For the Sake of Art Read online



  By

  Barry B. Begault

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  13225

  For The Sake of Art

  Copyright 2011, 2013 Barry B. Begault

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Jack woke to a slight tremor that ran though his studio and sat bolt upright in his bed. The tremor was barely strong enough to rattle a few glasses in his studio home. These little tremors were part of living in northern California like hurricanes and tropical storms are part of the Gulf Coast. Some worse than others.

  Since living here though, he'd only experienced a few tremors that rattled his dishware significantly enough to cause him some alarm. But he still hadn't become as nonchalant about the tremors as his brother, Jack. They still gave him cause for alarm. His brother could replace his equipment if destroyed or damaged, but Jack couldn’t replace his works of art. They were all a one of a kind, unique.

  He shrugged it all off his sat up in bed and rubbed both eyes with the knuckles of his forefingers in an attempt to sweep the previous night’s sleep from his eyes.. The tip of his right index finger no longer hurt where he shocked himself the night before on a bare wire from an old extension cord. He had grabbed it on his front porch to unplug his boom box and got a surprising jolt. His skin was still little a little discolored around the shock area.

  The aroma of fresh brewing coffee from his preset coffee maker, wafted though his studio and enticed Jack out of the comfort of his warm bed like the sea sirens who beckoned sailors to the reefs. He swung his feet off the left side of his bed and into his waiting fuzz lined slippers. He stood up and stretched his arms and back and twisted his torso left and right to help alleviate the sleep cramps from sleeping on his left side. Down the short hallway behind his studio he shambled to his kitchen, still yawning and stretching his arms, for that first cup of dark Cajun brew.

  In the kitchen he reached up and grabbed a heavy, white, ceramic, mug from the cabinet above the coffee machine. After rinsing it in hot water he poured a mug full of fresh, hot, java, and added a no calorie sweetener packet, and a generous blob of fresh milk. Now his day was pre-flighted.

  His closed his eyes briefly as he sipped his morning beverage.

  "Ah. Now that's good coffee." he announced to his studio at large.

  He walked into his studio to watch his morning ritual of the sunrise dispelling the black cloth of the previous night. He stood in the mostly dark studio and only the shapes of objects could be determined but not their details. The increasing brightness of the emerging day slowly revealed the depth and the contents of his studio.

  I like to watch my creations appear out of the darkness.

  The sunrise energized Jack every morning. It gave him inspiration for the rest of the day and cranked his creativeness into high gear.

  Darkness turning to light was always a spectacular site. Hey, maybe I should put this in a poem.

  The swords of light shredded the remaining darkness, and the cliffs rapidly became immersed in the yellow light of the new sunrise. Jack’s day had begun.

  The studio was a mess from the party that was thrown by his friends the night before to celebrate his 300th piece of art being sold. Half full cups of beer, wine, and other beverages were on every flat surface. Napkins and half eaten d’oeuvres were on paper plates everywhere and beach towels were flung over almost every chair back. He realized that most of the towels didn't belong to him. He just shrugged at the mess.

  I'll have Amanda launder the towels when she come tomorrow to clean and leave the laundered towels on the bench over there so their owners can claim them when they come back.

  The slight stench of stale beer, and various liquor smells hung softly in the air. He drank a little more, hell, a lot more than he usually did and he felt the aftermath of it with cotton mouth and a slight headache.

  The studio really needed to be cleaned up, and he didn't want to burden Amanda with all this mess so he would pick up most of the mess, but not until after lunch. Mornings were his best inspirational time, and the time when he did his best work. He didn’t want to waste the morning cleaning.

  He stepped to the windows and pressed the remote that opened the transoms on the top and middle of the wall of windows that faced the ocean to air out the studio. The cool, salt scented, sea air rushed into the studio and began to displace the stale party air of the night before.

  The studio was large; it occupied almost half of the space of his three thousand square foot , single story, home/studio. The house was built on the cliffs of the northern California coast north of Elk. The wall of windows, that faced the ocean, were twenty foot high and fifty foot long and had a self tinting mechanism to keep the studio from becoming a ceramic kiln in the hot afternoon.

