Paper On A Wire
Saturday, March 21, 2009 When I was in my early twenties, just before I began my own foray into university life, a friend of mine asked if I would be her model for an art project that would be displayed on campus. She promised me beer and that the modelling didn't require nudity, so I said that I would do it. I went to her house, thinking that non-naked modelling probably meant that I would sit on a chair or recline on a sofa, but I was mistaken. She lead me into the back yard, told me to lie down on the lawn, and threw a camping blanket over me.
"What's happening?" I asked.
"Just relax," she said.
I felt something else being laid over the blanket that covered me.
"What's that?"
"Just don't move too much. It's chicken wire," she said.
I lied as still as I could in her back yard, the heat baking me through layers of clothing, camping blanket, and chicken wire. She pressed the wire around my body and occasionally stuck a straw under the blanket so that I could sip pop from a can. My skin swelled in the heat, and I could feel the elastic in my shorts and brassiere cut into my sides. I inhaled measure breaths in time with the beating heart in my cheeks.
Weeks later, I began my own university classes. Campus was an unfamiliar maze of hallways and shops and streams of students, and I carried a backpack full of textbooks from building to building, my schedule a tattered list of missed appointments. While pretending to attend classes one afternoon, I hurried down a set of steps and rolled over on my left ankle. I had to throw myself against a large rock at the bottom of the stairs. I was so tired.
Ten feet away, there was the form of a person hanging on wires against a stone wall. The chicken wire that stuck out on all sides made me catch my breath. That was me hanging there. That was my shape twisting lazy in a subtle wind. I couldn't breathe.
Students rushed from one side of me to the other, the hubbub at once frenetic and still as stone. I could hear none of it. There I was, suspended against a rock wall, paper plastered over wire. One of me lit handrolled cigarettes from a perch on a stone, the other shed bits of her paper in a wind.
Reader Comments (9)
Wow.
Freaky. How come it doesn't surprise me that you've had this kind of experience?
Beautiful.
This is haunting, Schmutzie. Haunting and beautiful.
Awww. You're the best.
I'm sorry I nearly cooked you under that wire that day. I'd nearly forgotten about that.
xx
cool. what coulour was the paper and what year was this because I think I rember that sculpture. I rember thinking it was like working with the stuff we made armour out of in costume construction. You should see what happens when the hair gets stuck in the hardening mold. My sincere apologies to all those guys we laughed at when removing the casts.
This happened on the University of Saskatchewan campus in the mid-1990s. I think the sculpture was just chicken wire and papier mache, but I'm not sure.
That is horrid!
I mean, you know, almost being cooked. that would freak me out