Prized Artwork Now Available To The Masses

Now that I’ve become a recognized art collector, I don’t expect any of you easily impressed members of the unwashed masses to treat me differently.

As long as you refer to me as “Monsieur Clark,” everything will be hunky, if not dory.

If you didn’t already sense it from my prolific writings, Monsieur Clark is as closely connected to culture as Van Gogh was to his kitchen knife.

Now it’s official. Several of my prized artworks are currently showing in the “Northwest Neon” sculpture exhibit at Spokane’s Cheney Cowles Museum.

I know. I know. It ain’t the Louvre. But in my book Cheney Cowles is still arguably the best damned museum between Post Falls and Airway Heights.

Although it just opened, the neon show appears to be a huge hit judging from comments left in the guest book by highly sophisticated visitors. “Neato!” wrote Jonathan Ahern. “Cool. Rad,” added Adria Zampich.

Of course, every art event attracts a few constipated critics as evidenced by the snide remark of one couple who scrawled, “Bring back Picasso.”

I hope all of you attend so you can enjoy the show’s highlight, a sign on a rear wall that reads: “From the collection of Doug Clark.”

As a rising star in the Spokane arts scene, I plan to make the necessary changes - 1. Affect a nasal accent. 2. Don a beret. 3. Pad my resume.

Sadly, not everyone is buying my newly found stature.

Namely my dear wife, Sherry, who is of the neo-realist school of thought. Only a few days ago, she argues, Monsieur Clark’s so-called masterpieces were just two old beer bottles and a neon beer sign gathering dust in our den.

Point taken. But that was before Marsha Rooney stuck them in the museum. When the curator heard I had a couple of bottles and a vintage sign from Spokane’s Golden Age brewery, which went bust in 1947, she asked if I would loan them for the show.

Oui, oui, squealed Monsieur Clark.

We serious art collectors have a social obligation to share our priceless objects with less fortunate people who can only dream of owning old beer memorabilia.

Sherry has never fully appreciated my genius for finding art. Her skepticism dates back to the day I moved her hope chest out of our entryway to make room for a 1956 Seeburg jukebox.

“Well,” she said dryly when she walked through the door, “you’ve certainly done it again.”

Some day the pope will proclaim my wife “Saint Sherry” for her forbearance and long-suffering. The good woman has tolerated many of my art-collecting forays.

My den, for example, holds the bulk of the Clark Collection:

A Mr. T lawn sprinkler, the hubcap off a 1952 Buick, a life-size stand-up of former Spokane Symphony conductor Donald Thulean, a concrete gargoyle, a 1961 Philco Predicta television, two old radios, six jars of old marbles, a 3-foot cigar ashtray, a light-up Spuds Mackenzie dog, a puppet head, a Miller beer and pizza neon sign, a mirror advertising Grants Scotch, two Red Ryder BB guns, an Ex-Lax thermometer …

My wife wouldn’t mind if I carted these precious works of art to a more suitable gallery like, say, the driveway. Unfortunately, that space is blocked with Tom Foley’s bargelike 1965 Buick Riviera that I acquired one day on a whim.

My latest art discovery, I fear, has pushed Sherry over the edge.

It’s a vintage foosball table, which unfortunately now has taken over about a third of our living room.

I bought the foosball table on New Year’s Day at St. Vincent de Paul’s half-price sale. Like most of my finds, no thought entered my brain as to where I might put such a thing.

All I cared about was that a St. Vinny’s manager lowered the price and then sweetened the deal with a pair of size-47, avocado-and-white checkered polyester pants.

Of late, Sherry has been staring at me the way Van Gogh glared at his ear before grabbing the blade.

My only hope is that the next show at Cheney Cowles is a “Foosball Through the Ages” exhibit.

, DataTimes