Innocence

Light fell through the skylight and struck the shattered mirror on the floor.  Rays lanced out in myriad directions, illuminating motes of dust as they lingered in the air, unwilling to descend to the floor below and wait to be trodden on, and finally striking the painted faces of Popes.  Popes Innocent I through to Innocent XIII, collectively entitled Innocence.
Each Pope had been painted on a large canvas so that they were about 80% of life-size, and each had been painted as accurately as sources would allow.  Most of them were from writings, as Pope Innocent XIII had died in the early 1700s and the first Innocent had lived sometime around the fifth century, but now and then there had been other paintings available for study too.  Geraldinium Holmes had done her best with the material available, but in some cases had made up much of the image from her own imagination.  She'd been quite pleased to discover that there were thirteen Popes Innocent, as it allowed her to set the exhibition up in a circle and tell people that there was a Pope for every hour of the clock-face, and then see their confusion as they tried to work out why they didn't leave the circle when they subconsciously expected to.
  As the light faded through the skylight, because dark clouds were filling the sky and louring with the promise of rain, the artist Geraldinium Holmes opened a small door in the corner of the room and came in.  She was limping; after drinking heavily in a underground bar one evening she'd left, and reached the top of the flight of narrow iron stairs before losing her balance and common sense and falling backwards.  She'd crushed two other people who were also trying to leave, but had come away from it with a sprained ankle and an odd, but mild, fear of iron fire-escapes.  She leant heavily on a walking stick to help her manage her ankle, and she limped across the room to the shattered mirror on the floor.  She peered at it for a little while, and decided that it was right after all, and turned to leave again.  As she did so, Pope Innocent X caught her eye, and she paused to examine his picture again.
Innocent X was considered to be one of the more evil Popes, who had had interests in prolonging wars that had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and of supporting Civil Wars in European countries.  She looked at his face: long, thin, slightly rat-like, and wondered if she should have emphasized the evil a little more.  Did it contradict the collection's title of Innocence, or could evil be just as innocent in its own way.  She had perched ravens on both of his shoulders, but was that enough?  Perhaps she could add a fly or two, possibly crawling across his robe, or on his hand as it clutched one of his Bulls, the Zelo Domus Dei?  She stood, thinking for a while, and then decided not to.  It had taken her nearly a year to put the collection together, and if she started changing things around now it would be another year before she'd be satisfied again.
She leaned back on her stick again, and limped, a little melodramatically, out of the room, locking the door behind her.  Something about all those Popes together was disturbing.

Continuations

The gallery was half-full, which was several more people than were usually seen at an exhibition at this end of the city. The opening had been two days earlier, so there wasn't even any free food or wine to tempt people in. They were coming in, it seemed, because they knew who the exhibiting artist was: Geraldinium Holmes.
A young man hovered near her, looking hopeful. She was unscrewing a flower press, her concentration on it suggesting that she was hoping the young man would go away and stop trying to catch her eye.
"Er, Miss Holmes?" said the young man. He sounded nervous, and he started shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"That's Mr. Holmes, actually," said an obese woman with flaking skin making her face look like she'd been snorkelling in parmesan. "I don't know why people can't tell she's a man."
Geraldinium looked up at that, and caught the young man's eye unexpected. She sighed.
"That's my old landlady," she said, gesturing at the fat, flaky woman. I've no idea what she's doing here, she used to regularly wash my canvases with turpentine and tell me that she was just keeping things clean. What do you want?"
"Um, I'm a reporter, with the Daily Meteor," said the young man. He shifted his weight again, and then seemed to be inspired. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a flimsy paper rectangle which he handed to Geraldinium. "My card!"
"It looks like a taxi-receipt," said Geraldium, reading it. "Thank-you. Have a good day, don't let me keep you."
"Oh, no, you're not keeping me," said the young man, failing to stop Geraldinium from interrupting.
"I'm so glad, thank-you for coming."
"No, you see, my paper would like to do an article on you. And… and could I have my receipt back please? It's for my expenses."
"I don't like interviews," said Geraldinium handing the receipt over. "Why would yours be any different?"
"I only want to talk about your work. I think everyone knows about your private life now."
"What?"
"Well, your twitter feed has been very explicit."
As the young man saw anger rise on Geraldinium's face like a mushroom cloud over Bikini Atoll, he realised that he should have asked about the twitter feed instead of making assumptions.
"Twitter feed? Is this some kind of bird joke I don't get? Because it had better be." Geraldinium's voice was grim and held the promise of pain for somebody. The young man handed his phone over wordlessly, the twitter app opened to Geraldinimum's alleged tweets. She scanned down them, her face turning thunderous.
"Who is Lady GaGa?" she asked at the end. "And why would I compare myself to her?"
"She wore a dress made of bacon," said the young man, "and she's very… herself."
"I see. Fine, ask your questions and quickly. I can see I have a twit to hunt down."
"They call themselves twitterers," said the young man, and hastily added, "but yours is probably more accurate in this case."
"Questions?"
"What's this exhibit all about, really?" The young man had flushed and was almost stumbling over his words in an effort to finish and get away without causing any more trouble.
"Continuations."
"Continuations of what?" The young man noticed that Geraldinium was opening the press at last.
"Previous works. For example, this piece here, Persephone in Decay, continues on from my previous exhibit Cheeseburgher."
"But this is a painting!"
"So?"
"Cheeseburgher was a rat rotting in a jar of old cheese. How a painting continue a dynamic sculpture like that?"
Geraldinium smiled for the first time. "You actually do know my work! Well, this painting was made using only the contents on the jar from Cheeseburgher," she said.
The press opened at last, and inside was revealed a flat kitten.
"What is that?!" The young man sounded both intrigued and horrified.
"I call it Flat 31," said Geraldinium. "Flat 30 was where I lived with my ex-landlady and her pet."

