The Art Factory Ch. 01

Dear LIT Readers, however many you are,

I decided to try my hand at a longer story with an ongoing line of events. Since I’m an artist living in a small New England town with many remnants of its failed industrial heritage in evidence, it seemed like an apt setting for a longer story. The invention of “The Art Factory”, a large industrial complex converted to live/work space for artists is not unique to New England or many other cities in the states, for that matter. But it did seem like a befitting structure to support a cluster of characters and their related stories. Let me know what you think as the story evolves. Voting and feedback are the most effective way to do that.

I’ll respond. And if someone has more to say, I’ll get back to you through E-mail.

Thanks and enjoy.

L O Reins

“The Art factory” Part 1: “Althea, The Painter”

Althea Rodez stepped back from the painting she had been working on for the last three weeks. The abstract painting took up four 8-foot square canvasses that ran most of the length of the long windowless wall of her studio. Her paints, in pails and her assortment of large, soft brushes were spread out down the stretch of cotton drop cloths that covered the floor in front of the painting. There were buckets and smaller cans of colors, solvent cans, rags and two stepladders, one three feet high and the other six feet. This was the last of three days of mostly staring and making small changes in her painting. It was finally done. The acrylic paints were on her clothes, in her hair, on her hands. It felt good. She felt alive when she painted inside like this--so much more private than the mural work. Alone with the studio thermostat set high the way she liked it when she painted indoors. No gawkers, no earnest compliments, no silly questions. She felt intoxicated from the heat of the loft and the fumes of the paint but even more from the hypnotic act of reaching inside herself to work with her pigments and canvas. She loved working at this scale. The afternoon light from the windowed wall behind her basked the studio and the canvases in a crisp white with just a tint of the oranges and pinks that came in that hour before sunset. .

Althea kicked off her clogs, quickly undid the straps of her coveralls, let them drop around her ankles. She stripped off her tee shirt. The studio felt hot and humid to Althea, the air thick with the aroma of latex and acrylics. She felt dreamy and intensely focused as she stepped back from her painting. It was beautiful, vibrant and alive and swamped in the deluge of emotions she had been working with for the past weeks. Her color pallet was visceral, thick rich tones and shades of what she called life colors. Her forms were voluptuous and sumptuous--large rolling masses of shape and color; shadowed pockets and deep crevices, and to a much lesser degree, thin elongated hard lines and edges. Though abstracted these forms suggesting the organic shapes of life.

As if in a trance she bent at the knee and dropped her hands, to above her elbows, into the warm thick paint in the two joint compound buckets at her sides. A rich yellow ocher and a muted eggplant of a black, these were two of her staple of basics that she had mixed in larger quantities. She drew her arms up out of the buckets as she stood to full height. There was a thick plopping sound as the paint ran down her arms and back into the reservoirs. Althea caressed her thighs with her syrupy coated hands, drew them slowly up the sides of her abdomen, together at her soft tummy and finally up and under her breasts. She brushed them up over her now engorged nipples as she locked her powerful leg muscles and turned her pelvis. Her hands continued their slithering journey to the back of her neck and up past her ears to come together, left hand grasping her right wrist. Pulled tight as if bound and drawn up over her head, she reached and locked her joints into a languid stretch that freed all the tensions built up from the close concentration of the days work.

She turned around facing the narrow wall of windows. Althea relaxed, dropping her arms and slowly lifted her left leg, toes pointing over the rich thick surface of the ochre. The ball of her foot and her pretty toes just rested on its surface. She slipped into the warm yellow brown all the way to the top of her calve, the chilled paint tickling the sensitive flesh behind her knee. It felt cold and squishy between her toes. She reached down into the pool of golden mud and drew it up to mid-thigh like a nylon stocking. She padded over to the other pails. The feeling of the thick paint squishing between her toes sent a tingle through her pussy. Althea lifted the smaller pail of vivid red from the drop cloth. She dipped her fingers into the thick ooze and swiped her finger through her nether lips and swooned at the sensations. Now her right arm and her left leg were ochre and her left arm was black. And her lovely pussy was a gashing swipe of corvette red.

The "Art Factory" complex was nearly at full occupancy. She didn't know how many live/work loft units the two buildings held but when it was done it would be a dedicated arts usage complex. She thought she saw movement at the windows of the sculptor's studio in buiding one, directly across the alley from her windows. The likelihood of someone watching her paint herself only fueled her intensity as she lifted the red bucket to her left breast and poured it’s contents down her body. The acrylics were stiffening in the thin areas but remained liquid elsewhere, lubricating her movements while at the same time tugging at her skin. The crimson paint enveloped her breast and ran down her leg like a heavy syrup. She only regretted not having a full mirror in her studio to be able to see this painting in living color she was creating.

Across the alley, John Iggy Baker, who called himself Jib, sat at his bench bundled in layers to the thick woolen Army Navy store sweater. His hand jumped, pushing the rasp across the plaster and over his knuckles. “Fuck!” The cheese grater rasp bit his first and second knuckle. “I can’t do this again. Got to keep working. Don’t look at her.” He sucked the blood from his knuckles and pushed away from the mold he had been filing. “Why would I think I could resist her this time?”

He stood in front of his window unbuckling his pants as the harsh February winds buffeted the rickety pains and mullions. Jib knew who Althea was but he had never spoken with her since she had moved into the Art Factory on the first of the year.

He had witnessed her ritual before--more than once. He had come to realize it was her way of completing her paintings--as if she had to cleanse herself in the very substance of her art. But it drove him crazy. Pants around his ankles, his dick was as hard as he had ever felt it-- the skin drawn to maximum elasticity over rock hard cock. He eyed the pan of mold release he used to coat his casting molds. “Its a vegetable product, what the fuck?" JIB doused his hand into the pan and grabbed his cock in both hands.

He tried to match the tempo of her movements. She was stunning, short but perfectly proportioned, voluptuously full breasted and bathed in rich warm tones. “And that splash of red.” Her studio through the windows was a riot of vibrant color. JIB felt like a prisoner, trapped in his black and white world of Plaster of Paris and shadow. He stared through his own condensed breath on the glass into this Technicolor world of hers.

She was now touching herself; the one red hand was between her legs and the other black one ravaging her red breast, twisting and pulling her nipple. Her breasts were marbleized in strands of black and red and tan.

Jib’s mouth was watering, he couldn't hold back now. He ringed his left hand around the base of his cock and balls a worked his right hand forcefully up and down the shaft. Fucking his greased fists, he watched as she threw her head back bringing herself towards her feverish climax. He wanted to come with her as she ravaged herself into a blur of color. His cock began to spasm, pulsing with the frantic pounding of his heart. She opened her mouth and, from his view or at least in his imagination, she seemed to scream out in an ecstatic feral cry.

Jib's cum shot out in a succession of forceful spasms that surprised him. Onto the glass panes of his window, over his injured knuckles, it mixed with the parting oil and his own thin blood, turning an opalescent pink pearl. He was stuck to the window as if held by his own sticky glue. He watched her cool down. She looked at herself as if she was surprised to find herself in this condition. Maybe she was somewhere else, someone else when she passed through this ritualistic trance.

Like two squeegees, Althea slid her hands down her body, pushing the paint towards the drop cloth like a fabulously sheer garment. It left her cloaked in some exotic mix of naked flesh and blending colors. This was enough to squeeze another spurt out of Jib’s thick rubbery cock. Then she walked out of view of his window, probably to shower.

Jib vowed to himself to talk to her, to get to know her, but when he did meet her he would not imply that he had ever seen any of her rituals. At least not yet, not until he understood her better.

L O Reins