Too Nice

Lunch with prof again: pork loin and sauerkraut melt on wholegrain, special mayo, side honey kettle chips, glass of Orangina on ice. Later: tea during paragraph breaks and URLs.
Tagged along town earlier. Introduced to Neils (stern, tall, dark, Danish) at Inform; tour of new three-story, geo-thermal-heated store front with green roof. Side note: green roofs hardest thing to do. “It’s a giant swimming pool up there.” As soon as you run water over something…
Also first visit Martha Sturdy studio. Enter back alley doors, scene from 80s car-theft / drug smuggling film: oversized white plastic blocks like black market marble quarry. Half dozen middle-aged Asian women in respirators, hazmat suits. Stare at us for whole second, in unison, before continuing with sanding, drilling, polishing and cutting. Small and large power and hand tools.
Fine white dust, buzz of grinders. Smelled like model making.
Other rooms, other craftsmen (men this time) working on pieces in various stages of whatever it is a piece of designer resin furniture and/or decorative objects (popular in Europe apparently) go through.
Fairly attractive-in-a-wholesome-way 30-something white woman helps us choose items. Introduced only by name (usually it’s Jeff 2nd year ID Emily Carr; aside: wonder what these VIPs think of me, new guy, young guy, what does he know, when i tag along) then asked to give on-spot feedback on what combination of low-riding decorative orange swirled block, like some orange crush float, coffee table (?) with giant resin bowl and contrasting coloured resin spheres the size of softballs placed in fives inside, as in which ones should we take. Mostly grunt little approvals. Has become my way of actual approval in situations (very satisfying to grunt, Grandfathers know) where more in my element and but also nervous cover-up when no idea what to say and like no expertise to back it up.
But make an effort. Step back. Literally and other. Thought about form / colour in 10 seconds and it’s hard to do both together but some sort of vague notion in the first second which combination I like. Don’t particularly like any of them. Not that honest out loud.
But they’re not asking that. It’s not “don’t use any of this stuff.” Being asked which combination. Totally valid of them, actually. And valid to choose what’s given. And it’s a challenge and my addition to the “When something’s funny” quote by G.B. Shaw:
When something’s hard search it carefully for a hidden lesson.
But while Sturdy’s furniture seems a little over modern for my taste–bordering on Beetle Juice, that Michael Douglas / Winona Ryder (but come on, when it came out and I was like 10 years old it was a Winona Ryder film first and foremost I was in love with her even then) film that’s always my defacto knee jerk standard picture-in-mind when I think of excess in design and the people who consume it (think that elderly couple in Clockwork and imagine them in our era and like buying one offs from Philip Stark)–anyways, a bit or just the wrong medium for me.
Was at Inform where–though only briefly met and saw–the artsy peeps like a Big Lebowski Maude seemed in abundance. Black turtle necks, mid-thirties, thin woman in black stockings and dark rimmed glasses setting up $1000 chairs. Kind of cool. Kind of a bit much. Is it just the previous generation?
And Kato, a (half Japanese?) helper who fetched us allen keys so we could transport a square orange chair out of the store in one piece. Shook his hand after helping carry square orange chair outside. Waited awkwardly together for the the car to come around. Kato offers to carry down the block wearing a fitted collared shirt in wool slacks and well, thanks but please, no need to trouble yourself at all.
Kato goes back inside but really seemed like a nice guy. Bunch of trendy business men squawking by insist “You should be sitting on it” i.e. square orange chair. Reply: “it’s too nice;” they agree it’s art.
I don’t want to sit on a borrowed four-digit chair right in front of the store and besides, the chair looked kind of annoying.