Model Behavior

No one knows how he/she will be remembered. When we make our entrances into the world, we ripple outwards, but see only the first few rings. We live our lives without suspecting that we may be touching others, that others may hold a certain picture in memory, that we are immortalized by nature of being who we are, where we are. When I was immortalized, as a model for a painting, I couldn’t quite comprehend it. In my first frantic few moments, I wondered over the state of my hair, clothes, lingering sunscreen smudges or food bits in my teeth. One day such things don’t matter, the next they become art, part of how one will be remembered.

Individuals are scribbled into the margins of others’ memories when they least expect it. Seldom when they look their best, or put forth their best first impression. People are remembered for their humanity, the moments when they think no one is looking and the beauty of their character is stripped to its rawest form. I am sure more than one college peer on my dorm floor remembers me as the wide-eyed girl waiting, exasperated, outside of a friend’s door in my pajamas and moccasins.

This past weekend, at the Evergreen Fine Art Gallery’s annual “paint off” and auction, I passed into memory as the silent, wistful model. The artists were tasked with creating their masterpieces within ninety minutes, pieces that would then enter an auction for charity. Right before the timer was to start, one of the gallery managers approached me and asked if I was interested in modeling for Ron Hicks, a renowned painter whose work I had admired for quite some time. I was speechless. I may as well have been modeling already, I so quickly snapped out of the motion of the summer afternoon.

So I adjusted my hat and smoothed out my frizzy hair, trying to get used to everyone staring, and everyone being allowed to stare, as I sat obligated by an artistic silence. The artist explained that most models ask for breaks every fifteen minutes. But in the course of my runaway reverie, my confident coma, I stayed positioned and concentrated from start to finish.

In the course of the hour and a half, little children came up to try to touch me, whispering to their mothers “Is she real? Are you sure? I didn’t see her move once!” Onlookers remarked to Ron Hicks that he had a beautiful model. Many laughed at the fact that I still wore my medical boot for my fractured arch, crediting Hicks with choosing a model that couldn’t run away. The closest call to jumping out of my seat came when a man said: “Look, she doesn’t even move when there’s a bee buzzing around her head!” That necessitated a smile and a shake of the head to discourage the bee that seemed to want immortality too.

It eventually came time to move, and to survey the strokes of color that ushered me into a record of humanity. I felt like sleeping beauty, dusty and awakened by the powdery kiss of a paintbrush. Sure enough, the girl on the canvas was me, rosy cheeked and glowing in golden browns, shining amidst puddles of poetry smudged around the edges. The eyes were pools of green expression, though I know not what I thought of through my rebirth as art. Perhaps some emotion unbeknownst to me now, one meant to be understood when the paints dry, when my image hardens into an immortal revelation of light.

The artist named the piece “Hannah Rose.” The starting bid was $2500, baffling my bidding father into lowering his number. So I parted with that ghostly image of myself, knowing that she is who I will be to hundreds of surveyors in the future, who look into those oily eyes and wonder. I looked into those eyes and wondered if that girl is who I am, whom I want to be remembered as. But my ripples just so happened to be in paint. That girl can now go forth and touch as many individuals as she can. Onlookers may survey the brushstrokes of her creation, and imagine the life of a girl that passed into oblivion years and years and years ago.