Seven years ago, after rewatching La Belle Noiseuse, I returned to figure-drawing class after a twenty-five-year break. I had a really good time and swore I’d incorporate it into the weekly routine going forward. I only lasted a couple months. I don’t know why I stopped but ever since then I’ve promised myself I’d return.

Now I have.

I go to the art store to get a pad of paper and see an old man checking out newsprint and charcoal at the register. He waves at me as I’m strapping a portfolio to my bike in the parking lot. I have an inkling I’ll see him again and sure enough he’s sitting in the waiting area outside Platform Studios with a couple other oldsters at 6:15pm.

The doors open at 6:30pm. There are seven or eight of us out here. Used to be that I was the only one to show up early. Times have changed, I guess.

A guy I vaguely remember arrives to open the doors. He’s overloaded with shopping bags and cases of beer. We filter into the room and claim spots before he’s even had the chance to turn on all the lights but the room looks unfamiliar to my memory of it seven years back. It takes a few minutes to see it’s a different room. Smaller. Oriented in a different direction. I learn later they had to downsize during COVID.

A few minutes after I set up at my horse, Noah walks in. I’d heard he’d been coming to draw. We joke that if Frank shows up we could pretend it’s 1991 at the Art Institute. I text Frank and he answers with a series of our old teacher’s mantras rapid fire. It never goes away when you get phrases lodged in your head young.

This is as close to church as I have. A set of innocuous actions repeated over and over with slight variations every time. The room is packed with others all doing some version of what I’m doing. On model breaks, I go to the bathroom and wash the charcoal off my hands. I don’t look at anyone else’s drawings. I just want to go through the motions of the ritual to see if I remember how to do it. To see if it still means what it used to mean. To find out if I want to do it again, again.

I don’t know when I’ll return but I believe I will. Doing this is a part of me. What it adds up to? Who knows. Who cares. The stakes are very low. To have no expectations is not a thing I get to feel where art is concerned. It’s a feeling I wouldn’t mind more.

RIP David Thomas. This is a sketch from the Abbey Pub twenty-plus years ago. Wish I had a better scan but the sketchbook it’s in is god knows where by now.