Wednesday, December 12, 2007

sophie channels her inner cy twombly

"untitled" by cy twombly, 1970

i love twombly's work--i even had the chance to meet him in the early 90s and speak with him, briefly, about art. he was a generous and interesting man. i especially love his work at the cy twombly gallery, where it is safely ensconced on the walls. i do not, however, love it when sophie decides to emulate his work on my beautiful, white, silk and linen sofa. i was packing up boxes to ship off stuff i sold on ebay (i am still raising money for that digital back!), and i was using a red chisel-point sharpie to cross out writing on the boxes and a black sharpie to write the buyer's address on them. i stopped watching sophie for a minute and she absconds with both of them. i didn't notice because i am working on wrapping stuff in bubble wrap...and then i smell that unmistakable smell of sharpie. sophie has a HUGE smile on her face as she has just finished coloring the armrests of the sofa sharpie red. she was so proud of herself. i was sweating and trying not to scream.

so, she didn't get in trouble--she's only 18 months old and she wouldn't understand why i was yelling at her (or what i was saying) anyway. i got out every toxic stain-fighting chemical i could find and just started drenching the armrests. my google searches from yesterday are: "permanent ink on fabric must remove cannot wash," "sharpie removal fabric silk," and "how do you get sharpie out of fabric," etc. the answer is that you really can't. so now we have pale pink (you can fade, just not remove) cy twomblys on our couch. and i'm sure you're wondering, "why the hell do they have a white couch in the first place?" good question--it is because we inherited this monster sofa, clad in a lovely linen and silk blend that we could never afford to replace, from my dad's mom when she passed away. it was part of her household when she lived in beverly hills, so you can imagine how nice this sucker is. also, through all of gus' early childhood it was hidden under a slip cover. my mistake for removing it and trying to have an adult-ish looking living room...

...and the worst part about this isn't the pair of twomblys on our couch, or the black twombly we found last night on the wooden toy box. no. the worst part about it is that we still haven't found the black sharpie yet.

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