Behind the Paint: The No Furniture Painting

Photo by Emily Wick

We've all seen Paulette's "NO FURNITURE" painting and know about it because it is everything a painting could be and more, and so it deserves to be known about, not kept obscure like small, unnoticed things.  But did you know that there's a really interesting back story behind it that goes like this?

Paulette was at Rise Above Graphics at 4770 Telegraph in Oakland, getting her fantastic t-shirts printed up quickly and at a reasonable price when she took a break from watching their production and sat for a bit in the front part of the store, the gallery part.  On the walls and in cases and on the floor and hanging from the ceiling were all kinds of works of art on display.  It was the art show of the GALACTICALLY FAMOUS ARTIST, J. Otto Seibold.

There was a small person in the store who liked flipping and spinning and practicing ice dancing routines, and so Paulette and she started working on their ice dancing routine with earnestness and diligence.  It was all fun and games for at least 3 minutes when tragedy struck, forever changing their lives in unforeseeable ways that nobody could ever have seen.

Paulette's account follows thusly:

"It was horrible, really horrible.  I was swinging the small person, we were doing this move where i was standing, holding her hands, and then she would fall back and to the side and down, and her legs and feet would go to the side. We were just kind of figuring it out, my god, it was horrible, we were trying to get it to be a kind of swing where the small person would swing down to the side and up, it was horrible, I'm sorry about the uncontrollable sobbing...and then, on one of the practice runs, her feet went out to the side and struck some books that were propping up a painting made on glass.  The painting tipped and fell, shattering with a really, really horrific CRASH ...into one million and two pieces."

Paulette thought it wasn't the best karma to be party to art destruction, so she offered to make a painting of an unbroken work still in the show.  She chose the beautiful painting of furniture which was painted on the glass over a framed diploma.  Both works are now hanging low and high on the walls of the Rise Above Graphics Gallery, but get in there quick-like if you want to see them because the building is being torn down to make condos, and they might have to leave the building early because the landlord didn't like the current "Future Home of No Future Weed Cookie Shop" art show that this art is part of.