All of us -- Marianne, myself, Claudia, Robert, Jesse, Evan, and Nick
-- seem to be in constant contact with each other. Having communicated with Annmarie mostly through e-mails, letters, and phone calls in the past few years, I treasure this long-distance network with her friends. It is painful but precious to be able to remember her with them without so much as mentioning her name.
Paris, Tennessee, an armpit of the biblebelt famous for its annual Fish Fry, was the home of my best friend before she died. In May, Annmarie was vacationing in Florida when an alligator killed her in one of three attacks that week. At the time of her death, Annmarie was a store manager and artist-in-residence at Fancy
That, Paris'
all-in-one vintage store and art gallery.
The day after her funeral I went to Paris with her family and friends on the pretense of collecting her belongings. Our true reason for coming was far less practical: we wanted to capture Annmarie in still-life, to place her extraordinary death in something ordinary.
On the way from Kentucky, I told Annmarie's father that I always admired her presence in Paris and the neighboring town where she had finished her art degree. Though I knew she didn't plan on staying in Tennessee much longer, she had found inspiration and creative partners in the backwoods.
Annmarie lived across the street from Fancy That in a converted hotel from the 60's. A photograph of the town's Eiffel Tower replica and a concierge table greeted us inside. Outside, the nearby Wallmart dwarfed the town hall and library. From her apartment we took the handful of steps she took everyday to the store. A sheet of gray, the sky mirrored the street, flat with silence. After a weekend of rites and reminiscence, Fancy That was the last capsule of Annmarie's life we would open.
Waiting for us inside the stylized facade was Nancy, Fancy That's eccentric middle-aged owner. Nancy stocks her store with the estates of Paris' deceased residents. Well-known in the area, she receives calls from families overwhelmed by the sheer amount of objects left behind by their loved ones. While combing the piles for merchandise, Annmarie and her co-worker and friend Jesse also found art; the two collaborated on exhibitions held on The Parius Idium, the second-floor gallery. Even the first floor's aesthetics impressed us, suspended in Annmarie's touch. We noticed how the racks and displays were organized in what could have only been her meticulousness. In the fog following her death, Annmarie's hands still gave poise to retail chaos.
Neither Fancy That's clothing or antique furniture, however, had quite enjoyed the reception of its exhibitions. "Dirty Man," an installation inspired by a jam musician known as "Cutworm" and other Parisians afflicted with "compulsive collecting behavioral disorders,"
had been the store's biggest hit.
Annmarie and Jesse worked intensely to offer Paris the grotesque series of portraits and sculptures. In a gesture more referential than representational, they used objects that actually belonged to their subjects. Painting caulk over pre-existing framed pictures, the pair of artists also profaned "The Last Supper," the result of which drew high school students from throughout the county. The whole installation would have fit any high-profile gallery (Annmarie's mom is currently scouring a permanent residence), but in Fancy That it was daring. Annmarie's final additions to the show -- beans boiling during the reception, trash straight from her apartment's bin, and half-eaten bananas -- recreated Cutworm's trailer, confronting the public with sensorial traces of their own lives.
Ascending the stairs to an installation in progress, I recognized another Parisian's possessions -- the undergarments of a woman named LaRue as worn by Annmarie in her blog and MySpace profile. Annmarie had told me about her discovery of LaRue over the phone. Among the diaries of bible quotes found in LaRue's belongings were copies of sex education literature (The Sensual Man and The Sensual Woman, to be
exact) and mounds of foul, bloody underwear. Annmarie was taken with the portrait LaRue had left behind for the world -- one of both innocence and repressed sexuality. The stockings that now hung over a glass display had fit her perfectly.
A reminder of the mortality that now intimately connected artist and subject, the LaRue installation evoked a note Annmarie had written to me in high school. "It's so depressing to look back at the way things were before," she wrote. "It always interests me, though. There's this one story in the Bible where Sodom and Gomorra (two 'corrupted'
cities) are burning, combusting, dying away forever and one man and his wife manage to escape. God tells the man and his wife to run away and never turn and look back at the cities if they wish to be saved.
The wife looks back and she is turned into a pillar of salt. But like Kurt Vonnegut said, "You've got to love her for that. It's so human."
On the drive back to Kentucky Fancy That struck me as site of memory rich with this kind of humanity: Annmarie had presented LaRue's existence as both a work of art and focus of her empathy. She was constantly doing the same with her own life, and Paris, Tennesse, was no exception to her canvas. She came to relate to its residents, even the ones she hardly knew, as friends. One of them, Robert, recalls a pregnant girl who joined the ranks: "She was 14, and Jesse had given Annmarie a $100 gift certificate to get a massage. Annmarie said, 'I want this girl to have a prenatal massage.'"
Sitting in the car, I couldn't help but think that the day had unfolded with Annmarie's blessing. She taught us that looking back is the work of an artist; that to witness the past is to behold it in creative compassion. It was in this spirit that we would end up taking several of her things home that day. In one hand, I held a denim jacket for her father. In the other, I carried the scrapbook she and I began as a document of our friendship. It is a work of art I will never finish. But it is a work of art I will always work on.
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