"Ah, yeah. Yep, I'm Joe," He popped a grape in his mouth. Joe was modestly nodding, a bit of a nervous tick when it came to people complimenting the works he didn't like. "Well, thank you. I'm not really confident in this piece, or the others - but I do have some smaller pieces. They're around this way, kinda shoved near the corner."
Tucking his shaggy hair behind his ears, Joe showed her over to his small section of the show. There weren't any pompous windbags, at least. Some stragglers and elderly couples walked around, their shoes making hollow clunks on the smooth, wooden flooring. Joe was used to his sections being pretty empty. He had small rectangular pieces lined up about a foot from each other along a small white wall. All of them were combined mediums, with rough textures to show for the paper he used in creating them. Most had subjects - girls, guys, bottles, family scenes, but they looked blurry or even geometric in style.
"I was, uh, trying to make them vaguely familiar, yet dreamlike for everyone. My paintings, I mean." Joe fumbled with a button and its eyelet, trying to keep his voice steady as he spoke about his own crappy art. "In this one, I see Pa with a clothes iron, but someone else might see their mother getting a kettle on the stove. And that one's my ma cutting a tomato, but somebody's told me it reminded them of a surgery they went through. I dunno - didn't come out right anyways."
"Still haven't nailed it." He quieted a little, eyes focused on the tomato with bits of newspaper feathering out of it. After a beat, he snapped out of it and seemed embarrassed. "Oh, shit. Look at me ramble on! Um, I didn't ask for your name?" He wiped his hands on his pants before offering her his hand to shake.