The eye of the beholder

Graphic design was a pretty expensive major. You had to buy all sorts of stuff — paints, canvas, paperboard, construction paper, zip disks, special rulers and pens... quite the list. And you only used it once, of course. But once a year, you had a chance to recover some of that money by entering stuff in the juried exhibit. That meant framing your work, though, and that could get expensive very quickly.

So I had gotten into the habit of collecting old picture frames. Goodwill always had some good ones; you just had to toss the terrible painting that was in it, or turn around the picture of a moonlit wolf (there was always one of these in the art bin at Goodwill) and use it as a backing for something worthwhile. Five bucks would get you several usable frames if you had the eye for it, and maybe another one where you could hide the ugliness with a can of spray paint. By my senior year, I had built up quite a collection. I was going through it, looking at them and trying to decide what would look good with a particular piece.

After maybe the tenth frame, I noticed that the wall behind the frame was more interesting than the frame itself, so I decided to frame that. I shone a little clip lamp into the corner and suspended the frame in space using a few pieces of thread strung from the mirror and the windowsill. It sat at a jaunty angle, and I liked it. It showed off the texture of the wall nicely. One of the guys was walking by, so I invited him in to view "my new piece of art."

After the annoyance of having to ask where it was (as if he couldn't tell, hmph!) it was easy to see the thought running through his head: It's an empty picture frame.

Yes, it is, I thought to myself.

"So what do you think?"

"It's um, nice. I guess." And obviously casting about for something else to say about this empty picture frame, asked, "What is it?"

"What do you think it is?"

"Well, an empty frame..."

I gave him the "You poor, ignorant Philistine" look. He was there on a baseball scholarship, and the meanings of paintings was not his forte.

"What does it mean to you?"

"Mean?"

I nodded. He screwed up his face like it was an examination question and studied the hanging frame in a worried way.

"Well," he finally ventured, "It's your life. It's open and empty, and you have to fill it. You go through it, and there's a light on the other side."

I nodded, acting impressed. "Pretty good," I said.

"Really? I got it right?" He gazed back at the frame with a sense of awe now. "Wow! I never understood art before. This is cool!"

But I really was impressed. He had come up with something so completely different than what I had imagined, and had obviousy gotten something out of it. I went down the hall to find Jon.

Jon was used to me showing him my pieces. He ambled back to my room.

"So, whaddya think?" I prompted.

"Think of what?"

I rolled my eyes. Philistines.

"My new aaaaart installation," I drew out, gesturing at the brightly lit
corner. "Do you like it?"

"Well, maybe if I knew what it was..."

"That never stopped you in class, did it? Come on, what do you think it is?"

Jon slumped into Art Mode.

"It's life."

Now my mind was spinning. It was the same answer Ryan had given me. Trying hard not to sound too excited, I prodded for more.

"How so?"

"Well, you go through it, you know, and then, bam, you hit a brick wall, and you're done." He slapped his fist into his hand. "There's nothing between you and that wall. You step through it and there you are." He shrugged and looked over at me for confirmation. I nodded sagely.

"Really? That's what it means?" I raised my eyebrows, not daring to say anything lest it spoil the electricity that was arcing around my brain.

"Pretty good, then," he nodded.

I was floored. I had stumbled across a bit of some Universal Truth, and it was starting me in the face, daring me to explain it. I dragged in person after person from the hallway, and each one told me about not the picture frame, but about themselves. People say that 'Beauty was in the eye of the beholder" — by which they mean that everyone has their own tastes — but really it's because the beauty is in them. So was hope, or despair, or whatever, but it was in them, the beholders — not the things I had hung on the wall.

One thing still nags me, though. They all said it was about life.

So artists have been failing all along. Why has no one else realized that it was the frame that symbolized life, all along, and not the drawings we cluttered them up with?