The Colorman Read Online Free PDF Page A

to herself that she might have been reacting against this woman more strongly than she would have liked, Rain’s attention wavered as she watched people circulating around the gallery, trying to keep herself from tallying viewers in front of her pieces against those in front of works by the other two artists. She couldn’t help but feel the buzz of eyes as they brushed by her work—the little pangs as they exchanged comments she couldn’t hear.
    Rain didn’t know the other two artists showing. They were chosen by Philip, Gwendolyn’s new director. There was one other painter and a sculptor. Or rather, one wall-based artist and a dimensional artist. The sculptor’s pieces were actually just vague swellings in the gallery wall, painted over with the wall paint from Gwen’s back room, used to touch up between shows. The sculptor had worked for three days in the place, fitting his plaster forms to the walls, spackling them in and then using Gwen’s paint to camouflage them back into the scenery.
    The other painter—the one from the front window—had the scratched gesso schtick that seemed to be getting a lot of attention. But then Rain figured most of the admirers were his own recruits. Sometimes, when witnessing the enthusiasm surrounding this sort of work, Rain felt as though she’d missed some entire micro-culture in the art world. Was it jealousy she was actually feeling?
    Rain understood that the art “world” was like a network of veins. There were large and small ones crossing each other with absolutely nothing in common. They appeared to perform the same function. They pulsed at the same rate and were moved by some of the same influences. But their players coursed on independently, never mixing or even feeling anything about the other.
    One of Rain’s jobs at the gallery was dealing with the unsolicited submissions heaped upon them daily. Large manila envelopes addressed in all their variety, some even arriving via FedEx, to the Gwendolyn Brooker Gallery, West Broadway, New York, NY, 10012—printed labels, cartoon-like sharpie, scribbled messes, ripped and retaped.
    Mostly artists sent slides in stiff plastic sheets, though increasingly it was CDs along with printed pages. Then, of course, there were the occasional actual paintings, something that always felt vaguely embarrassing to Rain. A desperate flinging. None of these had much to do with Gwendolyn Brooker Gallery, however. Rain couldn’t understand how so many people can have missed day one of art-representation-search 101: Know what the gallery represents. Gwen Brooker showed a very particular vein of work: social realism. But, however narrow her area of interest, Gwen always managed to commit to the tradition of the summer show, which helped keep the mountains of slides coming in. That, and her irritating habit of sometimes grabbing a pile of submissions and writing careful y considered advice back to the artists, listing gal eries they should approach and other avenues they might pursue. Invaluable information for those who were able to recognize what they had been granted when facing, ultimately, her rejection.
    One of the great art dealers who dominated the New York art world during the latter half of the century, Gwen had emerged from a line of powerful professional women in New York: Edith Halpert, Betty Parsons, Terry Dintenfass, Joan Washburn, Louise Ross. Some were mentors, some competitors. But characters, all of them. Confident, intellectual taste-makers who appeared to be passing into history. Even Gwen was beginning to talk more frequently of retiring to England with John, though both John and Rain laughed at her whenever she said that. The art was part of her, the artists like her children, even though most were her own age or older. She would never stop promoting them, never undersell them or resist buying up their works when they became available.
    If the submissions included the