Letter

From 2004 to 2011, I lived in an apartment at the corner of 24th Street and Western Avenue. I made a lot of paintings and drawings there including a series of large charcoal and ink interiors and window views. Seven or eight of these will be on display at Rootstock starting tonight. Though few people outside the neighborhood knew it, the area was was called the Heart of Chicago, so that’s what I’m calling the show. Rootstock is a really good restaurant so I hope you stop by over the next few months and check out the work. Even if the artwork doesn’t do it for you at least you’ll have had a good meal with some good wine! 

I’m dipping my toe back into the t-shirt racket. This pigpen illustration I did originally for a talk about Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is one of the two designs currently available (the other is of a couple of dogs). You can buy them directly from Threadless in a variety of sizes. I got a couple for myself and they’re pretty nice shirts. I’ll add more designs if this goes alright.

My friend Mark commissioned a portrait of his wife for her 50th birthday. That reminded me I hadn’t done many portraits in the last few years (save for those of dog and cats), so I’m thinking of doing some more for an upcoming show this fall at a bar in Rogers Park. Unfortunately, for the moment, only a model of last resort is available. 

Lastly, I wrote about Werner Herzog’s new meditation on the internet for the Reader.

About 8 or 9 years ago, on MySpace, I got to be friendly with Edgar Breau, the singer and guitarist of the legendarily forgotten ’70s Canadian band Simply Saucer. He liked my paintings and told me he’d like to use one for a CD cover for a forthcoming solo recording. I did some sketches and the painting above and Edgar sent me some money, but nothing happened for a few years. In 2012, “Patches of Blue” was released, but without the cover I designed. Some of my sketches were used to decorate the disc itself though. A couple years ago, while cleaning out a drawer, I happened on my cover painting and decided to send it to Edgar, figuring it was doing no one any good sitting in storage. Last week he emailed me to say he’d decided to use it for the remaining stock of “Patches” CDs. You can hear the songs here but if you want to buy one with my cover you’ll need to contact Edgar directly: breauscr (at) hotmail (dot) com. 

Last December I heard Gint Aras read from his newly-published novel, The Fugue. I decided to review it for the Tribune but the day after the editor gave me the green light the book’s publisher pulled it from circulation, citing financial insolvency. Luckily, Tortoise Books came to the rescue and the book is available again. Read my review.  I also wrote a bit about the new season of “The Americans” for the Reader. Both deal with Eastern Europeans in America, albeit in very different ways. 

Saturday I went to hear Ran Blake play at Constellation. His music is a mix of jazz and classical but really is its own animal. He played some standards but even recognizable melodies were mutated to fit his own voice. Blake is 80 years old and needed a walker to get to the piano, but once he hit the keys all frailty flew out the window. Like Mavis Staples last week, Blake made it clear that old age doesn’t have to mean retreat or defeat or diminishment of creative power. They show me reasons to keep going.

Few people these days would call this thing a spigot these days, but it’s an old word I like so that’s reason enough to make it the name of this new painting (I also originally thought to call this week’s newsletter “Staring into the Void” but reconsidered.) Coming up with titles for pictures is a fraught process. You don’t want a name which does all the work for the viewer, but neither is calling it something completely opaque or seemingly unrelated to the subject-matter ideal. You want something evocative but not too evocative. More often than not I just give them geographical or very rudimentary titles, like the one below. It’s called “Lituanica #12” because it was painted looking out the window of my apartment on that street, and is the 12th in the series so far. It’s simple but it works. 

The Tribune published my review of the incredibly thorough new book about The Replacements and the Reader ran my review of the Alex Katz drawing show.

Saturday night I got to watch and listen to Mavis Staples sing. Most of us would be lucky to put out as much energy and joy as she does at half her age. It was something to behold and I felt fortunate to’ve been there.