A Butterfly in Flame by Nicholas Kilmer Page B

individual use were clumped on their modeling stands, keeping pliable under damp cloths, next to the works in progress.
    “The first two weeks of the pose, they do the armature. The metal skeleton that supports the flesh. If the armature is off the proportions are wrong and you can kiss the rest good-bye. Everyone’s going to have trouble with the arms. You’ll see. Well, no, you won’t, but more than half will likely fall off in the firing if we get that far.”
    Fred had stopped next to an effort to which not much clay had yet been applied. The metal rods represented the model’s central, skeletal support. “Could make a person think Giacometti,” he remarked. “Except it hasn’t been elongated to the point where gravity seems to be an afterthought. So you have a kiln.”
    Meg gestured with a nod in the direction of the sea, back beyond the studio windows, toward a large dilapidated shed. “The big grinder to prepare the clay, also,” she said. “Sure. The ones that are good enough get fired,” she said. “Propane. I built the kiln myself. For my own stuff as well.”
    “I’d like to see it,” Fred said. “Your work.”
    Meg responded, “I’ll get Marci rounded up. Otherwise these kids take the excuse to fuck around.”
    Fred said, “That President Harmony. Does she care if Stillton Academy lives or dies?”
    “Who’s asking?” Meg said. “It depends who’s asking.”
    Her students were trickling in again, approaching their own work or looking at others’. Marci appeared, putting down her coffee cup and shedding her robe onto the floor as she stepped up to her pose again. “I got the assignment,” she told Fred. Meg started to adjust the placement of her feet and the degree of twist to her back.
    “
Lives and Loves of the Artists,
” Fred told Meg. “Can you believe it? I’d better get in gear.”
    ***
    Word had gotten around. Aside from Marci and Missy Tutunjian, there had been seven students absent from
Intro to Lit,
as Fred had learned when he talked with them individually. But
Lives and Loves
—that’s what the students called the course—was missing only one, as Fred learned when he read out the class list. “Not to find out if you’re not here so I can hurt you,” he said, “but since I don’t know much about what’s going on.”
    A number of the names were of Greek, or French, or Portuguese origin. Descendants of fishermen, most likely. If a person had either the time or the inclination, it would be interesting to know…
    “How do you folks expect to make your living?” Fred asked. “Just a question that popped up in my mind. Rubens. If you asked him when he was twenty years old, let’s say, how would he answer?”
    The question achieved a blank stare of varied disinterest or intensity.
    “Because I hope you know,” Fred said, “most people who make art do not make a living at it. Take van Gogh. Without the rich brother…moving on…did these people promise you, when you were done, you’d be able to make a living as an artist?”
    A male student broke the silence that Fred allowed to extend until it became obvious that he wasn’t going to let his audience off the hook. “They didn’t even promise we’d get a lover, as an artist,” he said. “Anyone here knows you’re on your own.”
    “Unless you’re Design,” a female added.
    “Graphic Design,” another explained. “Posters, packaging, book covers, illustration, CD covers, that.”
    “Commercial.” The general agreement was not enthusiastic.
    “OK.
Lives and Loves of the Artists,
” Fred said. “That’s somebody’s idea of a course and I’m not anybody’s idea of a teacher, so it evens out. Where I come from, I don’t care who it is—Gauguin, Rembrandt, Audubon—when I look at what the artist made, what I want to know is, what does this guy want? Figure that out, the rest starts falling into place. Maybe. At least it’s a start. Beyond enough to eat and a dry place to sleep, what does