It was a day not unlike this one when I got a call from my agent. I call her Audrey. She wanted to know what was up. "What's up?" she might have asked. I could hear her exhaling a stream of smoke. She was probably wearing something black and slinky, red lipstick. Definitely eye liner. We had once agreed that it was never too early in the morning for eyeliner or beer, especially in London. As we discussed the nature of creative processes, I tried not to sound as if I were the type to drink tap water from an old jelly jar, which in fact, I was. While tearing up little strips of colored tissue. Audrey was in need of a new project; I was in need of a reason to get out of bed.
"I never finish anything," I complained, feeling very busy indeed. "I have no problem coming up with ideas, but I always lose momentum about halfway through."
"So?" she said. "Who's to say when art is finished? Listen, darling, you have talent. I have seen the work that's out there now, and you're stuff is way better, finished or not."
My stuff, yeah. I'm sure I blushed.
"It's a new concept, you know? Oh, I am so over found art. Found art is so passe. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to get you a show at that gallery, you know, that one on Geary? They love me there. But we need to do it soon, in case my visa comes through. Think 'installation'."
"Well, if you really want unfinished art, that's no problem. I'm a one-woman unfinished art factory."
"Brilliant! That's how we'll market you. Shannon Peach: The One-Woman Unfinished Art Factory."
Incidentally, I can't help but flinch whenever I hear the word "market".

We began a frenzy of brainstorming right then and there. Which of my attempts at art were feeble enough to be included in this installation? Most of them, it seemed. But there weren't enough to make an impressive public showing, we wanted this event to be unforgettable. For an agent, Audrey had some incredibly artistic ideas about melting crayon on waxed paper. And she was the one who came up with the concept of not only unfinished art, but unfound art. It was decided that I would create a piece consisting of an empty pedastal labelled "There WAS Going to be Something Here...". I, however, have to claim credit for "The Dog Ate My Sculpture." It had my trademark originality written all over it. Also, I would glue bits and pieces of things to other things, making new, unfinished things. "It's all about sequins," Audrey proclaimed. She provided the inspiration for a piece called "Things I've Lost Around the House" which would include a table covered with keys, rubber bands, etc. In retrospect, it might have been more effective to leave the table empty, to avoid misinterpretation as found art. I was to include a tryptych of three half-scribbled pages from my notebook, perhaps another of some crossword puzzles I had begun during a long bus trip. Tastefully framed, of course.

New philosophies were born during that conversation and I was high with an excitement that lasted three, if not four, full hours. "Think of this," Audrey proposed in the grave manner of a self-aware prophet. "Negative space isn't." I mentally digested that and returned with a newly-minted proverb, "'Tis better to have begun a thing and not finished it than never to have left it unfinished."

Needless to say, we never completed the project. But I like to think that a statement was made, all the same. And today I found this, in E.M Cioran's Drawn and Quartered:

"Only unfinished- because unfinishable- works prompt us to speculate about the essence of art."