Blue Sun, Yellow Sky Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Quote

  Chapter One - Color

  Chapter Two - Change

  Chapter Three - Spontaneity

  Chapter Four - Grit

  Chapter Five - App World

  Chapter Six - Love

  Chapter Seven - Luminosity

  Chapter Eight - Story

  Chapter Nine - Detour

  Chapter Ten - Midnight in Paris

  Chapter Eleven - Solitude

  Chapter Twelve - Nature

  Chapter Thirteen - Nurture

  Chapter Fourteen - Fear

  Chapter Fifteen - Acceptance

  Chapter Sixteen - Innovation

  Chapter Seventeen - Foundation

  Chapter Eighteen - Blue

  Acknowledgements

  Author Bio

  Blue Sun, Yellow Sky

  by Jamie Jo Hoang

  HJ Publishing

  Available wherever you request a copy.

  Published by

  HJ Publishing

  Los Angeles, CA 90064

  a division of

  HeyJamie.com

  First paperback edition, HJ Publishing, March 2015.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Design by Jamie Hoang

  Cover illustration by Ryan Eslinger

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hoang, Jamie Jo

  Blue Sun, Yellow Sky: a novel / by Jamie Jo Hoang.—1st ed.

  Copyright © 2015 Jamie Jo Hoang

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1-63443-371

  ISBN-13: 978-1-63443-371-6

  This book is dedicated to my sister,

  Dr. Kimberly Kay Hoang, who supported

  me throughout this journey. Thanks

  for making my pipe dream a reality, sis.

  “From the moment I held the box of

  colors in my hands, I knew this was my

  life. I threw myself into it like a beast

  that plunges towards the thing it loves.”

  —Henri Matisse

  CHAPTER ONE

  Color

  HAVE you ever noticed that fire hydrants are rarely alike in shape or color? I have. Most people associate them with the color red, but that’s not always true. For example, looking around my neighborhood of Venice Beach, California, I can tell you the majority of them are, in fact, white.

  Before I knew their function, I thought these oddly shaped, metal objects bolted down into the sidewalk were street art. I grew up in Houston, Texas, and at the tender age of three my dad took me to an opening at the Rothko Chapel. Located in the Museum District, the chapel sat just off the main strip of museums, so it was more like being in a neighborhood than the center of a city. Nestled inside quaint, single story homes, the grassy area surrounding the chapel made it easily mistaken for a community center, and rightfully so. In honor of whatever they were celebrating, a team of local artists had gotten together at night and painted every hydrant in the town black. My dad noticed them first as he walked me to one and said, “Look honey, it’s a Rothko fire hydrant.” He meant the artists had painted the hydrants black as a tribute to Rothko, but being three, I thought he meant the physical hydrant was for Rothko. I remember growing more and more fascinated as I noticed them on every street.

  Taking an immediate interest in what I imagined to be a worldwide phenomenon, I spent hours scouring our library of coffee table books at home (known to me at the time as ‘picture books’) for photos of international monuments. It was a “Where’s Waldo” type search for fire hydrants in iconic places. I looked for hours and hours and when I didn’t find a single hydrant within the covers of my books, I drew them in myself. My mom was furious when she found out, yelling at me and slapping my hand to get me to understand what I did was wrong. Meanwhile, my dad stood in the background cackling so hysterically that his laughter became contagious and my mom couldn’t help but join in. She didn’t so much care about our books, even though they were quite expensive. With the start of preschool the next day she was afraid I might deface all of the books in the classroom. Which I did.

  Years passed before I realized the two-foot high objects bolted into the sidewalk were lifesaving water pumps used to put out fires. But by then, I’d already spent so much time studying fire hydrants that it was impossible to pass one by without taking notice, and on the rare occasion I came across one decorated like Super Mario or engineered to double as a drinking fountain, I’d take a picture and send it as a postcard to my dad. Our inside joke became a small-scale version of what later emerged as Banksy or Space Invader art pieces, a duly oxymoronic sense of community amongst art enthusiasts who found unity in bearing witness to a public secret. I personally wasn’t the trespassing or graffiti type artist, so my subtle form of artistic expression with the hydrants was to include them in every single one of my paintings. They were hidden in plain sight as part of the landscape; like trees in a forest, viewers just expected them to be there. I’d only ever had one person recognize the black fire hydrants in my work, and he happened to also have been at the Rothko celebration that day.

  At my gallery openings, nearly two decades later, I made a habit of wandering about the room and listening to see if anyone ever recognized the motif. Not many did, and even if they took notice of one, they never thought to look for another. People rarely notice fire hydrants.

  On the night of my biggest gallery showcase to date, I nervously stood in the back room of the Michael Sanders Gallery watching the event from afar. Typically at openings I moved around, studying the expressions of strangers as they connected with or dismissed my work, but this night was different. Champagne and bite-sized quiches floated about the room on large platters, carried by waiters who deftly weaved in and out unnoticed by the clusters of patrons gathered to examine my creations. My paintings had shown in galleries before, but this was the first time an entire space was reserved solely for me.

