So critical

We usually just walk around Gallery Walk and pretend we know what we're talking about when we look at the other art hanging up in the stores downtown. Being married to a man who graduated with an art degree, I guess he knows more about talking about art than I do.

Either way, this month it was different because he got to actually participate.

Dave, who says he dislikes every project he's ever done, who criticizes his work more than most normal people, was freaking out. That's the nicest way to put it, freaking out.

He didn't participate on a large scale -- It was more like he put up six or eight photos while someone else was featured at Limelite Studios, where Dave freelances. One of the owners asked him on Friday afternoon if he could get a few things together for the 6 p.m. show on Saturday. I'm sure he said "Oh, yeah" like it was nothing, but when he got home that night, was pacing like a 13-year-old waiting for a telephone call from like, the cutest boy in school! The one with the jean jacket with the "Sixteen Stone" button on it.

He was a wreck. "This looks stupid. What do you think?" ("It looks great.") "No, it doesn't. But it's as good as it's going to get." (Sigh.) "What about this one?" ("Yeah. That looks good.") "No, this is bad."

Because it was a last-minute affair for him and one of our Ohio friends to go around getting frames, mats and glass, it reminded me of his last semester in college, when he was awake until 4 a.m. doing a project that was due at, like, 9 a.m.

There wasn't a grade this time; just people looking at them while drinking wine and eating olives. Which, to him, was worse. Apparently, he's going to show more pictures in the fall. I'm sure by then, he'll have worked himself into an ulcer.

(Photo: One he showed Saturday, of the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, on our honeymoon.)