Letter

The thing about making art outside is you’re at the mercy of the elements. Turner tying himself to the mast comes to mind, even if it never happened. Also, the outside is endless; not like a room with walls on each side and the back, making for a natural composition. You have to cut off all the flora and buildings, etc on your own, arbitrarily, somehow.

I hadn’t carried the French easel out to the alley for a couple years. Can’t pinpoint the reason for such a long break but seemed any day I was thinking to do it, the weather was wrong or there was some book waiting to be illustrated or some movie that just had to be watched right then. It all sounds like a bunch of excuses.

The practice of working from direct observation goes back a long way and is one of the ideas most important to me. Any time I pick up a pen or brush I need something to look at and react to. There’s nothing inside my head or heart that is the basis of what I make. To be sure, the experiences and events I write about have spent some time in my consciousness, but they didn’t originate there, so, to me, it’s not unlike hauling the blank canvas and easel out to the alley when it comes time to put it down on paper.

Over the years, the words and images I’ve made have had to go through multiple stages before ending up in pictures or books. Fewer and fewer are a pure direct response to a subject in real time but that is always the goal. I want it to feel immediate, like you’re right there. Not made up or invented or even recalled but responded to in the moment. It’s kind of impossible but I keep trying.

The times it’s hardest to pull off is when I have to work from a photograph. Nothing takes me out of an experience as quickly as looking at one of those frozen images. The trick becomes to pretend to be in the actual place or looking at the real person rather than the machine rendering. It’s a kind of self-delusion that I never feel quite right about. It’s a shortcut and a cheat. The people who get these paintings don’t seem to mind but it bothers the hell out of me.

I’ve been at it a long time so I can fake it pretty good but not ever well enough to fool myself. When I’m not physically in the place and the time there always something missing. That’s why setting up the easel in the alley the other day was so satisfying. May not be a ship’s mast but I was for sure out there.

Long before K and I became an item a year ago, I was a fan of her writing. fifteen years ago, tried unsuccessfully to get my publisher to give her a book deal on the strength of a zine called Weirdo Du Jour. Now there’s a book.

She says it wouldn’t have happened without my pushing her but I don’t believe that. I helped any way I could but firmly believe this writing would’ve ended up in a book sooner or later. I had the same confusion and fatalist attitude before my first one came out too. It feels like there are miles of insurmountable barriers between a writer and a published book but at this late date most of them are smokescreens and mirages.

It has never been easier to get your words printed on paper, bound in cardstock, and made available to anyone anywhere. I doubt that the percentage of worthwhile writing has increased any since the days of more formidable gate-keepers, in fact, with such a large number of so-called books generated with no human involvement, the number worth bothering about has likely shrunk. And yet there are writers who deserve an audience who aren’t getting it.

K spent decades making zines. There’s an insular community devoted to that form that is not unlike the book crowd, but in miniature. It’s all school-age cliques anywhere you go. If I did anything to help this book along, it was to convince K that she belongs on the outside of the book club as much as she already knows she does outside the zine one. We have that in common. We’re not joiners.

I did some copyedits and suggested a few phrase changes but hardly had to change a thing to the manuscript she sent me a couple months ago. She’s been working up to this book a long time and now it’s here.

We recorded a talk the other afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table of her new place.

I’m proud to’ve played a part in getting this book out into the world. Order yours here.

Cleaning up the studio, I came across a bunch of stapled pages from an old spiral-bound notebook. They were my field notes from my time working for Lifeline in 1995. I transcribed them and posted them for you to read.

I have a bunch of art up at the bookstore but you can buy it without leaving your couch.

I don’t have that many personal connections to Evanston, Illinois. My friend, Bill, works at Northwestern University and my old friend, Tom, lived and died there, as did my friend, Tony, more recently. It’s a suburb connected to the city by public transportation which links it in my mind with Brookline, Massachusetts, where my parents still sometimes live.

I like the university’s art museum and I’ve seen some good shows at Space but I don’t really have a handle on the place.

Twice over the past month or so I’ve taken the train up to the Dempster stop and walked east a block to a coffeeshop to meet with an editor at Northwestern University Press about publishing a book. It looks like I’ll be signing a contract any day now, though the book won’t appear till the fall of 2028. University presses function on a different timeline than most of us. That’s okay. I know what I’m signing up for. My first book back in 2011 was through a university press situated roughly thirty miles south of this one. Maybe I’m feeling nostalgic for the glacial pace, but more likely it’s that at this point, after making books every which way myself, I’m ready for others to do more of the lifting.

It helps that the woman who’s acquiring the book and will be my editor is not a stranger. Megan and I were labelmates on a doomed local indie press whose demise came with lawsuits and a generous helping of bad feelings. I once illustrated something she wrote. She seems to have an inkling of where I’m coming from and what dealing with me entails. At this point, a little understanding and good will goes a very long way with me.

As part of my book deal, the press asked me not to sell my Book Hole zines publicly anymore. If you want some of those, drop me a line. I have a few each of issues #2-#5.

I wrote a review of John Knudsen’s show at Firecat. What I didn’t mention is that I also helped hang it. It went up the same day my show there came down.

I read my friend, Tim’s, book and it’s been rattling around my head pretty good. It’s up for preorder. I’d get it if I were you.

My friend, June’s, book about Chicago coffeehouses with my painting of Jinx Coffee on the cover is up for preorder as well. Strangely enough, Tim worked at that coffeeshop. In fact, his book is dedicated to his coworkers there.