  The roof swept down from the glass wall, to a height of twelve feet at the opposing wall, thirty feet back, supported by large rough cut cedar timbers.

  Both south and north walls perpendicular to the front windows were covered in paneling rough hewed from driftwood logs found in the ocean with four foot transoms running across top of the walls just below the beam and plank ceiling.

  He looked out to the sea as if to get inspiration from the whitecaps breaking in the distance.

  The white caps sometimes seem to form artistic shapes, and I can sometimes be inspired for a new piece from that.

  His house was surrounded by twenty acres of rough land with acres of wilderness surrounding his. It offered him the quiet isolation he needed to become imbibed with inspiration and not to be easily distracted by the sounds of a crowed city or suburb.

  The cliffs below his house were beautifully rugged. The driveway was twenty feet below in front of his house and one hundred feed from the coast highway. The road circled up and ended on a natural little plateau. A wide wooden stairway led up from the plateau along the rugged rock face to his front porch that extended across the entire front of his home, with a very large hot tub on one side near the large stairs, and the entrance to his home/studio on the other south end of the porch. Patio furniture occupied some of the center of the porch and near the hot tub.

  The cedar heart wood was well weathered from the salt air and they were still as sturdy as the day they were nailed down. Climbing those stairs was about the only true exercise Jack ever got, of late, but climbing it multiple times a day helped to keep him fit.

  The dirt road that ran from his parking plateau and out to the coast highway was his only entrance and exit. He wished that he had a back way to his house across the land behind his house, but there were no roads for miles near the back of his property. It was just miles of low scrub and rock strewn land with occasional trees.

  This studio had the light and the location, and the tranquility for creativity. It but was only a few miles to the small town of Elk. When he worked in his studio, he seemed to be the only person in the world and was oblivious to anything else except creating art. His family often complained that he wouldn't even answer the phone and would let the answering machine get the call. Thing was, with the classical music playing at the volume of a live performance, and the noise from his welding, he really didn't hear anything else.

  The studio/house was built in 1962, and he bought the house five years ago from another artist’s estate; a painter. The painter's widow told him how her husband had the home specially built to be a place of light and space. It
was a magnificent work area. He immediately fell in love with the studio and bought the house on the spot. He didn't even quibble price. It was worth every penny.

  While standing in the new daylight, soaking in the new-born day, he thought about his good luck. Being a very fortunate abstract wire-form artist, Jack did in metal what artists did on canvas, only in three dimensions instead of two. The sculptures he created were of the medieval King Arthur days, but in a stylized manner. Three dimensional wire-form art has always been popular, but on a smaller scale. Not too many artists created wire-form art the size he created which was actual size of the subject.

  Early American sculptures were still his favorite creations, however, because of the worldwide interest in the Harry Potter books, movies, and the proliferation of medieval movies the public, especially the rich public, wanted medieval art and he obliged.

  The figures of the knights, and people of the time that he created were out of half inch steel rods artistically bent and welded to shape. There was one authentic piece of medieval equipment woven into each of his creations which made his art unique. The piece “The Jouster” had a helmet from one of the Knights of the Round Table. It was these authentic pieces of medieval artifacts that gave Jack the idea to do the wire-form sculptures to showcase these pieces. The art public went wild over this new modern, yet primitive art.

  His popularity grew, and the demand for his work over the last few years was huge. Commissions for new pieces came in from all over the world, and especially if someone had an authentic medieval piece that they wanted displayed in a dramatic way. He was doing just fantastic. He was proud of his accomplishments and the satisfaction it gave him and his clients. His had fame but not the self-centeredness some famous artists had. He remained a down-to-Earth artist.

  He looked around his studio while finishing his first cup of coffee. He had nine pieces in the studio, in various stages of development. Three of them were due to be picked up today and sent to northern Scotland, “The Maiden”, with an authentic robe of the time, was Jack’s favorite out of the three being shipped. Even though her face was wire-formed he still showed her beauty in the metal rods with his unique craftsmanship.