Art Thieves

It's not your painting any more. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvain
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NOTE: If you haven't answered the SUMMER QUESTION yet you only have 7 days to do it.
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Wednesday night was a night of change and adjustment for the local artists community. For several years we have had a gallery on the main street of this town but we closed it. The reason we did is because we well never sell anything from it, for two good reasons. First because there is no art buying public around and second because there is no any kind of public around. Sure, people live here, but this is a strange place in which nothing happens on the main street. There are some shops up and down, a few doctors' offices, a realtor and an attorney, but no customers. The supermarket is someplace else, so is the drug store and not far away there's the usual mall. There isn't even a movie theatre here. There is nothing to bring them to main street.

So we decided to take our art works down and close it up. And that's when the fun began. It was the stuff of a short story I might write someday. "The Burgling of the Gallery" or "The Gang of Art Thieves."

It was a very dark night when the bunch of us showed up there. The first thing was that we found the building which housed the gallery locked. Only one person knew the combination of the lock so we had to wait on the sidewalk while she showed up and managed with no light at all to open the lock and let us in. The next thing we discovered was that the electricity in the gallery had been shut off, no lights.

Now you have to picture a small crowd of mostly seniors poking around in the pitch dark, bumping in to each other, trying to find their paintings. I found one of mine, put it in a plastic bag, and went looking for the other one. When I thought I had found it I lit a match to make sure but all I could see were brush strokes, I couldn't tell one color from another. Some found pieces that belonged to artists who weren't there and there was a big discussion in the dark, among people who couldn't see each other, about what should be done with them. There was a lot of confusion.

In the middle of it all I began to get the giggles. I thought what if the police happened to drive by or if some passing motorist called them when they saw what was going on.

"EXTRA,EXTRA, Police conducted a raid last night where they nabbed a gang of thieves who had broken into a building on main street and were attempting to rob the local gallery of all its art works. On a tip from an anonymous bystander the police blocked off the street and entered the gallery where they found the robbery in progress.

All the alleged thieves were apprehended and the art works taken as evidence to be held until the appropriate trials. Some of those arrested were let out on bail or on their own recognizance when next of kin appeared. But one of them, a Mister Bate, who could provide no connections with any family in the area, is thought by police to be the gang leader and instigator of the theft. Bate has since been identified as a vagabond and is being held on charges of breaking and entering, attempted robbery, vagrancy, willful destruction of commercial property and unlawfully impersonating an artist. The crime is still under investigation."

Imagine. We night not ever see our paintings again.

Well, it didn't happen. We all got safely away with our work and now we have to figure out where we can open up again.

DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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SUMMER QUESTION

The end of Summer is fast approaching, people. 7 days left.

It's been a long, hot, wet and sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

21 interesting answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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