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Monday, July 2, 2012

Fancy Footwork


The only class I looked forward to at Wilcox High School was art class. I didn’t draw much attention my freshman year, and then I decided to get noticed. But someone was standing in the way to me becoming the next Picasso. Her name was Karen Kleinfeldt. Karen was two years older than me. She already had experience with perspective and oil paint. Miss Veasie, our art teacher, was helping her develop a portfolio to submit to art colleges. I needed to take Karen down. But how?


Karen could take a photo from National Geographic and transform it into an oil painting, which was more than I could do. The school provided a modest assortment of supplies but I wanted to practice at home and begged my penny-pinching mother for money to buy paint and brushes. To my amazement, she opened her wallet.


I should have started with something simple, but my first attempt at oil painting was inspired by a classical painting of Adam and Eve I found in an art book. My copy was awful. I couldn’t draw the figure properly and my flesh tones were sickly. Instead of looking like a robust Adam, my figure resembled Casper the Friendly Ghost. My Eve would have convinced Adam to remain a virgin for the rest of his life. I checked more books out of the library, books on human anatomy and perspective, and gradually my work began to improve. Not that Miss Veasie noticed right away. She gave my work a cursory nod while reserving her praise for Karen.


One day I noticed something interesting about Karen’s work: all of the figures she drew or painted were standing in tall grass or high shag carpet. I asked Karen if I could see her portfolio and, sure enough, I couldn’t find an image of the human foot. As an artist, Karen’s Achilles heel was that she couldn’t draw or paint feet. Of course, neither could I. So I pored over anatomy books, studying the foot like a future podiatrist. I made numerous drawings of the twenty-eight bones that make up the human foot until I could depict feet convincingly.


Miss Veasie asked us to do a painting of a famous person; I chose Winston Churchill. My Winston looked more like an angry potato than the former prime minister of England, and I’d depicted him standing on the White Cliffs of Dover in his bare feet. Miss Veasie had begun to notice me and interpreted my picture as an interesting psychological exercise showing Churchill’s inner vulnerability by rendering him without shoes.


I tried to look modest as I accepted her compliments, and her smile was so broad when I told her she’d guessed my intentions perfectly that she looked like she had a coat hanger stuck in her mouth. Karen’s depiction of the late JFK, with his feet concealed in the bottom of a sailboat, wasn’t singled out for as much praise as she was accustomed to, nor were her next few assignments.


Another time, we were asked to paint a seascape. Karen must have sighed with relief, safe in the knowledge that I’d have a difficult time including a foot in a scene of waves and rocks. So that’s exactly what I did. I painted a typical coastal sunset with a wave breaking over a rock, but instead of a rock I had the foamy wave crashing over a stone foot. Miss Veasie said my painting was peculiar and gave me a C, leaving Karen to feel smug with her muddy picture of a cypress tree on the coast near Carmel.


Karen might have redeemed herself and renewed her position as Wilcox High’s greatest artist except for what happened next. Mr. Genovese, the biology teacher, happened by our art class when I was adding the finishing touches to my “footscape.” He pronounced my picture the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life! He offered to buy my still-wet painting. I’d never sold a picture before and didn’t have a price in mind. I turned to Miss Veasie for advice and was surprised when she suggested a ridiculously low amount—ten dollars, not enough to cover the cost of materials. I turned to Mr. Genovese and boldly said, “One hundred dollars!”


Miss Veasie burst into laughter, but her smile flatlined when Mr. Genovese pulled his checkbook from beneath his lab coat and scribbled out a check for a hundred bucks. I barely had time to sign my masterpiece before he picked it up and walked off with it. I later learned that Mr. Genovese wasn’t so much impressed with my painting skill as he was with my subject matter. He was caught burglarizing the neighborhood and it came out that he had a foot fetish. A search of his apartment turned up nearly two hundred pairs of stolen women’s shoes…and my footscape.


Karen Kleinfeldt must have been disappointed when I deprived her of Wilcox’s Outstanding Artist of the Year Award. She graduated and went off to art school someplace in the Midwest where, presumably, grass grows higher than the ankle.

39 comments:

  1. you have a gift of the gab; an enviable talent for telling a story. I really got a "kick" out of this one!

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  2. I knew you would eat out your rival but the ending took me by complete surprise. Great story. You developed a lot of sympathy for yourself!

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  3. Do you think that your rivalry with Karen is what propelled you to become better and better? Perhaps you owe her a perfunctory nod! A great story, brilliantly told! ;-)

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  4. .. what an interesting little town you lived in ... poor Karen .. I hope she eventually took an anatomy class or at the very least a life drawing class wherein her feet were the model

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  5. This was so thoroughly entertaining and surprising that I am still smiling. Good grief, that Mr. Genovese- weird man!

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  6. I never understand the foot fetish thing, but to each his own I guess. If only you'd known sooner you might have realized a career in the pornography industry.

