and now the rest of the story...

One day last week my friend, Nick, told me about Union Coffee Shop, which is by his apartment and how they want paintings for  a disaster relief fund.
"What kind of painting?" I asked
He shrugged, "I don't know, whatever you want, I guess."
"Well, what's the disaster relief for?"
Again, he wasn't sure of the details.
I threw up my hands and said, "I need more information!"
He said he was going to do something, so that night I started sketching out some ideas. I had a couple blank 11x14 canvases and lots of paint, so Friday I got started and completed this painting:

I call it "Glory in the midst of despair"

The bird is on a smaller canvas and is glued to the larger canvas. I thought it was a cool idea, something I've done before, except with a picture frame rather than a smaller canvas.

I don't care for it but I thought, "Well, at least they'll have something to put up and I can give it away when nobody buys it."

I gave it to Nick on Sunday, thinking he would be taking it right over there, you know, since he lives a block away, but he neglected it. So I rescued it from him and took it over myself and decided to meet my friend Sergio there, too so he could take my picture for my scrapbook.

I met Mike, the owner, a swell guy and I imagine an all-around good American, who seemed excited about receiving a piece of art for the fund (there is a map hanging up showing where some disasters happened and what Union will be funding). As I was standing at the table, holding my painting, his friend, Megan (I believe, sorry if I forgot your name) took one glance at it and readily asked "Oh my God! Is that for sale?"

I told her it was for the relief fund and she said, "I'll take it! How much do you want for it?"

Since I had already decided that nobody was going to actually pay money for this, I told her to just donate whatever she wanted, giving the money straight to Mike and I would just take a cup of coffee.

Done deal.  She wrote Mike a check, I got a cup of coffee and I gave her the painting, but not before Sergio snapped a few shots for me.

I have another painting in the works for the relief fund. I think I 'll take money for that one, if it sells, because when I was driving home, I looked at my gas gauge and thought, "Nuts, I coulda had gas money."

the artist and the painting