Very occasionally I will vanity Google myself. It's pretty rare that anything unexpected turns up. I don't care so much about my so-called online reputation; I'm more interested in funny weirdness and I was rewarded this time. On like page 30 of search results, I found that a.) Goodwill has auctions, b.) that a painting titled, "Isolation" by someone with my name got four bids and sold for $28.77 in September. I have never been a painter, so I assumed this was someone else making bad art that got dumped at a thrift store. Yet, I could see it sold from a Hillsboro, Oregon branch, a Portland suburb. The accompanying photo no longer displayed. Was it some art school exercise? I did leave a bunch of artwork behind in my apartment when I left Portland in 1998 but I'm sure that went to the landfill years ago and I didn't title homework.
Though it only makes me sleep in later and later, I've been going to bed later and later. Instead, of my self-imposed 1am weeknight rule it has crept up to 2am (and pushed to 3am the other night when I had to watch the 1am two-episode season two premiere of Downton Abbey--yes, I finally caved and am too old to figure out how to just semi-illegally stream episodes online). And I'm still not tired. Last night as I was trying to fall asleep, I suddenly remembered what "Isolation" was. Not a painting, but a print. It was one of the first color blockprints that I made in probably '93 in a series of maybe 25? I don't have a copy on me--I have no idea where any of the art I made and kept is--but I recall I used four colors and it featured Easter Island head sculptures for reasons long forgotten.
I wonder where it came from. Who now, nearly 20 years later had this print in their possession and donated it to the Goodwill? And who bought the damn thing? I never was aggressive about art promotion, never showed at galleries like ambitious classmates, or took it seriously in a money-making way. I don't think I ever made a penny on anything I created. Now, I have a $28.77 legacy.
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