Burnt potatoes

Geraldinium Holmes crunched a potato crisp thoughtfully. Her hand reached out without looking for another, and her fingers dipped neatly into a freshly-made cup of coffee. She pulled them out, and looked round. The newspaper reporter whose drink she'd just turned into a finger-bowl tried not to look reproachful.
"You?" she said, contriving to suggest that she was taller than him and looking down dismissively, despite the fact she was at least three inches shorter. In her heels.
"Miss Holmes, it's a pleasure to meet you again!"
"You sound desperate."
"No! No, I just didn't want you to think you might have offended me by putting your fingers in my drink...."
"I didn't think that. Why are you here? Why do I keep finding you under my feet whenever I turn round?"
The reporter shuffled back a little, as though apprehensive that she might attempt to trample him, but kept smiling. It was a little manic, thought Geraldinium. If he could keep it up for the whole conversation she might have to photograph it and use it as the basis of a painting. Something with clowns.... Abruptly she realised that he'd stopped talking and she'd not heard him start.
"I wasn't listening," she said, opting for honesty. "I doubt it was worth listening to."
"I came to view your exhibition," repeated the reporter. "I didn't actually think you'd attend."
"He ain't got no choice, 'as 'e?" said an elderly, obese woman who was rubbing vigorously at a canvas with a cloth that smelled of turpentine. "He's under contract to appear with all 'is paintings at this gallery." She darted off with surprising agility as two security guards raced towards her.
"Your landlady?" asked the reporter politely, and Geraldinium just nodded. "I mean, ex-landlady, of course," he added. "You're contractually obliged to appear here?"
"No," sighed Geraldinium. "She's just insane. That painting she was trying to deface? It has a herbal varnish on it, to protect it from just that kind of attack. The little plaque beneath the painting even explains it, because it gives the painting a special kind of smell."
"Burnt potatoes," said the reporter smiling.
"What?" Geraldinium looked mystified.
"I've been smelling burnt potatoes all round the exhibit," said the reporter. "I thought that must be the herbal varnish."
"No. That's the sculpture made from burnt potato crisps," said Geraldinium. "Be careful with it though, I had to use an arsenic-based glue to hold them together with enough structure soundness."
"Isn't that sculpture being installed in an infant school?" The reporter looked shocked.
"I believe so," said Geraldinium. "I can't imagine why, though. What child understands art, really? Just look at their television programmes, they're devoid of any intellectual creativity!"
"Is that why one of your paintings depicts the Teletubbies being hanged?"
"You spotted that one?" Geraldinium looked pleased.
"Yes, even though it's the size of a postage stamp."
Geraldinium's smile got broader. "I had to make a brush out of ant-hair to paint that," she said.
"Ants don't have hair." The reporter realised what he'd said, and went bright red, but Geraldinium ignored him. "Any others you spotted?"
"Um, well, yes, but I think the police have spotted it too."
"Which one?"
"The one that's your orphan servant girl leaping off the roof in that bizarre Batman costume."
"Why would the police be interested?"
"You noted it was painted from a photograph, and that suggests you knew it was going to happen...."
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"I'm the distraction." The reporter hung his head, looking thoroughly miserable, as two burly police officers stepped silently up behind Geraldinium and seized an arm each.

Anti-Cat

The reporter found Geraldinium Holmes in her new studio. She was sitting at a table gazing out of a window that looked over the sewage recycling plant. In front of her was a cup of tea, smelling strongly of Chamomile.
"Miss Holmes?" said the reporter tentatively. The artist didn't respond, so he looked around for the girl-waif who had shown him in, but she had disappeared. "Miss Holmes?" he tried again.
Geraldinium stirred slightly, and picked up her cup of tea by the handle. She sipped from it, and put the cup down with a look of disgust.
"This is dreadful," she said, and the reporter looked around to see who she was talking to. "Fix it."
"Er, are you talking to me?" he asked, his hand already half-way to the cup. "What's wrong with it?"
Geraldinium turned round and saw him for the first time.
"Who the hell are you?"
"I spoke to you at the art exhibition a week ago; I was hoping I could get another interview with you. A girl let me in…."
"The orphan, yes. She has difficulty telling who is a visitor and who should have a bucket of water thrown over them."
"Well, she let me in…."
"So you think that entitles you to an interview, do you? I am busy you know. I have a new installation to create, and hate-mail to answer, and that's even before I go and punish the orphan until she learns how to make tea."
"Hate mail?"
"For Flat 31."
"The flattened kitten?"
Geraldinium shrugged her shoulders and stood up, picking her cup up as an afterthought. "I think 'pressed kitten' sounds better. Flattened makes it sound like I just dropped something heavy on it, whereas pressed sounds more artistic."
"Either way, you did kill a kitten."
"It's art. Although the people writing the hate mail seem to agree with you, so there's a lot of uneducated people out there still. You should see the letters they send me: crayons, chalks, letters written on the backs of recent bills, they're all insane. And none of them can spell!"
"Perhaps they're just getting a little excited when they write to you--"
"I've had evidence of that in the letters too. I have to burn some of them."
The pause turned into a silence that finally the reporter felt he had to break.
"What's the new project called again?"
"Anti-cat."
"Aunty Cat? Is this making up somehow for the squash-- I mean, pressed, kitten?"
"Not Aunty as in your mother's sister, you ninny. Anti-cat. The opposite of a cat."
"What, like a dog?"
"That's a different species altogether. No, a collection of anti-elements held in a magnetic holding bottle shaped like a cat. If you brought it together with a real cat the two would annihilate causing an explosion, much like when you bring two angry, hungry cats together over a small fish."
"Um, is it wise to create art that appears to be encouraging the wholesale destruction of cats?"
"Was it wise to make my own orphan and then employ her? Probably not, but it wouldn't be art if I didn't do it!"

