It was Autumn of 1996, I started school a week later than everybody else. Mr. Gamble was teaching that first period - Sculpture, Grade 11. When I came in, the class was already buzzed with activities. Everyone was in the middle of working on their projects. I sat down and looked around, felt so intimidated being a stranger in a new environment.
I noticed Noémie. I didn’t know her name at the time. She was very slender, she sat on the donkey (a wooden artist's drawing bench/easel) drawing something. Her posture was super straight, someone, her parents perhaps, must have told her to sit up straight. Everyone else in the class was slouching. She had beautiful golden hair. But her glasses had made her look nerdy, like a bookworm. I believed if she took them off, she would look like those girls in fashion magazines.
Mr. Gamble was busy tending to everyone's needs. I knew it was time to make myself heard or suffer being unnoticed. I shot a hand up. When he finished with four remaining others who were lining up to speak with him, he approached.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“You are, erm…” He whirled around the studio classroom to see what everyone was doing, to remind him exactly what the subject was. “We… are… making a sculpture, that is wearable, whether on the head or anywhere else on the body.” He said.
“We'll use these bendy wires to form the shape and structure, and then paper maché over to give it a surface. Then you can paint on it. After that, you can wear it, and we'll take photos and develop them upstairs.”
“We can develop photos, here? In the school?” I asked twice, just to be sure I heard it right.
“Yes. Upstairs. We have a darkroom where we will learn to develop our own photos.”
My eyes lighted up. A school with a darkroom, wicked! I opened the sketchbook and got to work. Came up with a sketch of a large, fancy seashell. The kind you can wear as a hat. I showed Mr. Gamble for approval. He held the sketch up for the class to see as an example.
I proceeded with the wires, cutting, shaping, twisting, weaving them into a three dimensional mesh. No one taught me. I just figured it out as I went along. And when I wasn't sure, I just cranked my neck up looking around to see how everyone else was doing and took in clues. I brought the shell home to continue to work on. On the bus, I shielded it from view. One guy smiled at me knowingly, “You don't have to hide it.” He said, “Not with this school, nobody makes fun of you here. Nobody cares!” This had explained the odd things I've seen around the school. Some students wore wreathes of dried plants and flowers on their heads, some walked around barefoot, some danced in the hallway, and a few lied on the floor singing to the ceiling.
Two days later, when it came time to apply the paper maché, I hesitated, because the prickly wire mesh was so beautiful, it was art all to itself, and paper maché would ruin it. But, instructions were made to be followed, right?
When the papering and painting were almost done, I asked Mr. Gamble if that girl sitting over there would wear it for the photo, I pointed at her.
“Noémie?” He wondered.
“That’s her name?” I asked.
“Yes. Noémie, come here!” Mr. Gamble beckoned her over and placed the shell on her head. It fit, and she liked it. She went to the mirror above the sink and explored different ways of wearing it. It amused her.
The picture taking never materialized. We were too busy moving on to the next subjects. Our schedules were jammed with projects from different art departments - ceramics, life drawing, still life, painting, etching, lino cut, printmaking, art history, and photography.
Photography Class
When we had Mr. Gamble again, it was for Photography. He lent us the school's Pentaxes. I loaded mine with a roll of film and roamed about the school looking for things to take pictures of. I walked pass the stairwell and saw my classmate, Yvonne, taking pictures of Noémie. Curious, I decided to stay and watch them. Moments in, I wanted to take pictures of Noémie as well, but didn’t know if I could even open my mouth to ask. I was too timid.
When Yvonne was done and started packing up her camera, Noémie turned to me and asked, “You want to take pictures of me, too?” I said yes. I was glad to this day that she had made it so easy for me back then.
The Darkroom
I joined a classmate, Tim, in a tiny closet within the darkroom to develop our film rolls. The smell of chemicals we mixed, the sound of gurgling liquid as we shook the rolls, our quiet talking and giggling as we waited, sounds and smells, were the only things existed in that abyss of darkness. After the rolls were hang-dried, the negatives were ready. I projected them on photographic papers and developed a string of black and white Noémies. Watching her resemblance appearing was thrilling. The darkroom was a world removed from reality, where ghosts lurched beneath baths of chemicals, spooky faces appeared on blank sheets of paper under a creepy red light, akin to settings in horror films.
I examined some of Yvonne’s developed photos that she had left hanging on a string to dry. I thought Noémie looked better in my photos, for I zoomed in, got the camera up close, allowing Noémie to fill the entire frame. Whereas Yvonne stayed at a distant, letting Noémie’s unique features competed with the cluttered environment, and worse, lost.
The Inspiration
When my string of Noémies had dried, I took them to the room outside to examine. I then selected a few to experiment with hand painting—rubbing oil colors directly on the photos with a finger and Q-tips. This technique was introduced and pushed by Mr. Gamble. It produced a very photo-in-the-attic look. A look of antique photograph, making Noémie appeared like a young lady from a bygone era. Suddenly I was filled with visions of a modern Noémie all dressed up in a corset gown standing in a Rococo architecture environment. An historical Western look that an Asian like myself had never experienced and was very intrigued by.
I grabbed a few books of old masters from the school’s library and proceeded to sketch a few scenes. First I drew Noémie, I posed her standing a certain way using my imagination and learned basics. Then I fashioned a corset to replace what she normally wore—t-shirt, cargo pants and boots. Then I filled the background with Art Nouveau elements picking out from the books.
Caught
I came into photography class, flunked down my green binder on a desk and winded my way into the darkroom, passing Noémie who was on her way out. When I was done and emerged, Noémie was at my desk looking through my green binder. She had probably wanted to see my developed photos of hers and how I hand-colored some of them. But she found the sketches and held one aloft.
“What… is… this?” She looked at me seriously and demanded.
I froze. Damn, she recognized herself in those sketches.
“I… erm… I… er,” I stuttered. “I wanted to erm… paint it.”
I braced myself. In soap operas, this is usually the time guys get slapped.
A few seconds passed, nothing happened. Then a smile appeared on her face. Then she became super happy. The school bell rang, she grabbed her books and exited hurriedly, smiling brightly. She had the look of a little girl who couldn't wait to run outside and bragged to all her friends in the playground.
Whew, I was relieved.