A New Day
Poem
for The Queen's Head and Asparagus
She
sits upon a street
not
known, anymore, for its differences but rather for its "hip" .
A
state now moved to limbo.
An
invisible building
passed
by the passing, not so cool.
Still,
they may stop in hope to see something different.
That's
the Queen's Head and Asparagus
different,
here, now
no
longer waiting, learning, here,
and
so am I, so am I.
The Queen's Head and Asparagus was a
consignment art gallery Judy and I opened up in 1991.
It was located in a building on Park
Avenue that had previously been occupied by a Doctor of Optometry, who had fled
the scene leaving the building owner, a suspicious woman being stalked by an
irate ex-husband, in need of a tenant. This woman happened to be friends with a
former nun who was friends with Judy, and that's how we happened to find the
building.
There were plans originally for the nun to
move her real estate office into the building with our art gallery, but that
never did come to fruition. Anyways, after several thousand dollars of
paint, furniture and re-decoration we interviewed
several potentials for membership into the gallery.
The idea was that for a flat fee, turned
out to be $25 per month, we would hang members work and the money that was made
from what was sold would be split, 70% to the artist and 30%
to the gallery. The best deal, by far, in
town. The space was small, and the rent was cheap ($100/month, primarily
because the woman who owned the building didn't know what she could have
charged) and when we started we had six members.
The name came from a memory of mine. When
I was in England I remember seeing a pub from a train window called The Queen's
Head and Asparagus, and it stuck. I thought the name alone would bring the
curious. It caused more confusion than anything else, Rochester being
Rochester.
Park
Avenue Sketches -May 23rd. 1991.
The
smoker on the porch across the street.
She's
getting mad at me doing this.
No,
you can't come up here to show me what you did!
The
Doctors office across the street.
