It was six weeks of emails, excuses, hopeful news, and promises. Then this arrived one morning:
“UPS says the package is unrecoverable.
“So sorry.”
It’s was the flippant “so sorry” that sent me over the edge. The gallery director gave the wrong label to the kid handling the packages to be returned from a national 6-week exhibit. When I immediately told them the tracking number they had was NOT on the label I sent, the response was an attitude:
“You must be wrong.”
From the Origins Series
I wasn’t.
I’ve shown in this gallery many, many times over the last 25 years. The director affixed to my box a label I sent from a previous exhibit there. That one had been used already. UPS wasn’t going to honor it. Could someone have called the gallery? Could someone have called me? Apparently not. Toss the box.
After three weeks of being ignored and the package not moving through the system, the word came: “UPS has the package in Tennessee. They will ship back and we’ll ship it on to you.”
Another week. Crickets.
Another week. Nothing. Will they give me the contact name and number of the person they are talking to? No. Why not? UPS doesn’t allow it.
Yet another week. “We don’t know anything else.”
What happened between “we have the package” and “it’s unrecoverable”?
Did someone think it was valuable and open it, only to find a tapestry of a snake, then toss it? Possible.
Was someone lying? Likely
Was there incompetence all around? Almost certainly.
I won’t name the gallery or the exhibit because they are trying to make it right. I understand mistakes. I don’t understand willful neglect, lying, or laziness. (I AM naming UPS because they have no interest in making this right.)
Hardly matters anymore. Rainbow Serpent is gone, probably in a landfill somewhere. I’d like to think it’s hanging in someone’s house right now. Even stolen art looks good in the right location.
From concept to design to blending and spinning the yarn to weaving to unweaving to reweaving to finishing, Rainbow Serpent consumed 5 months of my studio life. It was intended as the marquee artwork in the Origins Series. The work was insured but the insured label was never used, so I don’t have an action against UPS. The gallery is sending a check for the insured amount — the wholesale price — which I would have received if the work had sold. I’ll grieve for the work as if it had been sold, but that’s another post.
Will I weave it again?
Probably. When I’m ready.
It won’t be the same.
