Log: Kevin & Pixie

[x-welshpixie.livejournal.com]

Pixie’s roommate was gone, the rec room was empty, and so the mildly bored teen wandered over to the garage to see if Julian was around, working on his car. The garage turned out to be devoid of people, too. She could hear sounds coming from an adjoining room, and curiously came to the door leading to the metal shop. She had never been in here before.

She opened the door halfway.

“Hello?”

As per usual, Kevin had music loud enough to drown out most other sounds that could have been occurring within the shop. Today it was Seether focusing him on the job at hand. It was also probably why he had so many lines that swooped down gracefully and ended abruptly in jagged lines or severe angles and points. He was beyond cutting and shaping the sheets of metal, though, and was instead welding pieces together.

The pink-haired girl in the doorway drew Kevin’s attention, but he couldn’t hear anything she was saying. He had to turn off the welding torch first, then go over and turn down the music. “Hey. Sorry, didn’t hear you. What was that?”

“Oh hey, sorry, I didn’t know someone was working back here.” Her gaze moved from Kevin to the beautiful metal artwork.

“I’m Pixie. We’ve ah, sort of met...” she said uncertainly. “Wow, that’s really cool,” she added, her tone softening with awe, still staring at the metalwork. “How long have you been working on it?”

Kevin glanced between the slightly wide, black eyes of Pixie and his sculpture in progress. “Um...Ah’ve probably put somewhere like eighty hours in on it so far.” The base of it was done and there were various pieces welded together all over the place cooling. He was mostly down to welding pieces together and assembly, but it probably looked a little like being in a metal garden or something being surrounded like this. “Ah’m Kevin, by the way. We met on the journals or somethin’, right?” At least he was fairly certain he hadn’t run into her face-to-face. He was good at avoiding people, after all.

“Yep!” Pixie stepped all the way inside and closed the door. It was sort of like stepping into another world, an industrial sci-fi landscape. “You’d mentioned you were into art and now I finally get to see your work. Ah, if you don’t mind sharing? I’d really like to see how you work. It’s just incredible.”

“Ah don’t mind.” He’d had people who appreciated his art before, but never anyone who was interested in the process of creating it. Fabrication wasn’t the part most people cared about, they just liked the pretty end product. “This is mainly what Ah do,” Kevin told her, an arm gesturing to the scattered bits of welded pieces. “Eventually they turn into that,” he indicated a six foot tall structure in the back corner and then posted to the bookcase with six inch to two foot high sculptures on it, “or those. Ah draw and paint, too. And Ah can do like clay sculpture and real simple stone sculpture, but this is what Ah love.” He even smiled when he said it. Abstract metal sculpture was also what Kevin was best at. There were a great many people in the world who looked at the kind of work he did and just thought it was a mess. And that was okay, because art is about perception and ultimately you see in it what you allow yourself to.

“You said you do art, too, right? What kind?”

To Pixie it looked like the kind of art that was commissioned for public works--only awesome. New York sure had some interesting public sculptures and installation pieces.

“Well I mainly just draw...” She patted her trouser pocket that contained her Sharpies unconsciously. “I like to sketch with pencil or especially with markers. Sometimes I just attack a piece of a paper that I know is going to make my lines bleed, and see what I can make by incorporating all the mistakes. Um, I also paint with acrylics.” She lifted one leg and pointed her shoe out. It was green and was painted with apples and snakes writhing all over.

“Mostly on shoes. I get old plain canvas-type shoes, wash ‘em and do all different designs on them. I want to make something big, though. I would love to learn how to weld metal or do glass blowing. It’s so like... tangible, you know?”

She walked around the sculpture-in-progress. “It occupies as much space as a person. You can stand in its presence and put yourself in the place of the person who made it...” OK, maybe that was weird.

If that was weird then Kevin was definitely the wrong person to think so. “Ah wanna make something huge one day. Ah did a couple eight-foot-by-four-foot sculptures for people on commission when Ah was out at the West Coast Annex. But Ah wanna make something like ten feet high and like twenty feet wide eventually. Something you can walk through and around. But it’d need to be commissioned and done on site wherever it was.” But it would be awesome.

“Angel used to do glass blowin’. Ah dunno if she still does. You could always ask her when she’s not crazy to teach you. Working with metal involves a lot of heavy liftin’ and stuff. Machinin’,” he nodded toward the big machine that he used to for shape cutting, “maybe hammerin’, solderin’, weldin’...a lot of dangerous stuff. Which basically means Ah ain’t teachin’ you unless the professor gives it the thumbs up. ‘Cause if you go and lose an eye or a thumb or somethin’ without a healin’ factor and Ah’m the idiot who let the minor do it? Ah’ve had enough legal problems, y’know?”

“There was a time when I was always given the rounded scissors...” Pixie admitted, frowning slightly. She brightened a split-second later. “I would love to take a metal shop class if the professor would approve it. Or glass blowing, yeah! Oh man, an installation piece would be really cool. Like at the Museum of Modern Art... which I haven’t been to yet,” she added longingly.

“You haven’t been?” Kevin raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Ah dunno what exhibits they have right now, but you should go. It’s a good museum, decent permanent collection and all. Ah only go when Ah can be pretty sure Ah’ll avoid crowds, so usually week day mornings. Me and crowds and decaying, they don’t go together very well.” But he would give the pink-haired girl one thing, she was damn enthusiastic.

“I saw a promo poster for Picasso’s guitars at the MoMA. They’re three-dimensional sculptures, I think. That would be really cool. At least when I ever look at Picasso paintings, I like to try to spot the guitar. Or the boob. Seeing the real ones would be cool--the guitars I mean.”

Oddly enough, Kevin wasn’t much of a Picasso fan, at least not for the cubism stuff. “Well, if there’s ever an exhibit you want to see there lemme know and Ah’ll take you. Shouldn’t keep an artist away from art. Just ain’t natural.”

“Okay, cool! I know a lot of people don’t like modern art but I do, especially surrealism. And then there’s like modern-modern art, or whatever it’s called, all the movements that are going on now. I haven’t really learned about it in school yet...” She was starting to get into an excited chatter and realized she needed to calm down.

“Ah, I’ll let you get back to work. Do you mind if I stop by again sometime and see how your sculpture is coming?”

“Nah, Ah don’t mind at all. People don’t really wander in much so it doesn’t bug me none when they do.” Kevin blinked, eyes going a little wide. Wow, he had just sounded really country there for a second. He must have been channeling his father or something. “Ah’ve basically got an open door policy or whatever anyway. You can come by whenever.”

Pixie thought the accent was adorable--but then Kevin probably thought she had a pretty strange accent!

“Awesome! I’ll see you around, and I’ll find out a good day for a trip to the Museum of Modern Art.”

“Alright.” He gave her a smile and waited until she was mostly out the door before turning the music up and getting back to work.