A wart overtook the artist’s knuckle, preventing their wrinkles from attempting full bloom. Inside their bedroom, low wattage bulbs approved weak shadows whose tint intermingled with the blemish’s eclipse, making it difficult to distinguish where their flesh clumped up to form the bump. 

In order to recoup their losses on art supplies and wart remover, the artist had to attend the Art Fair to sell their aluminum sculptures…

At the art fair, geriatric patrons shuffled along with enthusiasm, remarking about folk art and hobby watercolors. 

“That’s nice.” Reverberated.  

A woman named Betty approached the metal sculptures and commented how they formed like Escher’s staircase, leading to nowhere but her front lawn. Her fantasy obliged originality, a keen fashion sense and encouraged dog walkers to pause before her mailbox and become so enthralled with the creative soul behind the storm windows, they have no other option but to ignore their mutt pissing onto their shoes.

Romans quipped about the effeminate and flamboyant aesthetics, featured in Greek art. Details attuned to everything human blurred the Roman stoics commitment to duty, forcing the Philosopher Emperor to meditate and declare an end to textbook definitions of the mind and body conundrum. 

Contemporary stoics maintain internet culture, providing fodder for postmodernists who weaponize their bland expressions and dissect fads, in straight lipped glee, attaining their own followers in the process, laughing in lust, greed and irony. 

1983 prepared the world for Orwell’s prediction, by unleashing unto it the Cabbage Patch Doll. These artifacts of folk art challenged cuteness, placing a child’s hair and eye color within mirror neurons, to reflect self, insinuating that purchasing one meant the consumer was buying a part of their soul. Riots coincided with pilgrimages, religious fanatics ended their quest one doll richer, but none the wiser. 

Betty looked at the artist’s knuckle.

“I have something for that.” She commented and reached into her purse.

“Here,” she said. 

“Thanks.” The artist replied. “That’ll be 500.00 for the sculpture.”