Memoir Blast #13 — That’s Amore: Malta Edition

 

Memory Blast #13 — That’s Amore: Malta Edition

The surreal, fume filled, marble stacked art job I could do easily… until someone asked me to do it.

They flew me to Malta for a night — flights paid, hotel paid, driver provided (my dear friend, my believer). The whole thing sounded glamorous in a way that made me suspicious. All this… for me? To spray paint a piece of antique furniture?

Cost covered.

Me covered.

(Panic absolutely not covered.)

My ND mask slid into place: international artist.

My original artwork — a million years ago — was simple. Crocheted blankets thrown in different directions, but by my own hands uniquely stitched. Spray paint misted over canvas until it looked like an accident that somehow worked. Playful. Experimental. Mine.

A friend in Malta showed that work to someone she knew — a furniture designer — and suddenly I was “the different thing” they wanted for a show.

Which is flattering until you realise “different” usually means:

We don’t know what you do, but please do it on command.

They paid for my flight, covered everything, bought me spray paint — not the graffiti style I was used to, but car spray. (The mask slipped lower.)

All I had to do was crochet the cover and spray it.

Easy.

Except it wasn’t.

The workshop was enormous — stacked to the rafters with old furniture.

And the smell hit me first: that cool, damp, old building smell. Concrete. Paint peel. Dust. A kind of underground cathedral atmosphere, but with fumes instead of incense.

No extractor fans.

Just air thick with varnish and spray paint.

And me with a real mask that felt more like a prop than protection.

And then the marble.

Marble stacked everywhere — more than I’d ever seen in one room.

It had that strange marble quality: cold without touching it, like it carried its own weather system.

The edges were so tactile they almost hummed at me.

Broken yet soft.

Thick.

Like a Kendal Mint Cake or a slab of coconut ice — only in my imagination, obviously — but that’s exactly how my brain filed it.

Texture, not taste.

Temperature as memory.

ND logic doing its thing.

Men were milling about, weaving between piles of vintage furniture like it was a department store for ghosts. And all of them were watching me — intensely — like I was about to reveal some secret technique I didn’t even know I had.

Trying to decode me.

Trying to replicate my “formula,” which is hilarious because my formula was basically:

panic + crochet + spray + trust in my process.

The crochet part was fine.

The spray painting?

That’s where the pressure hit me where it hurt, gut feeling.

It’s one thing to experiment on a £10 canvas.

It’s another to stand in a cavernous workshop with a vintage piece waiting for your hands to either ruin it or transform it.

And everyone watching like you’re about to perform a miracle you didn’t sign up for.

They kept reassuring me they could sand it down, repaint it, fix anything.

Lovely.

But it still felt like a lot of responsibility for something I usually do barefoot in my garden for fun.

The piece turned out great — not perfect, not my best, but good.

Good enough that they said they’d never seen anything like it.

Good enough to stand in the competition, even if it didn’t win.

His business was named after his daughter, so that carried face.

But the anxiety left its fingerprints.

Because yes, it was lucky.

Yes, it was surreal.

And yes, I felt like a fraud the whole time — doing something I could normally do easily, but under pressure it didn’t feel good.

Still — I did it.

I was flown somewhere for my art.

I was paid for my art.

And that should have been celebrated, because usually I just give it away. Feeling its worth was the hardest part.

✦ Footnote

Dedicated to Nikki — my Maltese beauty, my support, my backbone, my confidant. The one who kept me upright while I tried not to combust in a room full of marble, fumes, and vintage furniture.

She serenaded me on the harbour — “when the moon hits your eye like a pizza pie…” — and that moment is the happiest place in the whole adventure. A memory I’ll keep polished forever.