Smoking
An art story
All my life I have been grossed out by cigarettes. At birth, my lungs rejected the choking smoke in the air until I grew out of the asthma or my little lungs grew acclimated to their environment. My youth was surrounded by the disgusting vice of ashtrays and surrounded by the stench that permeated everything. My sister and I remember countless sickened car rides as we hotboxed our way south to California. All too familiar with the putrid smell of of aged, damp ash trays, I never once thought of them as an object of art.
However, last month I was drawn to something that repulses me. Cigarettes, no, even worse, an overflowing ash tray full of stained and spent cigarettes. I walked through the American College of Building Arts snapping pictures and looking for subjects to paint, I scolded myself for zooming in on the little metal vessels. Yet somehow, zoom I did. I found myself along the outside of the old converted trolly car garage studying the brick exterior and wrought iron embellishments. The wooden tables tucked against the building told a story of weary students taking a break from the sweltering warehouse full of choking stone, plaster, and saw dust to get some “fresh air” and recoup. In the center two tables I spotted the speckled red granite sculptures, clearly hand chisled by the fledgling stone craftsman (*edit: I met one of the iron workers at the school who told me he and his classmates made these because the were tired of seeing cigarettes everywhere. They are actually metal, made by fire and flame which is even cooler) packed beyond capacity with worried and crumpled cigarettes smoked to their filter and crushed into the base of the tray. Was this one day's work or a week of cigarette breaks? Something told me it was just the tip of a perpetual iceberg of many hours of smoking, reflecting and going back for just a few more hours of tedious toiling.
When I got home and studied my camera roll, there they shone in their compositional glory. I liked them more than any of my other photos. The lines, textures it just seemed like they had to be painted. Yes, two different paintings of two heaping ash trays. Art. Right? Preserving A Picturesque America surely doesn't want two paintings of ashtrays in their sensational art show full of beautiful historical scenes.
Well, it turns out they did want ONE. It's possible they thought they were two entries of one painting. They are very similar. All in all, I am quite pleased with my little abominations.
Which one do you prefer? Team Marlboro or team Camel? They chose the best one, in my opinion.
“Butts In The Seat” has an added interest of nub of a cigar, probably placed there by a fellow with a dapper mustache and the angles are a little more intriguing. What’s more, it is the first painting I made on 300 lb. cold press paper, which is a game changer. (side note: seriously, 300 lb. paper is so much better! The paint even has more depth and a richer look and no ripple whatsoever. I am forever spoiled for anything less)
My lessor unchosen ashtray painting is “Burning At Both Ends.” I liked the slightly confusing geometric Celtic design. It is weird how much fun I had painting these little cylinders of death. They say to paint what you know. Somehow, I understood every element of these death sticks with their thin paper and stained fiber filter. The familiar wrinkles of crumpled ends, just like the ones by my father's armchair. I used to get in trouble sneaking up behind his chair and snuffing them out when I thought he wouldn't notice.
My painting “Butts In The Seat” will be on display at City Gallery in downtown Charleston, SC with three of my other paintings for the Preserving A Picturesque America Exhibit July though September 2024.
I can’t wait until the show opens on July 19th.
Update: The show was a great celebration of history and art. One of my paintings sold and we had a lot of fun viewing the exhibit and meeting the other artists. My two paintings are still for sale and I will share the proceeds from both with PAPA and American College of Building arts should either one sell.
“Little cylinders of death” 💀 I am very impressed with ‘ butts in seat’ your work just gets better and better and better! 👍🏼