I am TOUCHED by art.
Recently I dedicated a picture book to my old art teacher. He is no longer with us for about two decades now.
I can’t stop thinking about this ring he used to wear, it is of a tulip. A very masculine and chunky metal ring in the shape of a very feminine and sensual tulip. It is both gentle and demanding. That was the sort of person Doug Moore was, a kind person with a robust way of going about it. I’ve always been a maker and not a collector, until this experience hit me recently.
I was contacted by Doug’s family, through a friend. They were touched and liked the book. I had to ask about the ring.
They say an artwork grows with you, acquires a life, and a meaning of its own, overtime. I’ve met people who have instantaneously rearranged a whole week’s plan at the glimpse of a painting, just to acquire it. I’ve heard from folks who can’t stop thinking about a painting for days on end and people who have regretted not buying something when they had a chance, for years and years. This unsettling yearning has never really hit me before, I’m a maker by nature and usually on the giving side of it.
However, this is something I can not replicate, sure I can carve the tulip, make a cast, pour the metal, even pay someone to do it, but the real “Je ne sais quois ” that really embodies the artwork: the nicks and dents it has likely acquired overtime in its travels, the story of the thing, the way in which it is embedded into the universe of our waking world, our spinning globe, I cannot make up. I even have a memory of him using this very ring to show me silver point, the process of using metal to scratch a drawing on gesso. The result is a shimmery, silver mark on a snow white background, along with a scratch on the ring where it hit the gesso. I know because I effectively ruined a ring in the shape of a snake doing a whole Salvador Dali inspired drawing with silver point. I learned about Salvador Dali that semester and that tulip ring acquired a scratch, a la me.
The drawing turned out good and Doug liked it more than I did, I know because a friend reminded me he still had it hanging in his office after I had long forgotten about it, and this man was not shy of throwing sentimental garbage out. The pursuit is just as invigorating as its ownership, my relationship with the Tulip Ring begins:
I met Doug when I was 12, I didn’t know being an artist was a thing you could be just quite yet. I stared at this ring during every art leason he gave, up until I turned 19. One day he told me he made it during a masters program in Mexico. He probably caught me eyeing it. I was far too shy to pry back then. I learned you could study cool art in Mexico.
Doug was an active, football playing dancer in his youth, so it was crushing to witness his life after he fell asleep at the wheel, leaving him a parapalegic. This I only know because I ran into an artprofessor who taught him when he went to McMaster university. A tragic major life change for anyone but I wouldn’t have guessed, for the time I knew him, he was circumventing the world, multiple times. He travelled more than anyone with two working legs I knew. A tragic life but not a tragic person. He wasn’t shy of being vulnerable either.
He dated, got rejected, got cheated on, stories and questions he’d answer as we chiselled away, making our own marks on these blank plaster blocks, he was more or less an open book. Regrettable feelings about being a bully in his younger days, personal faults he shared, he was human and did find love in the end, and maybe that’s not my story to tell. He studied every religion under the sun and never let you get away with BS, in all its glorious forms, and of course I ruffled his feathers. The ring likely met the Dalai Lama with him. Every person he ever met probably took notice of this one-of-a-kind, unique ring. I fantasize about being on my own around-the-world-art-journey one day, chancing on meeting a stranger who recognizes the ring with their own story of Doug to share. For me, the ring encapsulates his memory so well, and I haven’t seen that ring since I saw him last, before he died in a tragic skiing accident. He had a military engineer develop him some special skis. He wasn’t gonna go laying down, I think we all knew that.
I haven’t thought about the ring until now, when an opportunity arose to ask about it. Doug was never one to let a good moment go, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. This linking object, that started interesting and novel at first, and overtime, collected meaning as all the events unfolded themselves around it, and now it’s burned in my memory, just thinking about it and knowing it’s out there, somewhere, with its lose and mysterious connection to me, and a connection to those whose lives Doug touched. Doug has a second life in that ring, I feel it. Just thinking about it gives me a mental high, like a hidden gem left to uncover.
I’ll accept a photo of the ring even, but nothing beats the truth of an original, Doug can attest to that. To whoever has the Tulip Ring, I’ll even trade a painting for it. Big or small. ANY painting 🌷
LISA NG ART 