Letter

I bought a stack of old hardcovers at a church sale in a tiny Wisconsin town. I picked them for their covers or illustrations within or, sometimes, the title on the spine. I chose them with the thought that I could make something new out of them.

We Three is a reading primer for children. I picked it for the three kids printed on the cover and the cookie-cutter illustrations of conformist WW2-era American life throughout.

As I set about ripping out and defacing the book’s pages, I occasionally stopped to read random phrases. In the four previous collage books I made, I rarely left printed text from the book I was using as an armature, or staging area, visible. But something about the simple phrases about Mother or Father or children kept grabbing at me as I glued construction paper and my own childhood art onto the pages. I started scribbling and painting out half paragraphs; leaving a sentence or two per page. Sometimes I’d paste in text from elsewhere to sort of match up with or contradict these primer words.

The more I did it, the more I wondered how coherent a string of sentences I wanted. Some pages started looking like blackout poetry. I’d flip back to the start and read it as if it was a story. But in the end I wasn’t interested in revealing a set meaning. These sentences are frosting on the cake, not the filling. If you read it cover to cover, no mystery will be revealed to you. Maybe a couple laughs or eye-rolls, but that’s about it.

“New Attack Words” came from the series of vocabulary tables in the back of the book. I only noticed the phrase when I was coming to the end. As I said before, I didn’t read this book before mangling it. Would early-reading teachers use terminology like this now? Unlikely. We “attack” differently these days.

I’m still getting my sea legs with this way of working. I don’t know all the notes, all the rules. Still only making an alphabet. But this book pushed me further into considering what the recycled remnants I build the collage books out of demand. I chose these neglected, discarded hardcovers intentionally. When I see them in thrift stores or church sales, they speak to me and what they say demands thinking about.

As I add bits of my past to the past printed on their pages, I’m hoping to make something present.

See the whole book here.

— Summer of Soul is the most joyous thing I’ve seen in a long time. The concerts were filmed the same year as Woodstock, but inexplicably forgotten for fifty years. Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension, Sly & the Family Stone, The Staples Singers, and much more of the best music of the time. I loved every second.

—I wrote about the Chicago comics show at the MCA. Also, posted a bit from the new thing here.

My barbershop moved recently. I got my first cut in the new space the other day. My barber Kendall and I got to talking about the bare walls. She said the owner wanted to commission a mural. I had a better idea.

I got so excited about it that I went home and got to work.

The shop only takes reservations via an app, so I had no way to contact the owner directly aside from stopping by again. He was out, but I got Kendall’s email and sent her the paintings, plus a few older ones I thought might also fit. I could picture the six pieces on the wall of the barbershop. Now, even the old ones, painted for other occasions and reasons, had a new direction and context. As if they’d found a home after years of wandering, knocking on doors, getting dirty looks, or, worse, no acknowledgment of any kind.

No answer as yet, but I’m hopeful. Maybe it’ll get me a couple free cuts.

A few months ago a woman contacted me about contributing to a scholarship in honor of my high school art teacher. She’d tracked me down from a review I wrote of an Ivan Albright show at the Art Institute. Osna had given me an over-sized monograph on that painter’s work as a graduation present. I was happy to be part of a thing to honor her, but wary of contributing money to the school where she’d taught. Some of the worst times of my life were spent there.

I’ve kept up with very few people from high school, none regularly. Most of the people who matter to me from 1985-1989 are connected with jobs I had, especially the Coolidge Corner Theatre. The jobs were a refuge from school, a place not to feel like an outcast. Osna’s classroom was one of the few spaces like that on school grounds.

After promising to send a check to the scholarship fund, I found Osna’s email. I wrote that I’d be in Boston in May and we made plans to meet. I hadn’t seen her in twenty-five years, if not longer. But on the appointed day she called to say she wasn’t feeling well and not up for leaving her place. I met up with another former student of Osna’s instead. She’d moved back into her parents’ house in recent years. The house is on the same street as my parents. She has a husband and children. She’s somehow made living in that town work. I can’t even fathom it.

Last week, the first Osna Sens Scholarship was awarded. It went to a young woman attending Parsons in the fall. A shudder went through me when heard it over Zoom. The woman who had reached out to organize this whole thing was hosting a group call of some twenty-five former students, and Osna. We went around and said what year we’d graduated. I only recognized one person. It was the woman who lives on my parents’ street. People shared memories. There were lots of tears. I said how Osna provided some of the very few happy associations I have with that place and time. Many echoed the sentiment. I don’t fully trust anyone who counts their school years as their peak. The call went on for over an hour. People promised to keep in touch, to start Facebook groups, to share work, but we won’t. The past is the past for good reason.

What stays with me is how touched Osna was at the outpouring of gratitude. She’d taught over thirty years and must’ve known she made an inpact in many strange children’s lives, but it’s different having it said out loud to your face. What is the proper reaction?

A couple days ago, I got two pieces of mail that stopped me in my tracks. One was a paperback of a book I’d reviewed last year. The writer had been trying to track me down awhile to thank me. He seems not to use the internet at all, which I find admirable. What he wrote on the title page was so over-the-top flattering that I had to stop what I was doing and just sit there trying to process it. He basically called me his brother. All I’d done was written a positive review. You can never game how your words hit people. The other piece of mail was a letter, coincidently from another non-cyber person. It was a very generous account of how much he’d enjoyed my book. He’s a set designer and wondered aloud about adapting my bar stories for the stage.

Who knows if that will happen? The thing I have to keep telling myself is to appreciate and be grateful when hearing someone was moved by something I made. It doesn’t come easily or naturally.

That’s what I got from watching the glitchy image of my old art teacher girding herself against the waves of love we kept pushing her way.

—Even though he read how I painted the wrong house a few weeks back, Skyler took a chance and commissioned me to paint his. So I did.