    Something I found out yesterday when I saw the bandaids on my newborn niece's feet was that they can take blood from your feet. I guess if you're an adult though it's really painful.

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  7. Shame poor Karen, you were a nasty competitive little rotter when you were young hey? :)

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  8. Hey, we each gotta shine someplace! My son is a budding artist, and he's really good at eyes. These days, he's been working on hands, something I couldn't do in my wildest dreams! By the way, did you draw that picture on your post?

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  9. "Draw much attention" during "Art class"?
    Unintentional pun or a genius insertion to see if anyone was paying attention..?
    In any case, well-played.
    I've always thought that people with foot fetishes are good soles. Those who make fun of them are heels.

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  10. Too funny, Stephen. Feet and hands are tough to draw, much less paint with any accuracy. Wonder what became of Miss Art School???

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  11. Fom modest beginnings, a great artist with his feet on the ground!

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  12. Another great story...I wonder if Karen ever made a living using her artistic talents? OR if she ever learned to draw feet???

    That's pretty funny about the foot fetish thing. How many times in life, can a person be thankful for a foot fetish having a monetary payoff. I would have loved to see Miss Veasie's face.

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  13. I loved the funny, creepy, and hilarious twist to this story.

    You do have a great talent for telling stories Sir CC!

    Foot fetishes. hee hee

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  14. Bwahahahahahaha. A foot fetish. Now that's rich. Great post.

    Wonder what Karen ended up doing?

    Have a terrific day. :)

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  15. glad you didn't say anything too stupid and put your foot in your mouth.

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  16. You were a competitive young man. Sounds like that helped you work hard to improve skills. Have you been to a class reunion? Is Karen still in the art world?

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  17. You even set my children laughing!

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  18. Oh my gosh, you kill me! This is so funny. Did you feel cheap and used when you found out or just honored that you'd made the grade? :)

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  19. So I guess this is a story? At first I though for sure that you had the most interesting life in high school.

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    Replies
    1. Tabor:

      This is a true story I borrowed from my memoir "The Kid in the Kaleidoscope." I have changed the names so I can't be sued on the off chance I find a publisher. Every now and then I post a piece of fiction but I announce it as such. I should also admit that my mother has challenged the details on several of my stories, particularly the ones that relate to her.

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  20. I'm not sure whether I should admire your determination or wince at your cut-throat competitiveness!

    And a biology teacher with a foot fetish; no doubt the syllabus gave undue emphasis to the lower extremities.

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  21. You certainly don't put your foot in your mouth when you write. That's a great story. I quite often get "foot fetish" as a search term for my blog because I wrote a post about my dog Franklin licking my toes and my slippers. I have gorgeous feet.

    Love,
    Janie

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  22. As we often use the same self-depricating humor and write stories of days gone bye, I have to admit that when I read your posts an evil part of me secretly hopes they will suck. To this point I have always been dissapointed.

    cranky

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  23. Ha...you're a cunning man, Steve. Excellent! ;)

    S

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  24. Well. That story veered away from my initial expectations. Until the last sentence of your first paragraph, I was expecting a tale of you and an "older woman" playing footsie during art class.

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  25. Ack! Am squirming over the foot-fetish--yikes! But at least you got paid and out-shone Karen in the end :)

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  26. A great read! I'm struck by how you were able to turn Art Class into a near athletic endeavor-a Foot Race, you might say!
    PS-Bet the Biology teacher would have paid more.

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  27. That's a good way of showing her! However, I can also relate to her problems with drawing feet. In middle school I did a lot more drawing than writing, and hands were always my main weakness. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get the hang of it.

    One day I just got tired of drawing hands and focused more on the writing aspect. My comic books turned into prose, and now has become my current writing. All because I can't draw hands.

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  28. Aha! So it was competition and a foot fetish that started you on the artistic road. Whoda thunk it? ;)

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  29. Competitive painting, the new sport. Have you ever thought of self-publishing?

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  30. Great story! Love that you set the price ten times higher than the teacher suggestted! Good for you!

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  31. Your stories of your growing up just keep getting better and better :)

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  32. A delightful post that shows the value of diligence and practice. You couldn't paint a foot, so you learned. She couldn't and didn't work to learn: not in this time period anyway.

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  33. You draw feet quite well. As an amateur artist that really likes to draw hot blond guys, I can at least say this...I notice immediately when someone is avoiding hands and feet. I also like hands and feet, especially shoes, and will spend hours detailing them with wrinkles, buckles and stuff to make them look as real as possible.

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  34. Just goes to prove the old adage, Give a man a foot and he thinks he is a ruler! Bahaha! Love it!

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  35. A fine story about a difficult class for so many! Stop by when you get a chance! And Happy 4th!

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  36. I NEVER have a problem reading every word of your posts. I'm well entertained. Thanks.

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  37. Your stories never disappoint. I assume that you've changed the names but have you ever Google Karen's name to see if she's still producing art.. and if her subjects have feet?

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