It’s raining in Texas. It’s flooding, streets are charcoal black and the sky is gray. I pulled up to a stoplight this morning and glanced right to see a brown fence. It’s a place where grade school kids hang their art, kind of a community art piece I think. What remains now are two paintings, at the very end of its expanse, which are self-portraits.

Why only two now?

Based on the empty space looming next to them, I imagine that at least 15 others were also hanging at one point. I imagine the group of kids hanging their paintings, and the teachers carefully watching the traffic as they make sure the work is properly spaced and leveled. I imagine that within the group of kids there are some who were excited that people in cars were going to view their image, and that a few of them were not. Perhaps those two were the shy ones, and because they waited until last minute to hang their work it ended up on periphery. Perhaps, in their minds, this was the least visible place for their work. I imagine myself as a schoolboy hovering in the back of a crowd, clutching something tightly: shy, lonely, not wanting to put my image out for others to see.
Perhaps when others came to pick up their paintings those two kids missed the chance, and that is why the work now streaks with rain. One is a picture of a boy, the other the girl. Based on the color and the facial features I assume they are Latino. I imagine tears there and by doing so I feel sad... This morning I have a moment of aesthetic understanding, empathy– I am moved by art. I am moved to the formal qualities of the image, the colors, curves, and shapes that house themselves there. I am moved by the gray rainy day, the way quiet luminescence falls so softly on things so as not to raise any shadows. I am moved by the wall, its ramshackle publicness, its emptiness. In this kind of light colors are amplified: I remember now that the pigment from the blue sky above us kids was running down and mixing with the color of our eyes. The choice to negotiate a piece of art always comes with its consequences. I can’t help but project myself into the things I see, can’t help but laugh tentatively as my mind drifts into my own or some other past, then into some constructed future. I project myself into some context, into a trajectory that which an artwork helps me to construct.