  The layout was strategic, designed to move the viewer from one painting to the next and a break in sequence was delineated via a wall separating the rooms. Weeks of interior design, light installation, bulb testing, and precise placement of the artwork all culminated in this one evening. But as I stood watching people, both familiar and strange, my pinky finger strummed the ridge of a dime-sized, shallow hole, where someone had nicked the doorframe chipping the paint. All I could think about was the imperfect floor-to-ceiling crack in the wall behind Dr. Rostin’s diploma from UC Irvine. Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP)—those words were the last thing I remembered him saying. I stopped listening after he said there was no cure, and my body numbed as it felt everything and nothing, all at once.

  “Aubs,” Michael Sanders called, in a slightly-too-loud, perhaps intoxicated, greeting.

  He was the gallery owner and my biggest supporter. From across the room he motioned for me to come over. I took a deep breath, lifted the hem of my long black chiffon dress and moved toward him with a glass of now-warm champagne. As I approached, he began the introductions: “Aubrey, you remember Mr. and Mrs. Gibson?”

  “Of course,” I replied as we shook hands.

  “So tell me. Is this a love story?” Mr. Gibson asked, cutting right to the chase.

  Being that art was subjective, no right or wrong answers existed, yet people wanted affirmation that their interpretation was the same as that of the artist. Michael explained to me some time ago that peopl
e bought art that spoke to them, so if the artist was available, why not double-check that you “heard correctly,” so to speak? “If I dropped $7,000 on a painting, I’d want to know that what appeared to be a symbol of unity was not simply a walrus,” he’d said, making me laugh.

  “Depends on your definition of love,” I said to Mr. Gibson.

  “I love your use of color here. The painting simply exudes romance. But there is a darkness to it too, a foreboding shadow if you will,” Mrs. Gibson chimed in.

  The Gibsons were looking at one of my favorite paintings, Midnight in Paris—an abstract cityscape with a couple dancing underneath the Eiffel Tower. I’d never actually been to Paris, but my mother often talked about dancing underneath the iconic symbol of love with my dad on their honeymoon.

  “I painted this in honor of my parents, on their 20th anniversary,” I said. I knew better than to say, On what would have been their 20th anniversary. Not many people want paintings that have any kind of connection, however remotely, to death, and so for good measure I added, “If you come at it from the angle of love, then the darkness symbolizes marital struggles, but you’ll notice that the dark is only on the periphery, never seeping into the core. On the other hand, the argument could be made that couples cripple themselves by disengaging with what’s on the periphery in exchange for each other.”

  Mrs. Gibson squeezed her husband’s elbow and I knew I had sold them this painting. Couples who had been together as long as the Gibsons, or my parents, knew that in a relationship, one kind of love did not exist without the other.

  Just behind them, I caught a glimpse of one of the first paintings I created in graduate school at Columbia University. A juxtaposition between poverty and gluttony, the piece was aptly named Poverty and Gluttony. The scene took place at night in the back alleyway of a row of high-end restaurants, where every night, high-quality food was thrown out. In a corner, curled up in a ball, was a little boy exhausted from starvation. I painted Poverty and Gluttony not long after my parents’ death. It was the darkest time in my life.

  Drawing from the pain in Picasso’s Blue Period, more specifically The Old Guitarist, I mimicked Picasso’s technique of bodily distortion to convey loneliness and isolation. My painting hung in the Michael Sanders Gallery for two years before the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art asked to display it in a traveling exhibit showcasing emerging artists. Too dark a subject matter to be hung in someone’s home, the painting never sold, but it had a tremendous museum and gallery run because it directed the viewer to a place of uncomfortable contemplation.

  It’s rare to see signs of it this young.

  The words rang like deafening bells in my ears as my smile stiffened and I started walking to another piece of art, with the Gibsons following closely behind. What started as occasional blurred vision and patchy peripherals had culminated in a diagnosis with no treatment.

  Six to eight weeks…a genetic disorder affecting the retina.

  I had only recently started to gain recognition in the art community. “You’re sitting at the tipping point, Aubrey,” Michael had said to me on numerous occasions. I remember being on cloud nine and wishing the clock would start ticking at half-pace so I could enjoy the moment. But I no longer wanted time to simply slow down. I wanted it to stop.

  I remained aware of the people moving around me, but in my own thoughts time moved at a rapid pace. No one knew what was happening to me and even if they did they probably wouldn’t care. In the art world, save for the select few who were lucky enough to die before their time, artists moved in and out faster than the fashion trends of the New York Runway. Michael stood less than three feet away from me discussing how my paintings were a juxtaposition of life’s many facets—precisely the reason he found my work so fascinating—but his words registered as faint and far away.

