Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko
William stood in the gallery, watching people walk past his installation – a wall of discarded phone screens displaying fragments of text messages, creating a mosaic of modern connection and disconnection. Not quite Michelangelo. Not even close. But uniquely his.
“It’s… interesting,” a visitor said, the pause carrying more meaning than the word.
Ten years ago, that pause would have crushed him. Now it made him smile.
He remembered his first year at art school, trying to perfect his figure drawing while classmates produced masterpieces of realism. His professor had found him in the studio at 3 AM, crumpling another failed attempt.
“You’re fighting the wrong battle,” she’d said, picking up his discarded sketches. “These aren’t bad – they’re different. A different brilliance. But you’re so busy looking at what they’re not, you can’t see what they are.”
She’d spread his “failures” across the floor. While his classmates drew perfect hands, he’d drawn the spaces between fingers. While they captured exact facial features, he’d caught the tension in the air around expressions.
“Not everyone needs to be da Vinci,” she’d said. “Some need to be Basquiat.”
The next day, he’d stopped trying to draw perfect figures. Instead, he started experimenting with broken electronics, discarded screens, fragmented images. Found beauty in the glitch, meaning in the malfunction.
His first exhibition had been a disaster by traditional standards. Critics called it “amateur,” “confused,” “lacking technical skill.”
Then a tech company CEO saw it. Two weeks later, William was installing his work in their headquarters – a wall of cracked smartphones displaying employee messages about hopes, fears, and dreams. The piece became a viral sensation, not for its technical perfection, but for its raw truth. Another different brilliance
Now, watching people interact with his latest installation, he noticed something. They didn’t just look – they shared. Took photos. Pointed out messages to each other. Connected.
A young artist approached him, sketchbook clutched tight. “I saw your TED talk. The one about finding your medium.”
William nodded. He’d given that talk six months ago, titled “The Space Between Screens.”
“I can’t draw like the masters,” the young man said. “But I can code. I’ve been trying to combine neural networks with watercolors and everyone says it’s not real art…”
“What do you say it is?”
The young man blinked. “It’s… mine.”
“Then it’s real enough.”
William watched him walk away, standing a little straighter. He thought about all the years he’d spent trying to be something he wasn’t, measuring himself against standards that were never meant for him.
His phone buzzed – another commission request. This time from a hospital. They wanted an installation about healing, connection, hope. Not beautiful in the classical sense, but true in the modern one.
He looked at his wall of broken screens, each one a “failure” of traditional art, together creating something entirely new. Each crack, each glitch, each imperfection adding to the story rather than detracting from it.
His professor had been right. Not everyone needs to be da Vinci.
Some need to be the ones who show us new ways to see.
Some need to be the ones who find beauty in the broken.
Some need to be themselves, a different brilliance, brilliantly imperfect, perfectly unique.
William pulled out his notebook, already sketching ideas for the hospital installation. No perfect figures. No classical compositions. Just truth, told in broken screens and glitch art and all the ways technology fails to connect us – and somehow connects us anyway.
Not quite Michelangelo.
Not even close.
But exactly, perfectly William.