Letter

My parents came to visit last week. I rented a car at O’Hare and picked them up. Over their three days here we ate a lot of good food, drank some decent wine, had some good talks, and looked at a lot of art; mostly mine. On previous recent visits they were able to stay at Shay’s house, but now that I live in a place suited for one they had to AirBnB it. That was one of the few hiccups during their stay.

After showing them my place and having lunch at Pleasant House we drove to the Gold Coast apartment building where they’d be staying. The apartment, which was supposed to be on the second floor was actually on the fifth and the elevator which was supposed to be functional was out of order and wouldn’t be fixed for three days. After a couple tense phone and text exchanges with their hostess, my father spent the next four hours trying to get through to AirBnB to refund their money and compensate them for the inconvenience. During those hours we visited my gallery show, drove around, shopped for food, and eventually ended up at their replacement accommodations in River North.

I immediately recognized the Italian deli on the ground level of this high-rise. In my second or third year at SAIC, I had a work-study internship at the Roger Ramsey Gallery. One of my duties was to fetch subs for the two guys at the gallery from this spot. I can’t remember learning much of anything in my months on that job. I do remember that the guys would set up a portable TV in the middle of the gallery and watch hardcore porn anytime the place was empty; which was most of the time.

Having visitors in town—which I rarely do—always serves to remind me how solitary my everyday life is. Having to coordinate with others for three days in a row was a novelty and made me see my city from a different angle. My father, in particular, never fails to point out how scattered and random he feels Chicago is. How great the distances within its borders are. I’ve never seen it that way, but living in a place and visiting it are polar opposites in many ways. My Chicago has changed dimensions and character many times over the twenty-five years I’ve been here. But I can no longer ever see it as the sprawling grid of mismatched buildings which my parents perceived out the windows of the little Nissan rental as we crisscrossed its streets.

My parents have been unfailingly supportive of me throughout my adult life. They help with money whenever I’m in need and own more of my paintings than anyone else by a wide margin, but I often wonder whether they’re not a little disappointed about how I spend my days. My failure to succeed either in work or in love must weigh on them. But for better or worse, they raised me not to worry about their opinions nor seek their approval. At nearly fifty and single, they know not to hope for grandchildren and I know that I’ll never feel what they feel when they watch or think about their three sons.

Like so many other families in this country at the moment, our clashes during the visit were mostly over politics. By the end of their stay, we had still not quite agreed on what the word ‘fascist’ actually means. So it goes these days. I was glad to see them anyway. None of us are getting any younger and can’t afford to pass up opportunities to spend time together as the inevitable comes into ever clearer view.

After dropping them off at the airport Friday and returning the Nissan to Budget, I was alone again, heading back into the city on the Blue Line. It hit me that though I hadn’t left town the past three days had felt like a trip to another place. Just goes to show that it’s possible to travel great distances without ever leaving home.

Pleasant House used to be in Bridgeport but is now in Pilsen. They serve savory pies, so of course I was a regular at the old location—a cramped converted pizza shop next to Maria’s Bar at 31st & Morgan. In fact, I did a painting of the intersection where the shop used to be as a Kickstarter reward a few years back. The new place is a couple doors down from the Skylark, so I often see people who work there on Sunday nights after they’re done with their shift. The first time I ever walked in there, my friend Brian (who was a bartender at Nightwood, the restaurant which occupied this storefront previously), was at the bar as if he’d been there the whole time, just waiting for the doors to open again. 

Unlike their old spot, this space is opulent, and they spent a goodly sum redecorating, down to actual old-world-style plaster walls. For the first few months they were open, a series of black-and-white photos decorated those walls, but the last few times I’ve come in all but one or two had been removed. Tuesday, the day after I hung my bar paintings show up in Humboldt Park, I asked Iggy, between bites of mushroom-and-kale pie, who was in charge of the artwork. After a series of emails with Art, the owner, I was back the following morning to hang a bunch of my pictures. 

I chose all black-and-white pieces which I think go best with the decor of the place. Because they serve beer, I hung a bunch of bar-themed illustrations from Hack near the taps. Most of what I brought were portraits. You’ll find the one of Henry Miller I did last summer for The Scofield, but also the one of my friend Claire from years ago, as well as the one of the old grizzled cabbie who told me about the sci-fi epic he’d been writing for years while we were waiting to pick up late-night drinkers at The Continental.

The great thing about hanging old things in new places is that they sometimes get a bit of new life to them from the novel surroundings. They certainly have a better chance at survival in a room which fills and refills with people every day than on the walls or in the closets of my apartment, where the only person who will look at them will likely destroy them sooner or later.

It feels good and right to have them out of the house.

So these are the places around town where you can currently look at my paintings and drawings:

1.) Hume Chicago

2.) Pleasant House

3.) Jackalope Coffee

4.) Gold Star Bar

5.) Flying Saucer

6.) Skylark

7.) Bernice’s Tavern

p.s. I saw a great production of a Brecht play set in 30s Chicago, written in 40s Germany, but all about the US today.

March 18—April 16, 2017 Hume Chicago, 3242 W. Armitage, Chicago, IL 60647 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 18, 6-10pm Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5pm or by appointment 

I’ve been drawing in bars since before I was allowed to drink. Like coffee shops, subway cars, and any number of other public gathering places, taverns allow an artist to observe without necessarily being observed. Bars are neither home nor work, they are third places, where people gather to make community. Because they are engaged with others or with their own thoughts, people in bars make for great subject-matter. But what of the rooms themselves?

Over the past five years I’ve been taking my paints to my favorite haunts. I set up in different parts of the room each time and try to catch some of the atmosphere and feel of these places which play host to so many different kinds of people night in and night out. The three taverns portrayed in these paintings are ones I know well. Each has played a part in my personal history and there’s no way that bits and pieces of that history don’t make it into the pictures in some way.

The Rainbo Club has been an artists’ and musicians’ bar since back when creative people could actually afford to live within walking distance. Today it is a lonely holdout in a neighborhood glutted with strollers and sports bars. I’ve been a regular for over twenty years. My wedding pictures were taken in its photo booth, I’ve put up art on its walls many times, even worked the door a few nights. It all comes back every time I go through the door.

I’ve worked at the Skylark for a couple years but coming in since it opened some fifteen years ago. Like Rainbo, many artists have darkened its doorstep; unlike Rainbo, some can still afford to live nearby. Pilsen is well along in the gentrification process which swallowed up West Town years ago. One of the bitter pills of this transformation is that the very reasons which attract people with money to these neighborhoods are destroyed by their arrival. It’s one thing to dig the way artists make do with what they’ve got and quite another to live without the comforts and amenities one’s wealth has made one used to. Soon dry cleaners and sushi shops sprout like mushrooms and bars like the Skylark are but a memory.

Bernice’s Tavern has been run by Steve Badauskas’ family for over fifty years. Bernice is his mom and she still lives in the apartment behind the bar. Before Steve’s father bought the bar, another Lithuanian immigrant ran it. When I moved to Bridgeport the place drew me in as if it had been waiting for me to come in for years. The regulars are a mix of neighborhood old-timers and kids just out college and still figuring themselves out. It’s a place which welcomes all comers.

The paintings in this show may not directly address themes like gentrification but they definitely record specific places at specific times and thus cannot help but reflect the changes which make themselves felt nearby. The three taverns portrayed in these pictures are in three neighborhoods which are each at a different point of transition. Whether bars like these survive will determine whether these neighborhoods continue to be their own places or become cookie-cutter subdivisions no different than any other. These paintings are a way to pay tribute to particular places in particular times with the hope that they don’t disappear anytime soon.