Letter

Frank texted to ask if I wanted to teach a couple drawing classes at his school. A coworker tore a rotator cuff and was facing surgery, physical therapy, and significant time off. The semester was already underway and they were in a pinch.

I started typing a response, then stopped. I’ve had a couple students over the years, but have never taught a drawing class. Still, forty years of doing a thing almost every day should count for something. I asked how long it would be for and Frank said a month or so. Before I knew what I was doing, I said yes. Then the worrying began.

In 1994, I went to grad school for painting. The idea was to get a master’s so I could teach. Within a month I realized I was done with school and didn’t want to be part of school in the future. I dropped out and went back to driving a cab. Over the following twenty-seven years, many people suggested I should teach. They said I’d make a good teacher. Frank was one of those people. Why any of them thought so, I don’t know. I never felt like a good teacher after the private lessons I gave. I couldn’t tell whether what I’d told my student made any impact or difference.

I was never a good student myself. I fought almost everything every teacher tried to say. Maybe that’s why I assume anything I say to a student will fall on deaf ears.

A week or so after saying yes, I went in for a formal interview with an administrator at the school. I filled out paperwork and posed for a school ID. It all happened very quickly.

Frank sent me the syllabi for my two classes, as well as a bunch of supplementary material, including something called The Elements of Light. It was for the beginning drawing class, the one in which the poor kids have to draw a still-life made up of a cube, a ball, and a cone. But the page reads like a series of aphorisms.

All forms will have a dark tone

Can a kid who never took a drawing class handle something so heavy? Can I?

Beware——cast shadows can destroy other forms that they land on

My first class is in figure-drawing. Four students and a nude model. I tell them I’ve been coming into rooms like this since I was sixteen. That drawing the nude model changed my life, but that it never gets easier, so don’t get discouraged.

In the beginning drawing class, we talk about the cube, ball, and cone. They all want to use their rulers to draw, thinking it will make their drawings “accurate”. It doesn’t, but I don’t tell them. It’s too soon to burst bubbles.

After the second figure-drawing class, I stop to talk to a student tacking her homework up in the hallway. It’s a copy of an old-master portrait drawing. She’s not happy with it.

When I ask what she thinks will make her portrait a success, she says:  When it is recognizably of a human. I tell her this is a damn good goal. Walking out to catch the shuttle to the train, I think that I’ve always had the same goal, though I’ve never put it into words.

Often gets a little lighter near the edges

Six years ago I typed out and illustrated Stuart Dybek’s Christmas story, “Vigil” for Chicago Independent Bookstore Day. The idea was to stop into each of the twelve participating stores and collect all the pages of the story into a folder, while shopping.

Having trouble falling asleep a few nights ago, I had the brilliant idea to read the story aloud. Since it’s illustrated, I decided to film it as well. In my memory, it was a short story, but once I turned the camera and mic on and began, I realized the faultiness of my memory. Turns out it takes a long time to read twelve pages. Not that I even considered stopping. I stumbled a bunch times——you’ll hear that, should you make it all the way through——but I made it to the end. Once one of these ideas gets into my head, it’s best to carry it to its terminus, otherwise it eats at me and won’t let me be.

Vigil by Stuart Dybek

I’ll put some of the original art up for sale in the shop soon.

This was one of my favorite projects.(Typing out and drawing Dybek’s story, that is; the 36-minute video six years after is just the result of fulfilling the requirements of tunnel vision.)

Snow is my favorite thing that nature does. These last few weeks, after years of disappointment, of feeling shortchanged and cheated, nature has delivered. Chicago has had the most snowfall in 40 years. There’s a small mountain that tops out halfway up my front window. I’ve shoveled the walk and stairs three or four times, as have my landlords. We dump it into the little yard I look out every day.

Light reflects off the white of snow into my place, changing the cast of colors in the pictures I work on. There are no leaves on the trees streetside, so the light is harder, then when it bounces off snow, there’s a silvery sheen as it filters into the room. the paintings come out gray, cold yellow, few warm tones. Fitting for the season.

I feel at my sharpest in winter. The definite contrast between inside and outside makes my mind work better. The bracing blast of cold air outdoors makes me feel alive. I run hot, so the chill is a relief. The opposite of summer, when I feel stuck in the muck of heat and sweat.

This winter was the ten year anniversary of the huge snowstorm that stranded cars on Lake Shore Drive. I drove my cab through it, not giving up and going home past midnight. We’ve barely had more than a couple inches here and there since. So the mounds, rows, and hills covering the city feel special. I feel fortunate not to have to deal with a car in it. The city could do much better with clearing sidewalks, but other than that I love walking through it.

Snow slows everything down. It allows time to reflect. Hurrying through becomes impossible and that’s a good thing. The effort it requires to navigate restores the proper relationship between me and the environment. It reminds me that I’m small and the world is big, that struggle is necessary to get anywhere.

This cover of Trip Shakespeare’s “Snow Days” might be my favorite thing the Flat Five sing. Go buy their record already!

— I talked shop with Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley.