Carnation Street

Georgie.

I found the little black notebook on the side of my favourite bench. I couldn’t see anyone around, so I picked it up. It was filled with page after page of sketches and paintings, each by a different artist. Inside the front cover it said, ‘Show me your favourite masterpiece and leave the book for the next person to find. Pay what you can – it might help someone open a gallery one day!’. Sounds simple enough, I thought.

I decided on Sorolla’s swimming boys, the deep transparent greens and blues cutting through the grey day I was in. I left the book on the wall by a garden on my way to work after slipping a note into the back pocket, silently thanking it for bringing back the memories of that tiny gallery in Spain.

We had found the little gallery on the side of the Olympic mountain on a sweltering Tuesday all those years ago. I’d walked into the exhibit and the breeze and salty sunshine hit me in the face – I never knew painting could be like this. I’d walked entranced from canvas to canvas, feeling sand under my feet and the gentle seagull-full air. Sails billowed and water sparkled through the room. ‘Sorolla uses purples as a transition colour’ I repeated to myself as I sat in the cool cinema section, quietly re-examining everything I thought I knew about painting, knowing that there were no words for what he had put onto canvas – only colours, brush strokes, sunshine falling through water. ‘THERE ARE NO WORDS’ I write at the bottom of my page because it is true.

Christopher.

The Mona Lisa is very small in real life. I remember being so scornful of it when I went to see it as kid. We couldn’t even get close because everyone was lined up to take a picture. I chuckle at the thought of a 10 year old putting down one of the most famous masterpieces in history as I start drawing a few rectangles on the double page. Each one holds a view of Mona, but each frame has a tourist obstructing the view. A tall guy’s head, someone’s hat waving, a woman’s hair flicking through the air as she turns. It makes me laugh to myself and I’m glad I always carry a fineliner in my pocket. I leave the black notebook on the seat next to me with the fiver I’d saved for my coffee tucked inside, and run to get my bus. Safe travels Mona.

Steffanie.

I find the little notebook tucked away in the window seat of Emily Carr’s house. Mum and I are visiting without the boys as they don’t really ‘do’ art galleries.

I always imagine Emily’s swelling greens of the forest when I am homesick, and long for the rich undergrowth she shows with a few haphazard brushstrokes – a swath of green amidst the giants of the woods. When I look into her paintings, I hear the rain on the salal and smell the cedars, and I am back on Princess Margaret Island walking through the woods in wellies, headed for the beach. The sea is a grey expanse, and the beach is crackling with rain and tiny life and I can’t believe I live anywhere else but here. The wind blows in the trees and I wish I were as brave as this woman who followed her art the edge of the known world.

I breathe in, put brush to paper and don’t forget to leave space for the sky.

Charlie.

I found the notebook by complete chance – I was milling through the gift shop when I saw it. Dad was getting a postcard, so I went to look at the books and there it was on the shelf. I opened it and knew I needed to be a part of it. I’ve never stolen anything in my life - and really, this wasn’t stealing per se – so I tucked the book into my coat and told dad I’d meet him outside. We only had a few days to see the city, and so I had pleaded for at least one art gallery. We chose the Van Gogh museum because it had the smallest queue. Small and unimpressive, it sat in the grey square and welcomed us with none of the grandeur I was expecting.

We found the Toulouse-Lautrecs upstairs, in a little travelling exhibit of French printmakers. I never knew his ‘Jockeys’ were lithographs. I sat there on the floor and added my favourite one to the notebook, the strong haunches of the horse barrelling forward, its tail pointing back at me. Dad liked it too.

I tucked the change from my pocket into the notebook and left it next the ‘T’ in the Amsterdam square. T for Toulouse-Lautrec, T for horse tail and T for ‘time to go home’.

Mary.

My mind is on the broken eggshells that she painted for each of her miscarriages, but when I round the corner, I see the piece that will stay with me: a burning dishcloth against a snowy field at the blue hour. The flames are stark and shocking after the soft focus on her oil paintings in the previous room, but seem to fit more accurately. I stare at the burning cloth and think how her mind must have burned as she wielded her oil pastels.

It is a series, each piece more vibrant than the last - more full of flames, more empty of burning cloth. I paint fire on the page of the notebook for Mary Pratt and her tender eggshells and for the sunlight through jam jars; hoping it will remind me to be braver, hoping it will burn a little longer if I don’t bury it down inside.

I place the little notebook on a windowsill at the back of the gallery, in a puddle of winter light. I turn and start walking along the river. The light is gorgeous today, as though the city is underwater. When I think of light, I think of it soft and gentle, refracted through a glass, or I think of it as quick and destructive as fire in the winter air - but I always think of it as Mary’s.

Carli.

I know the notebook is full of paintings, but it doesn’t strictly say that sketches of photos aren’t allowed. It says ‘masterpiece’, and I think Roberto Dutesco’s photographs of the wild horses of Sable Island definitely count. Hmm. I dig through my bag for a pencil.

I went to see Dutesco’s exhibit for a short story assignment in my first year at uni, but really, I went for me. The copper tones of the metal that the photos were printed on melded with the dark winter day, and gave an air of hostility that matched the remote island perfectly. That is, until I saw the intimacy of the shots and got to know the gentle horses the way Dutesco did in the 20 years he travelled to Sable island to photograph them.

The horses on the walls are like the ones in my dreams – they dance across the sand, wind in their mane and salt in their nostrils. I am there in the bright harsh sun – so indistinguishable from the silver waves. White horses indeed, I thought, and walked through to the next room.

My part in the notebook will be from my favourite of the photos: a blurry picture with all the movement of the wind and magic of the island. It is called ‘Unicorn’. I tuck the book into the photography section in an antique bookstore and walk out into the rain.

Eli.

The black Moleskine sits in my palm and feels like it has more than a physical weight. I flick through it slowly, seeing the paintings, drawings and sketches that stiffen and warp the pages. It’s been such a long time since I saw any art, and yet I recognise almost all of the masterpieces I see. There is a Sorolla and I think back to the one time I felt human this year. I walked into the exhibit and was greeted by a wall of green. ‘The Siesta’ was so much bigger than I’d ever imagined, and I so wished I could have shown Gran. The wash of greens brought back the smell of the summer grass, hours spent in heat so thick it had a taste, and tuna sandwiches gran would bring out once we’d cleaned the dock. Days and weeks spent at the cottage came flooding back and all I could do was breathe and wait for it to pass in the basement of that gallery.

This one’s for you, Gran. I start to mix a mid green and wonder what she’d think of it.

I don’t go to art galleries anymore. It doesn’t seem like I deserve to, considering I ruin people’s lives for a living. I put a cheque in the back of the book. At least this way it might change someone’s life in a good way for once. I head to the cloak room, still holding the notebook.

Jo

I grab my coat from the coat check, desperate for some air. The Fauvist meat paintings made me queasy and I needed to get out of there. As I shrug my coat on, I catch something out of place in my pocket. There’s a little black notebook that isn’t mine in my left pocket. I almost turn back to hand it in but then I see the coloured edges of the pages and curiosity gets the better of me.

Pages and pages of famous and not so famous pieces flick by until I land on the last entry: ‘Siesta’ by Joaquim Sorolla. The inscription at the bottom of the page reads ‘miles and miles of green until I get to you’. I flick one page further, to the last page, which reads: ‘This notebook and its contents are yours. Pay it forward’. I open the back pocket and notes and change of different currencies slip out. I have to run to catch a cheque that slips out and dances in the wind.

When I get home, I count all the change and spend an hour figuring out conversions online for the different currencies. It comes in at exactly $20 000. What the sh*t. Surely, I couldn’t take this, right? The notebook was clear though – the last person to paint in the book could use the money to open a gallery. I wasn’t dreaming? It couldn’t be a coincidence that I was missing exactly $20 000 to buy the old gallery off Carnation St., the one that I’d been saving up for 3 years for… and it couldn’t be a coincidence that the gallery space hadn’t sold yet either, could it? Ooh man, what do I do…

Right. First things first – I need to fill this last page. Picasso’s pigs have been my favourite piece of art since I was a child, and I see them every time something good’s about to happen. I must have some charcoal around here somewhere…

Tommy.

I almost miss it as I hurry to meet Dan at our usual table, but as I push through the door I see a small poster for an exhibit near my old flat. The street name catches my eye and the more I read the more I can’t believe what I’m reading. Notebook…found…installation…multiple artists…it can’t be. Right?

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‘Welcome to Carnation Street Gallery! I’m Jo. Thank you so much for coming to our opening show!’

‘Tommy. Um – I don’t quite know how to say this, but… that’s my notebook. The first page is Sargent’s Carnation Lily Rose, isn’t it?’

‘…’

‘It IS you!’