A Flower Photograph for My Father

I grew up in New York City, in an artist's residence called Westbeth in Greenwich Village. It was an interesting place for a child to grow up. The hallways were long, drafty and unlit - perfect for trick or treating. There was a gallery for home artists, ramps, statues, half moon terraces, and it is across the street from the Hudson River.

Living growing up in Westbeth was not easy. I was busy twirling like a ballerina to the mazurkas my mom played and the way my father worked with bits and shards of glass into his Biblical themes of art.

It was my father's birthday. I asked him what he wanted. I had put aside three dollars and fifty eight cents from my selling books and other stuff projects in the lobby.

He said, "Peace and quiet." This was his usual answer for the last five years. I moaned hoping that this year's answer would be different. I consulted my brother.
"What will we buy him?" I asked.
He suggested a pocket watch, a knife too, a compass.
I laughed. "What will he do with a compass? This is New York City, not the Rocky Mountains."
He couldn't answer me.
And that was when I knew that we had a problem.

I wondered what I could buy for him that would give my dad, an artist peace and quiet. An umbrella? A pad of paper? A knife? If it wasn't those things then maybe I could draw him a picture. Maybe he'd like that.

And then it hit me. I would find a pretty moment and photograph it. On that roof there weren't many accessibly pretty moments and I didn't have sophisticated camera use. I thought about giving him something that was close to where he worked, but from another angle.

I had walked around the spooky hallways waiting for my mom to come back from her master classes uptown as I usually did. I was a fiercely independent child who liked to be creatively stimulated.

Along one route, I had an idea. I would photograph areas on the roof that had beauty for a birthday present. I photographed a flower in tar, still dripping from the rain and a big wheelbarrow wheel against a background of urban looking sky. I developed them and framed them. These things were inches away from his studio on the roof. When he wasn't working in the studio, I was on it with my friends back in the eighties, watching the flowers and oblong looking objects in the dark wondering if I would make any use of them.

It was the first time I photographed something so ugly looking, yet close to his heart.

It was a small thinly framed picture. I wrapped it in pretty paper. "For You." I said.
He looked pleased to find such a gift.
"Wow, thank you." I remember him saying.
And for once he looked happy because I knew how hard it was to please him.

From then on, I understood that this notion of 'peace and quiet' was not only typical artist verbiage (artists need lots of peace and quiet for their working conditions) but also it was another way to interpret peace and quiet on my own, through photographing what I thought was art.

On one of my visit back to the roof almost a year and a half ago, I looked for the wheelbarrow and the signs of the flower but, I couldn't find neither of them. Luckily however, the maintenance man of the building opened the studio still padlocked, and I found piles and wrecks of wood, the old tin Chock O'Nuts coffee cans that used to be the 'library' of my father's nuts and bolts. There was nothing familiar, just open spaces. The ceiling of the second floor had caved in and I could see up to the roof. Sun was coming in. I was too busy videotaping a twenty year gap of something I had forgotten: My father's studio where he spent many good hours working and I swivling on the tool waiting for him to finish a piece.

My brother and I videotaped that place once so full of memories. Now it is just a wood pile. A junk pile.

I left the place tormented by what I had saw. I wanted to see something visible something sensory. I didn't relate what I had saw to my father. I thought it would break his heart. My brother and I tried to convince the maintenance man to clear the junk turn it into a gallery.

"After all, this is a place for artists. It could be just another studio" I suggested. "It has no much potential. I saw already the beams of spotlight, wooden parquet floors." Sadly, I knew what his answer would be.

"And what about money?" he asked.
My brother and I knew that in such a place money was the main line of existence. Artists needed it like water. I understood then why my father had left the place in hopes for a brighter existence.

It is the process of watching an artist work that made me realize that there are different angles to concepts, sounds, ideas. As a child, I wanted to make my father happy with the greatest present, but years later I realize that the flower photograph was in essence both peace and quiet. I tried to give him what I thought was art, but in essence, I found the meanings for my own unanswered questions about childhood and art and I realized that the two could live harmoniously with each other.