Des Boteilles: What a Single Art Installation Can Mean to an Artist

"What are the bottles for?", a soft-spoken Muslim girl asked, tugging shyly at her headscarf. Her arctic blue eyes skimmed the hallway leading to the gym, reminding me of Trapper Creek, Alaska where my family had vacationed years ago; it was a glorious pocket of virgin wilderness devoid of big box retailers and rush-hour congestion, so unlike our suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Every aspect of the inquisitive girl's appearance suddenly solicited memories I thought I had forgotten. Her aquiline nose reminded me of my mother's Mediterranean heritage - -and it was the same nose brandished by my beloved Spanish teacher of three years - -the woman who taught me of love, of life, of the eternal spring blossoming within every artist. 

Suddenly my mind was transported to the mural depicting Alhambra's Patio de los Leones in Granada, Spain by my locker. I smiled wearily to myself when I realized that I too would be embellishing one of the school walls for AP Studio Art - -wearily because I had already devoted so much of my short life to the arts establishing a poetry series at my local library, organizing my own exhibits, submitting countless pieces to magazines, performing at poetry readings, managing the high school rock band Priceless Enuendo, writing plays for my sisters and I to perform, and interning grueling hours at the county gallery to try and compensate for at least a small fraction of my father's lost income after his motorcycle accident. But I never once regretted working so hard. 

My grandfather, one of the many writers in my family and one of the hardest working men I ever knew, died just two months prior to my father's accident. I tried remembering how I felt reading from the Book of Isaiah at his funeral, how fragile my step-mother looked in her crumpled dress - -but the Muslim girl interrupted my thoughts. 

"What are the bottles for?" she repeated, flashing the same timid smile as the young woman who sat next to me in calculus at the nearby community college.