Archangel #38

It came as a shock, an emotional shock to be sure, but also a real electrical shock for Jimmy Bowden, as he casually flipped on the light switch. He had insisted on using the cool brushed metal plates for the switches in his new studio, but he actually had no business working with electricity at all. It didn't help that he was color blind, but even more - that he was definitely challenged when it came to simple mechanical tasks. Changing a tire.....maybe, if he took notes. Anything requiring a power tool had been deemed off limits by his then girlfriend Charisse. He had almost severed a thumb with a power drill, for christsakes, never mind the drill holes he had left in the small eat-in kitchen dining table that tended to become is adjunct workspace when his old studio was full of stuff he had pulled (rescued he says) out of dumpsters. And some of it did smell.

Jimmy did jump back at that moment, and kind of crashed into a table full of paints. Some of these little plastic containers cheerfully popped open, and left spatters of paint, similar to a giant paint gun, on the floor. And Jimmy did like paint guns. Archangel #37 was painted entirely with a paint ball gun, after all.

Jimmy's shock subsided when smoke began to pour out of the switch box, but that did not last long, fortunately, for the power breaker did finally kick in. At least he did not burn the house down. That would be a shame.

The space itself had been built by someone else, a gruff beer-bellied guy who always wore jumpsuits, typically gray or blue, made by Dickies. He didn't say much, and listened to his stream of conservative talk radio at full blast on his admittedly cool DeWalt black and yellow boom box. Jimmy kind of envied it, and swore he would have one some day. It was LOUD, and Jimmy was so sorely tempted to plug in his iPod to it to listen to Morbid Angel, if could even figure out how to do that. He doubted the handyman/builder would like death metal.

The paint on the floor sort of coalesced, and created this swirl of pattern on the floor. It was cheap acrylic paint that he had doctored up with various stuff so that it had a slightly runny texture.

Jimmy had decided that he really needed another light switch, so he had wired it himself. He was confused by the wires, and red, green, blue (what was blue for?) and black were one thing, but the fact that it was hard for jimmy to tell some colors apart made it even more of a challenge. He looked at the smoldering, melted switch, and proceed it to pull it out of the wall with a crowbar, for in addition to everything else that made Jimmy unique, he was impatient and unable to think more than 3 minutes ahead. At some point, the box came free, and Jimmy fell backwards hitting his head on the floor, making a light thud as it bounced off the floor covered with industrial vinyl, the kind seen in commercial establishments with the little bumps about the size of quarters. His head at this point was covered in paint. He appeared to be bleeding psychedelic blood as he stood up, wobbly on his feed. He then slipped again, falling forward into a pile of whitewashed masonite siding he had scavenged. The paint had been absorbed enough that his body acted as one giant paint roller at this point.

Later this year, he would hang Archangel #38 in his one-man show. He was careful as always to not say much as people milled about making comments. The general view was that it was his best work yet, a sense of spontaneity and spiritual explosion combined with the temperance of man's physical being. Or something like that.