The weekend just past was, of course, Somerville Open Studios (SOS).  The orphanage has traditionally been a temporary home to struggling artists in the process of acclimating to a future of abject poverty, failure, loneliness and despair.   Our methods are as blunt, ruthless, and revelation-inducingly nonsensically sensical as the great Zen masters'.  That's why we're commonly listed in travel guides as a "home for wayward whores/zen retreat". 

Only one of our house whore — er, artists showed in this year's SOS.  I have some Nan Goldin-style Polaroids of desperate frenemies in dire straits who said at the time they'd do anything on film for crack, but I'm not sure that's the sort of thing SOS was meant for, although it usually was an SOS of sorts.  And anyway, they're worth more to me if I don't show them to anyone.  Yet.

I have some webcam shots that could pass for Mapplethorpes, too, in a pinch.  I mean, like the IKEA-version of Mapplethorpe.  You know, you want Man in Polyester Suit for the bathroom in the apartment but you can't afford the real thing.  Well, I do happen to have a polyester suit with a broken zipper. 

But I don't know how I would finesse the listing — "Nan Goldin Knock-Offs"?  "Designer Imposter Mapplethorpes"? So I just skipped it this year.  Maybe I'll get a studio in South Boston next year.  Anythig goes in SOBO (or so they say).

Somerville, not so much.  I mean, that's the feeling I get, anyway.  Especially when every other artist listing on the tour promised "moments of reverence and mischief," or art that was "uplifting," "purposeful and repurposed".  In his listing, Alden, not one to mince words, labeled his medium as "strange."  Which was not entirely off the mark and certainly piqued our neighbors' interest, one of whom stopped me on the street a couple of days ago and asked me "what's he building in there?"

Honestly, though, I'm not quite sure what Alden was after.  I'm not sure he was sure, either.  He doesn't seem ready to part with any of his pieces, nor does he seem to see the obvious potential for sex in Open Studios.  I got news for you, it's only amateurs who do art for art's sake.  The rest of us do it for the sex.  And I've got to say, in the half-hour, forty-five minutes I hung out at Garagetanamo, popping  wasabi peas and tossing back beers, there was not one visitor, male, female or otherwise, I would not have had sex with had the opportunity presented itself.

Seriously.  First, there was a cute lesbian couple.  Well, the Jodie Foster one was a little INTENSE, but her lipstick sidekick was totally hot.  Then there was a sexy young couple — she French, he Greek.  Cute as a button, the both of them.  Then came the Australians — two big, barrel-chested blokes with a saucy little American tomboy in tow.  And it just went on and on from there. 

But whenever Alden saw someone coming down the drive he ran off somewhere to hide.  Or he'd mumble something so long as they spoke first.  He clearly needed a wing-man.  So I took it upon myself to be his greeter for the time I was there.  All I asked in return was that visitors tell Alden exactly what they thought of his work.   I was like: "Be brutal.  Be honest.  He won't hurt you.  I promise."

Why do people trust me? 

In the end, no one got hurt, and Alden, when drawn out of his shell, was charming in his way.  I reminded him before I left that even if you aren't going to sleep with them, art is all about making people think you want to.  The pitch is part of the sale. 

"But I'm not a pitcher," he said.  Hastening to add: "I'm not a catcher, either!"

I'd had him pegged as a short-stop all along.

Anyway, despite the carte blanche, the harshest thing anyone said to him about his work yesterday was that they were expecting something... stranger.  And it's true: our standards in strange are frightfully high nowadays.  A portrait of your ex as a giant squid just doesn't really cut it, strangewise, anymore.

The sad fact of the matter is, I think Alden is running into the problem that plagues so many artists these days — their inner world is much stranger to them than to anyone else.  Next year I think maybe the medium should be "sex".