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[devi]

Maps corner
Originally uploaded by bluedevi


Friday, 9am: wimble very kindly drives me, my paintings, a large shoebox covered in bits of old map found in a charity shop with a postbox slot in it where cafegoers can put their illustrated maps, and a bag full of picture wire, masking tape, glue, hammers, scissors, paper and assorted folders, down to the Magic Cafe. I've hardly had any sleep. He's on his holiday sleep pattern, so it's a scant few hours since his bedtime. We communicate mostly in "urg" and "arrrr". He helps me carry stuff in, then goes home to bed. Hafiz calls out a cheery hello from the back kitchen where he and his helper are chopping peppers for that day's salad. The cafe is empty, not open till ten, but it feels warm and homely and it's full of classical music and the smell of frying garlic. I feel like shit by most objective standards, my head feels funny and I'm having odd floaty moments, but as I start cutting lengths of picture wire and coiling the ends into loops, standing on chairs to hang paintings from the picture rail, I think damnit, I'm going to enjoy this. And I do.



10am: They make me a latte. I'm done, just as the cafe opens. I goggle with joy at the pictures actually being on walls. I haven't seen them like that before. I realise at the last moment that the big map paintings aren't painted round the edges of the canvas. No matter, I'll bring some paint down later and touch them up. As I say goodbye and slope off through the wet morning towards home, listening to Mint Royale, Dan texts me: "How's it hanging?" "Hung!" I reply.

11am-5pm: Nap? Hah! Instead I finish up approximately five million fiddly little things. It was all very well deciding to do one of the altered maps as a tube map (based on nou's suggestion) but I really should have realised that would require making up several dozen station names. I skip lunch and instead gnaw on a lump of ginger cake.

5.30pm: Arrive back at Magic Cafe through pouring rain so Hafiz can show me how the cafe works. He's going home and trusting the place to me; I'll have to lock up, close the windows, put out the recycling, switch off the heating etc when I leave. I am touched, but simultaneously terrified as I keep losing the ability to process language while he's talking to me, and I may well miss something vital and then the Magic Cafe will be burgled in the night or burn down and it will ALL BE MY FAULT.

6pm: Squish down Cowley Road to Dan's. He's cooking me dinner. The opening night starts at 7. So Dan's planned to have dinner ready for when I arrive at his. Error: Insufficient Pasta. Stop in Tesco for box of wine and a bag of pasta. Swift hug and I'm up the stairs putting makeup on in the hall mirror while he starts cooking. Minutes tick down. I remember I have to paint round the edges of the canvases. "But I've got to be there before 7," I keep saying while shovelling bucket pasta into my face. "Don't worry," Dan keeps saying, "I'm sure no one will be there on the dot."

6.45pm: Squish back up Cowley Road at high speed, arrive at locked and dark cafe at about five to, and find triskellian and smiorgan standing outside in the rain waiting. Arse. With them are two people I don't know who must be - OH CRAP IT'S THE DAILY INFO REVIEWER AND HIS GIRLFRIEND. I open up the place and start putting lights and music on, getting out wine glasses and opening up the wine box, saying "bear with me" a lot. Those edges ain't gonna be painted. triskellian and smiorgan start taking chairs off tables for me. DAILY INFO AND HIS GF ARE NOW ALSO TAKING CHAIRS OFF THE TABLES FOR ME oh shit.

But then - but then - somehow it all just went from there. I put on Jeffrey Lewis. (I'd planned to do more planning wrt music, but in the end I just grabbed a bunch of beloved CDs from the stack in the kitchen. My cooking music. There was Jeffrey and Sufjan and Lemon Jelly and the Chemical Brothers and Björk and Orbital's Brown Album.) We started in on the wine and I filled bowls with crisps. I showed Daily Info and his girlfriend the book of altered maps and explained it to them. People began to arrive. Soaking wet, stalwart people with steamed-up glasses. People all the way from London. A gallery curator I knew through Oxfringe and had mailed on the off-chance (crikey). And more people. I mingled and chatted and felt the wine hitting my sleep-deprived brain like a brick and it was just - lovely.

Perhaps the best thing was the mapping bee. Five or six people at its height, gathered round a big round table with their heads bent, drawing features in on printouts of the maps: magnetic anomalies, pterodactyl, wee boats, a series of tubes, spiral towers, panicked pigs fleeing into the sea, an island of surprisingly pleasant exile, a BMX park, a town called Peristalsis...

I sold six paintings. Six! There was a little rush of sales after the first one went. I found myself running about writing SOLD on the tags with the Red Pen of Monetary Happiness. Dazed with success, I probably said some stupid shit. I ranted to the gallery curator, after he complimented the book of altered maps, about not wanting there to be a divide between honoured artist and passive, unimportant spectator. I said some utter rubbish about comics and art which came out all wrong. Daily Info and his Girlfriend talked fascinatingly about writing sestinas. They mystified me by saying I seemed to be painting "the darker side of nature" and wondered what had inspired that. I flailed a bit, given that to me the paintings were perhaps a bit odd, but about as dark as a pink unicorn. "I do worry about the precariousness of it all," I said. It turned out that the paintings of cells disturbed the Girlfriend because they made her think of cancer. "And that one, with the hedges," she said, "that's kind of sad too. It looks like the last remaining bit of nature." Okayyyy. They changed their minds later, though: "We thought this would be pretentious, like Yoko Ono's nail paintings, but actually it's all about the childlike fun." Fair enough.

We hung on for a long time after the people there was need to impress had all left, just hanging out and chatting and drinking the wine-box dry and then drinking several more bottles for good measure. The book of maps got passed around, and we made enthusiastic gesticulatey plans for the summer with much laughter, and things got steadily sillier and more boisterous till I found myself being introduced to the concept of breast tessellation. Both as a spectator and a participant. Oh my gosh.


It wasn't till quite late in the evening that I remembered to take photos, and quite a few people had gone home by then, but they're on my flickr page. And I love this one. It's the warmth of it against the clearly visible rainy night outside.


Table of people
Originally uploaded by bluedevi


And then it was very late and I was very drunk and everyone was going, and I had to try and remember everything Hafiz had told me earlier. Dan followed me around taking note of what I was doing, probably anticipating the many panicky questions I would ask later along the lines of "are you sure I turned off the heating?" I drunkenly did the touch-up on the map paintings and miraculously did not cover anything in paint that didn't need to be. We turned the lights off and locked the doors, with the paintings inside in the dark, and went home.

Sorry the wine wasn't mulled after all - I decided I'd be more use out front than in the kitchen. I had a fantastic evening. Thanks to everyone who came for making it all that it was.