Letter

A funny thing happened last Monday. My father wrote to ask if the painting I used to illustrate last week’s newsletter was available for sale. When I told him it was from the mid-90s and long-gone, he commissioned a copy. I didn’t ask why this little self-portrait grabbed him, but thought instead back to the circumstances in which it was made.

I was living in an artist loft building on Rugg Road in Allston, Massachusetts with my best childhood friend. Our few months living together would damage our relationship to the point that it never recovered. Living with somebody will do that.

It was a large, mostly open room with occasional sheetrock partitions in place of actual rooms. An industrial blower provided heat ineffectively and the bathroom and shower was down the hall, shared with other semi-legal tenants. After a lifetime of apartment dwelling, all the undefined space drove me a little crazy. I was there less than a year, as I remember.

It’s weird to copy your own work. I don’t know how it is for other painters (and there’s a long tradition of artists cranking out multiple versions of the same popular motif), but it’s not a thing that feels natural to me. Still, as an occasional exercise, it’s not uninteresting. I wasn’t interested in slavishly recreating every last brush stroke, but in making a new riff on an old theme. I made a free new version of the Rugg Road self-portrait, framed it, and put it in the mail. 

When I was choosing art to illustrate Soviet Stamps, I wanted to use one of the charcoal drawings from my BFA Thesis show. They were very dark drawings done at night with the lights off. Unfortunately, the only digital files I had were way too low-res to print. So I took out my Sumi ink and made a new version using the blurry picture on my computer screen as a reference. Once again, making this new picture from an old one made me think back to another time. I was depressed over a recent breakup and didn’t like having the lights on. Hence the dark drawings. 

A few years ago I was working on a series of paintings at the Skylark and made one of the photobooth in the back of the bar. A friend liked it enough to want to buy it. But when she found out the size she said it would never fit in her place—she had the misfortune of living in a New York apartment. So I returned to the bar with my gouaches and painted a new postcard-sized version for her. Unlike the other two painted copies, this one was not done with the earlier one as a visual source. I didn’t have to contend with my own marks, but rather just the same subject-matter. The result is similar but different.

They say you can’t step in the same river twice and that’s true for art as well. At least the way I do it. I suppose I could make the new, copied versions of old pictures closer to the originals, but that would be really boring. I’m not a machine and don’t get anything from mechanical reproduction. In the best-case scenario, the new paintings are reconsiderations or tributes to the old. A way to look back without dwelling too much.

Still, left to my own devices, I’d rather just try to make something new.

I’ve worked somewhere every Christmas I can remember. Movie theaters, restaurants, taxis, bars. It’s lonesome on that day if it’s not your holiday, so it’s better to at least make money off those who celebrate. To perform some useful function.

When my family first moved to the US we put up a tree for a year or two. We got presents from the Soviet Santa (Father Frost). Then, at Hebrew School, they told me and my brother that Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, so we shamed our parents into getting rid of the tree. American Jews have the poor man’s Christmas: Hanukkah. But it was never more than a consolation prize hastily arranged so kids wouldn’t feel left out. It wasn’t a “real” holiday. As time went on, I felt thankful not to be part of any of it.

When my parents moved into their current home, timers were left behind near the light switches by the previous tenants, who were Hasidic Jews. These timers were there to work lights the family was forbidden from touching during the sabbath—a modern version of a shabbos goy. Whatever the Christmas equivalent of a shabbos goy is is what I’ve become.

When coworkers need shifts covered come December, I’m happy to oblige. Sometimes there’s even extra holiday pay. Christmases in the cab could be pretty dire. Empty streets, with the odd fare every hour or two. Somebody you’d never see out on the streets any other day of the year. Or maybe it’s that they disappear into the crowd and only become visible when the crowd isn’t there. The inevitable meal at the Chinese restaurant. It is rarely a good time, but the work makes it go by faster.

The past few years I’ve bartended Christmas Eve and Day. It’s busy once I open the bar, but the hours before can drag. This year I worked a few hours at the bookstore, then went to see the crummy new Adam Sandler movie. People who come to the Skylark on Christmas overtip. They’re grateful we’re open, that their holiday responsibilities are done with. There’s a family who make tortas at home and meet up at the bar. They always bring me one. I was so busy this year that I didn’t get to eat it for about three hours. It tasted so good when I finally got to it. I made nearly two months’ rent covering bar and bookstore shifts, so I have nothing to complain about.

Visiting my parents for New Year’s, as I do every year, their celebration was extra low key. Their friends are all getting older and are less eager to come over. Or they’ve decamped for warmer climes. There were only seven of us around the table. My contribution is always washing dishes afterward. In past years I was still up at 4am, long after everyone went to bed, but this year my father and brother stayed up and helped; we were done by 2am. Once they stop wanting to mark this Soviet anti-Christmas, New Year’s Eve will become just another day. I’ll have to look to cover a shift for somebody who celebrates.

I feel much more comfortable serving people who celebrate than celebrating myself. I like to keep my head down and keep working. Not pausing to reflect on the passage of time. Maybe someone will invent a holiday I can call my own one day. Until then, I’ll be the guy pouring your Christmas drink or selling you a last minute gift. I’m ok with that.

Somebody has to do it, so it might as well be me.

In the run-up to Christmas, I’ve gotten a rash of commissions. It’s been dogs and cats most of the time the past few years, but this winter it’s houses and views out windows. It’s always strange to paint something for someone else, according to their instructions. They hire me because they like what I do and I can’t really paint like someone else, but subject-matter does matter. In the pictures I do on my own, the choice of what I’m looking at is complicated and often personal. It’s meaningful. Oftentimes, it’s a view I’ve seen for years and years until the moment comes that I want to paint it. No such luxury with commissions. I try to make it work anyway.

Kyle asked me to come to his office and paint the view out the window. It faces east toward Buckingham Fountain and Lake Michigan, along Ida B. Wells Drive. Kyle wanted a present for his father who is proud that his son is now a college professor. While I worked, Kyle sat behind me grading papers. We chitchatted. It was a good time.

Aaron asked for a painting of his parents’ house in Valparaiso. His father built it himself and the house is all he and his wife care about, to hear Aaron tell it. They’re hard to get presents for. This is the only meaningful one I’ve ever gotten them, he says.

Andrew asked for a painting of his house in Oak Park. I told him I’d deliver it myself and he asked that it be wrapped. I guess it’s for a wife/significant other. I took the Blue Line to Austin, then walked the few blocks to the address. I’d done the painting from photos so it was strange walking up to the real thing and leaving my painting of it on the porch. Like I’d walked into a picture—a tableau vivant; frozen for a moment, then back in motion.

Sarah wanted keepsake painting of a house on the northwest side for a relation who has recently moved back to Omaha. I’ve lived in apartments most of my life, so it’s hard for me to imagine living in one like this. The one time I lived in a house, it was disquieting not to hear the footsteps or voices of neighbors. A whole building just for you and yours. The American dream. Never dreamed that one. 

No holiday season would be complete without a pet portrait. This is Naomi. She died five years ago. She was a faithful friend and companion for many years. We’d have all been lucky had she been ours. Happy holidays.

— You can read a chapter from Soviet Stamps at Vol.1 Brooklyn.