one fluid stroke. "Was that during the Great Depression?" His eyes are wide, their purple irises shifting to magenta, then pink. "Hm.../favorite/ medium. I'd have to go with..." And here he just inclines his head at the wall. "Yep." The outline he has just drawn of the shark fills with vibrant blue that shades itself as it goes, the upper surfaces developing a network of iridescent patterns as of sunlight shining down through the water. "/Me./ Though it sounds kind of narcisstic when I put it that way..." "We were so poor that the ups and downs of our ability to afford pencils wasn't all /that/ tied to the Depression, as such." Steve goes over to the dusty duffle bag Tag had left open, oveflowing with paint cans. He roots through it, picks out one, and shakes it while he watches Tag work, head nodding faintly with approval. "I never grow tired of watching you do that, and it doesn't sound narcissistic to me. It's /yours/, you're /good/ at it, and it's beautiful. Impressive to watch, too." Tag blushes at the praise, but puffs up a little, as well. The unoccupied spaces on the wall turn a darker shade of blue shot through with lighter shafts from above, so that the nautilus, the mako, and all the other random tags and drawings and writing all appear to be suspended in a shallow, sunlit sea. "{Thank you,}" in Mandarin. "It took a lot of practice to get here. When I started out I could only splash colors in wide swaths, and the coverage wasn't even that great. Well, /really/ early on I couldn't even control when it happened. I would just...have some feelings and then bam!" His hands mime an explosion. "Colors!" Steve walks up to the wall and stretches out a hand to touch it, as if he expects that he might be able to feel it change colors, or his skin might come away stained. Or damp with seawater. "Amazing," he murmurs. Then he lifts the spray can and fills in the spaces between the red outline and striations on the nautilus with white paint. His mouth pulls to one side at how sloppy his work looks. "I definitely need more practice. Let's fill this sea with life."