Art Super Short Stories

Basically, every strip began the same way. A realistically drawn hand dips his pen in an inkwell and when the pen rises, a semi-realistic black devil is sitting on the tip. Three panels of hand trying to stop the devil from causing chaos, either in panels already drawn—-such as the devil disturbing a wedding, or in Grimwood’s own life—such as eating his sandwich or taking flames from the fireplace and trying to burn Grimwood’s house. The last panel always ends with the hand stained with ink, holding the devil by the nape of its neck and placing it back into the inkwell, the other hand ready to screw the top back on.

So popular was Grimwood’s Devil, he followed Winsor McCay into animating his first and only completed film in 1914, using two plots from the strip, the hand stopping the devil’s hijinks of eating the sandwich and jumping out the apartment window to ruin a wedding. The four minute animated film played to huge box office numbers, making Grimwood quite a bit of money, but cost him his job at the Charlottesville Daily.

I went to the University Library where they still had archival materials of the Charlottesville Daily from 1908, scattered through our months of January, September, and December in years 1909-1911, and one paper dated February 3, 1915 showing headlined Editorial about Nat Grimwood, disputing a rumor Grimwood’s Devil was coming out the newspaper and terrorizing readers and their families, neighbors and friends. The Editorial went on with this note: “We at the paper sincerely apologizes for the trouble, if any of the fantastically, nonsensical events actually occurred”. It ended with the announcement that Bat Grimwood would be leaving for other opportunities.

That was another reason Sonia was the artist; she always thought of things like this. Arthur covered their garage floor with a plastic tarp and suspended a quart can of white paint on a rope from the ceiling, hanging about six inches directly over the black square he had painted. Again, at Sonia’s suggestion, he offset the can somewhat from the center of the square.

Now, it was time for Sonia to take over. She held the can away from the square while Arthur first drilled a small hole in the bottom of the can. Then, as Sonia covered the hole with her finger, he drilled another hole in the top of the can, allowing a thin stream of paint to begin flowing once Sonia removed her finger from the bottom. Sonia took careful aim and sent the can slowly flying in an arc over the tarp and black square. They watched in amazement as the swirling paint created geometric results on the black canvas below.

That was two years earlier and one of the last few pieces she had made before… before the unimaginable tragedy. Arthur had been away on business for a few days when that low-life bastard had broken into their home, raped and beaten his precious Sonia to death, then robbed their home of whatever he could find. They were not wealthy by any means, but they had a few nice things of value. The murderer had even taken a few of Sonia’s works of Art.