Letter

I’m trying to figure out how to talk about the two books Arcade Publishing is putting out in October. I can’t in good conscience promote them whole-heartedly, as they will not be what I intended. Yet, I’m happy with the work I’ve done and would like if people had a chance to judge for themselves.

You can buy original art from one book or the other.

I’ve done one podcast where I tried to diplomatically address the issue. There will likely be more chances to talk about the problem and I have to be careful not to say what I really feel about it. It’s so tempting to go scorched earth but I know it’s not worth it. For one thing, Arcade still owes me the second half of my advance (payable upon publication) and they may be less inclined to pony up should I run my mouth too freely. It’s a conundrum.

For the most part, I’m over it. I took down my art show from the bar a few days ago, delivered all the sold pieces, and I’m trying to plot some new moves.

These clean slate times are always odd in that I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself after knowing exactly what to do for months and months but at the same time the open-ended state of possibilities is kind of refreshing. It won’t last long. I’ll be buried ass-deep in one thing or another soon enough. I know my patterns.

I watched a pretty remarkable new documentary about Leni Riefenstahl a few nights ago at the Siskel. It’s a good time to be a Nazi again these days and Leni lived a long happy life denying any complicity in genocide with plenty of people to defend her. I wonder which monsters from our present will be similarly beloved in the decades to come.

The director, Andres Veiel, did a Q&A after the screening and stressed his intent to show Riefenstahl as a person not a caricature monster. It’s all the more horrifying to watch a person dig their own grave rather than being thrown in one by others via righteous anger. This is the way in which art is a mirror. There’s dozens of Lenis running around pretending to be lillywhite pure every day now. Maybe it’s always been this way.

I wrote about perhaps the best bookstore book ever. Someone else wrote a nice rundown of Printers Row weekend: https://zonamotel.substack.com/p/dispatch-printers-row-offsite-the

I was commissioned to make five long and narrow paintings to replace crappy figure drawings done by a former hostess of a restaurant that has since gone out of business. The dimensions were determined by the gaudy frames the restaurateur refused to part with.

I wrote about this at the time but can’t find the newsletter and, thus, don’t even know what year it happened. This is a recurring thing that will only snowball, I know. The past is a looming, out-of-focus slurry. I reach in carefully and hope to pull out the thing I’m looking for, with mixed results more often than not.

The reason I’m recalling that project now is that the one painting that was paid for but never hung—for all I know, it’s gathering cobwebs in a basement to this day—is reproduced in a new print magazine called Tableware in their first issue.

The painting is based on a photo of the open secret door in Punch House, the bar in the basement of Thalia Hall in Pilsen. I think the bar is still going, though the restaurant upstairs, where my paintings hung, is now some seafood joint, I think.

The thing with art is you lose all control of what happens to it upon leaving the studio. It’s best that way so that you’re not married to it and there’s a chance it can lead its own life. But, sometimes, you wish for a better fate than what it winds up with.

In the case of the secret door painting, it was sort of doomed from the start. The guy who paid for it to be created is a really bad guy and his restaurant wasn’t any good. Still, his money was the color of everyone else’s, so I took it.

I’m happy this forgotten painting got remembered, albeit via reproduction. Now it has a chance to live again the way it didn’t the first time out.

Talked about my public domain project with Gil on his Virtual Memories show.

I wrote about Linn Ullmann’s Girl, 1983.

Traveling later this week so my mind is a little unfocused.

I started John Tottenham’s Service. Made me laugh out loud a few times within the first ten pages. Definitely up my alley.

The other night on Tubi, I watched a pretty lousy 1989 horror flick called I, Madman, noteworthy for two things: its star, Jenny Wright—once an up-and-coming actress—long disappeared, something about a bad accident referenced online that I didn’t wanna dig into; and, my friend, Bruce Wagner, in the end credits. Had to rewind to spot the back of his head, as a piano player about to be offed by the titular madman. Full head of hair. That’s why I didn’t recognize him.

A couple days later at the Siskel, I watched a mismatched double-feature of Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest and Kurosawa’s Stray Dog. The former is a loose remake of a different Kurosawa but that’s where the synergies stop. What Lee offers is a flabby gourmet TV movie-of-the-week while Stray Dog is a nearly note-perfect treatise on desperation and bad choices.

I sold an expensive art book on eBay I’ve had for thirty-five years. It will cover the car rental for my trip. A couple more pieces from the Rainbo show sold as well. Then I got a pet-portrait commission.

Sometimes the universe looks out for me. Can’t explain why but I’m grateful.