Continuations

The gallery was half-full, which was several more people than were usually seen at an exhibition at this end of the city. The opening had been two days earlier, so there wasn't even any free food or wine to tempt people in. They were coming in, it seemed, because they knew who the exhibiting artist was: Geraldinium Holmes.
A young man hovered near her, looking hopeful. She was unscrewing a flower press, her concentration on it suggesting that she was hoping the young man would go away and stop trying to catch her eye.
"Er, Miss Holmes?" said the young man. He sounded nervous, and he started shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"That's Mr. Holmes, actually," said an obese woman with flaking skin making her face look like she'd been snorkelling in parmesan. "I don't know why people can't tell she's a man."
Geraldinium looked up at that, and caught the young man's eye unexpected. She sighed.
"That's my old landlady," she said, gesturing at the fat, flaky woman. I've no idea what she's doing here, she used to regularly wash my canvases with turpentine and tell me that she was just keeping things clean. What do you want?"
"Um, I'm a reporter, with the Daily Meteor," said the young man. He shifted his weight again, and then seemed to be inspired. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a flimsy paper rectangle which he handed to Geraldinium. "My card!"
"It looks like a taxi-receipt," said Geraldium, reading it. "Thank-you. Have a good day, don't let me keep you."
"Oh, no, you're not keeping me," said the young man, failing to stop Geraldinium from interrupting.
"I'm so glad, thank-you for coming."
"No, you see, my paper would like to do an article on you. And… and could I have my receipt back please? It's for my expenses."
"I don't like interviews," said Geraldinium handing the receipt over. "Why would yours be any different?"
"I only want to talk about your work. I think everyone knows about your private life now."
"What?"
"Well, your twitter feed has been very explicit."
As the young man saw anger rise on Geraldinium's face like a mushroom cloud over Bikini Atoll, he realised that he should have asked about the twitter feed instead of making assumptions.
"Twitter feed? Is this some kind of bird joke I don't get? Because it had better be." Geraldinium's voice was grim and held the promise of pain for somebody. The young man handed his phone over wordlessly, the twitter app opened to Geraldinimum's alleged tweets. She scanned down them, her face turning thunderous.
"Who is Lady GaGa?" she asked at the end. "And why would I compare myself to her?"
"She wore a dress made of bacon," said the young man, "and she's very… herself."
"I see. Fine, ask your questions and quickly. I can see I have a twit to hunt down."
"They call themselves twitterers," said the young man, and hastily added, "but yours is probably more accurate in this case."
"Questions?"
"What's this exhibit all about, really?" The young man had flushed and was almost stumbling over his words in an effort to finish and get away without causing any more trouble.
"Continuations."
"Continuations of what?" The young man noticed that Geraldinium was opening the press at last.
"Previous works. For example, this piece here, Persephone in Decay, continues on from my previous exhibit Cheeseburgher."
"But this is a painting!"
"So?"
"Cheeseburgher was a rat rotting in a jar of old cheese. How a painting continue a dynamic sculpture like that?"
Geraldinium smiled for the first time. "You actually do know my work! Well, this painting was made using only the contents on the jar from Cheeseburgher," she said.
The press opened at last, and inside was revealed a flat kitten.
"What is that?!" The young man sounded both intrigued and horrified.
"I call it Flat 31," said Geraldinium. "Flat 30 was where I lived with my ex-landlady and her pet."

Chihuahua reaching for cake

The picture hangs in the Hanson Portrait Gallery, and is entitled Chihuahua reaching for cake. As many critics have pointed out, the chihuahua is actually reaching for a muffin -- a chocolate chip banana espresso muffin, in fact -- which the artist acknowledges.
The artist in question is Geraldinium Holmes, and all interviews with her to date have started off with questions about her name. She recounts,
"My mother was very much a product of her era, which was the end of the fifties and the start of the sixties. She'd thrown off repression in a big way, would have burned her bra if she hadn't felt that wearing one was also repressive, and was taking anything and everything she could get her hands on that was called a drug. When she came to have me christened, she thinks she was on horse tranquilisers, though from her description it could have easily been powdered bleach. The vicar rejected out of hand her first three choices of names: Bitchface, bitchslap, and Thingummyjig He insisted that any child born had a right to life, no matter the mother's opinion. So my mother cast about for another name, and thinks she started with Germaine, got side-tracked by Geranium, and ended up trying for Geraldine. So I got lumbered with Geraldinium."
The painting was produced during Geraldinium's Blue period, or as she puts it, "most of my life so far". It is simple enough: it shows a small chihuahua reaching for a muffin sitting on a plate. It is unknown if the chihuahua actually got any of the muffin.
"It's a figment of his imagination," says Geraldinium's landlady at the time (Geraldinium has since become homeless) who is insistent that Geraldinium is male, despite having met her many times. "There's no way I'd allow muffins in my boarding house and he knows that."
The identity of the chihuahua, if it really exists, remains a mystery. Attempts to find Geraldinium to ask further questions about the painting meet dead ends and blank walls. Geraldinium has disappeared into the seedy underbelly of the dispossessed of the city, and we the critics are left hoping that out of this will come a new work, of similar power and artistic integrity to Chihuahua reaching for cake