  I looked at him and smiled, unable to stop myself from reminiscing about the first time we met. I was in a low place when Michael stumbled upon me. Stunned by the sudden passing of my parents, I had dropped out of graduate school after only one semester and obtained a permit from the city to be a street vendor. Weeks went by with tourists asking me to paint them New York City skylines, which I refused to do until my landlord squashed my pride with an eviction notice. If catering to the lowest common denominator meant being able to pay the bills, then I wasn’t above it. Michael had just made a small fortune buying up the re-make rights of Southeast Asian horror films and selling them to the major motion picture studios in Hollywood. Atypical of a gallery owner, Michael was a jeans and zip-up sweater entrepreneur first and a suit-and-tie art enthusiast second.

  At the time we met, my body of work included: ballerinas on skid row; cityscapes with churches next to brothels; a boy dressed in a suit sitting on a bench reading the newspaper; and a homeless woman carrying a Birkin bag—images that offered multiple meanings depending on what the viewer brought to the conversation. For instance, on a normal day, seeing the boy sitting in a suit, reading a newspaper might evoke laughter at its absurdity. But look at the painting on an especially trying day and the boy becomes a symbol for the end of youth and loss of innocence… or something like that.

  I often wondered if I had missed the mark because no one ever paid attention to those pieces, even though I made a point to display them in front of the cityscapes. On especially slow days, I’d dream about a bigwig executive buying a piece for his penthouse office in the financial district. Michael was not that guy. At least, I didn’t think so. New York was a business-suit city and Michael’s casual attire suggested he was either a tourist or vagabond. So when he offered me $500 cash for Ballerinas on Skid Row, I laughed at him. He gave me a confused look, handed me the money, and asked for my number.

  “I have a boyfriend,” I lied. I was 23 and certain he had just propositioned me for sex.

  “I’m happy for you,” he said, dryly. He handed me his business card. “I just bought a gallery in California. Call if you’re interested in how this piece does.”

  Just shy of two weeks later (ten days to be exact), I called to find that the painting sold. That call marked the single greatest leap in my career and was how I ended up driving 3,096 miles to a new residence in Venice, California.

  Had it already been four years? The time passed so quickly that I wondered if I had taken it for granted. Looking right at the Gibsons, who were talking to me, I smiled in blind acknowledgment of compliments I didn’t hear. I knew I wasn’t dreaming—the champagne glass and Michael’s hand on the small of my back leading me to another painting were proof of that—but I wanted to rewind and reverse the news I’d received earlier. I wanted to go back to not knowing. It didn’t matter that the disease was genetic, predetermined before I’d even had a chance to fight it. I simply wanted to get out of this phase of excruciatingly slow acceptance.

  Unfortunately, there is no cure.

  Other than an experimental vitamin A palmitate, a drug that could, at best, slow the process, I saw no reason for regular office visits. Short of a miracle or divine intervention, it seemed the battle had already been lost. When the thoughts in my head calmed, I realized the Gibsons had begun negotiations for Midnight in Paris and excused myself.

  I spotted Jeff Anderson, an old friend who was both familiar and strange, in a far corner looking pensively at a painting I’d entitled Home. One of the few paintings in my collection with no subtext, it was literally a painting of my childhood home, only instead of a frontal view it showed an obscure angle from outside our kitchen window looking into our 1970s-style living room. A home void of its people, it remained the only still life in my collection.

  As I approached him I said, “You actually came.”

  Jeff dressed up for the occasion in a suit and tie, but the look didn’t fit his personality and I wished I’d just told him to wear jeans.

  “I did,” he smiled.

  “Nice boots,” I said, looking down at the black cowboy boots he wore beneath his cuffed dress pants. The boots gave him a rug
ged demeanor closer to the guy I remembered from high school.

  “Just keepin’ it real,” he smiled.

  “Are you having a horrible time?”

  “No, but I did overhear a conversation that could’ve come straight out of a Daniel Clowes comic,” he said. Of course he did. I smiled.

  That Jeff showed up at all to an event he probably considered pretentious, playing the part of an interested patron, was a whole new level of maturity. He was never a fan of art. In fact, in a heated debate about the value of art, I remembered him saying he thought collecting art was a wealthy person’s game of who could pay the most for the least comprehensible painting. Being around him was familiar and distant all at the same time. Jeff had always been my forever friend, the one I thought I’d never lose. But time and distance changed us and now our relationship was just a shadow of the childhood friendship we once shared.

  There was a bit of an awkward silence until Jeff said, “Where’s the fire hydrant?”

  I grinned, thrilled that he remembered. “It’s there,” I said. “Look closely at the texture of the exterior wall.”

  Jeff stepped forward and squinted. “No kidding,” he said, as he searched until he found it.

  “Do you mind if I borrow her?” Michael asked, coming up beside me.

  “No, of course not,” Jeff said.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Jeff.

  “Want to grab lunch tomorrow?” he asked, as I walked away.

  “Sure,” I said, turning back to him with a smile.

  “Who’s that?” Michael asked me.

  “Just an old friend,” I said. “How are we doing?”

  “Eight! Eight of your paintings have minimum bids placed on them and three have multiple bidders. You’re going to be up there with the likes of Mike Kelly and Douglas Gordon in no time,” he said. And I couldn’t help but think, If he only knew how quickly.