A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney

Author:Craig Laurance Gidney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Word Horde
Published: 2019-05-12T00:13:59+00:00

12: Lincoln

Working at the museum was the best job Linc had gotten so far during his exile on the Eastern Shore. He was a combination security guard, maintenance man, and, on occasion, a tour guide. Not that the Whitby-Grayson Museum was particularly busy. The most people he’d seen in the building for the three weeks he worked here was a group of ten. He wondered how it managed to stay open.

“Eugenia Fraser is the one who opened the museum,” Howard told him. “She was the heiress to Fraser Fisheries. She collected both Hazel’s quilts and Shadrach’s paintings back in the 1960s. The museum was constructed in the ’90s to house her collection. It stays open through her endowment.”

He’d shown Linc a picture of Fraser. By the ’90s she was elderly, maybe in her late seventies. She had been a tall woman with a striking sense of style. With her silver hair in a short, spiky cut and a tailored pinstripe pantsuit, she could have been a fixture in the New York art scene. “She thought that Hazel and Shadrach were overlooked Outsider Artists.”

“Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is an ‘Outsider Artist’?”

“It’s a kind of umbrella term. In a broad sense, they are visual artists who have no formal training. In particular, though, they are people who create things because of some compulsion. They often view their work as messages or portals. In other words, what they make has a meaning beyond just being displayed.”

There were, roughly speaking, two main types of visitors to the museum, the Quilters and the Ghost Hunters. Groups of middle-aged African-Americans came to pay homage to Hazel’s work. Most of them were fellow quilters coming to marvel at Whitby’s work. These women were respectful and followed the museum’s rules (no photographs). They would spend hours carefully discussing each and every tapestry. They marveled over the artistry and originality. For the most part, they ignored Grayson’s work and the small gallery dedicated to other artists inspired by Whitby and Grayson. The other audience was made up of hipsters. Girls in baby doll dresses, Ugg boots and oversized sunglasses. Men with scraggly beards, skinny jeans and porkpie hats. They mostly gravitated towards Grayson’s work, its stark, sea-washed landscapes dominated by glowing fuchsia orbs.

He once overheard a group of them theorizing about Shadrach Grayson: “I think he was on drugs of some kind. Like, datura,” one porkpie hat wearer said. The cadence of his deep voice suggested that he was under the influence of something or other.

A girl with an asymmetrical haircut that was dyed a dandelion-yellow replied, “You say that about all abstract art. Rothko was on hallucinogens. Leonora Carrington did opium. That’s such weak sauce.”

“Okay, then Ms. Art Forum. Why do you think he painted those orbs?”

“I don’t know. But I read somewhere that Grayson was directed to paint by a spirit of some kind.”

“A g-g-g ghost?”

“Very funny. Besides, it doesn’t matter whether or not there actually was a ghost. Grayson believed that there was one.”

In

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