Letter

I finished the book design months ago. It went through a bunch of revisions, some big, some small. The writer had a lot of input. I tried to make all the changes she wanted. Tweak by tweak, minute change by imperceptible adjustment the cover turned into something I barely recognized as my own.

That’s as it should be. It’s not my name below the title. If someone wants to know who designed the thing they’ll probably have to dig around a bit. The colophon is rarely the first thing that comes up when you search for a book.

I like this kind of job because it gets me out of myself. I’m using the same muscles but to very different ends. It’s a bit like being a marionette: the audience sees the figure moving but under someone else’s power. Every time I opened Photoshop and moved a bit of text or a graphic element there was a relinquishment of control. For better or worse, in my own pictures and books there’s no one else who’s allowed so much input.

There were three or four pretty involved design projects this year. They’ll be published/released early next year. When they come out I’ll be able to observe people’s reaction like a stranger. I can cheer their success or mourn their failure for a short time, then leave and forget about it. It’s a lot harder to do when the thing is my own.

I’m not much for looking ahead for the most part. I remember when I was in school, I created small things to look forward to so I could make it through the miserable weekdays. A movie to see, a record to buy. Sometimes those faint glimmers were the only thing that would get me to walk down to the end of those dark tunnels.

It’s not that I’ve become a sunshine-y motherfucker or anything but I’m a lot more focused on the day-to-day, the minute-to-minute, than I was back then. It’s because for the most part I choose how my days pass. I’m very lucky that way. I don’t have to hold tight until the good thing happens somewhere down the line. The good thing and the bad thing is mostly right now, moment to moment.

That said, I look forward to my annual Rainbo show in June and my third show at Firecat in July. I’ll keep working on the weird new book I’ve been chipping away at for the past year. No idea when it will be done. It’ll take as long as it takes. There are a few potential art jobs that aren’t for sure yet that I very much hope will happen but those are not entirely up to me.

So it goes. Thanks as ever for reading/looking/listening. Talk to you next year.

—Listen to my talk with Chris Brokaw and/or a discussion of Midsommar.

The week before the big fair I crank out fifteen new bookmarks. I’m no expert on what goes at a holiday fair but a unique bookmark is a no-brainer for this crowd. Even the majority of shoppers who pick at my books and are disappointed that there are words and pictures inside rather than being blank journals they can give their loved ones to fill with their own deep thoughts will throw $5 down for a bookmark to help curb their disappointment.

I’m an old hand at managing expectations. If nothing else, a holiday fair gets me out of the house a couple days with the possibility of coming back with less than I brought. It’s rare I can’t clear this low bar.

The last winter Renegade Craft Fair I did was six or seven years ago. It was at the Bridgeport Art Center which was very convenient for me and I made a bunch of money but swore I’d never do it again. There’s a unique emotional/life-force toll exacted by these events. You’re not doing much more than smiling at people for six or seven hours but afterwards you feel like you’d gotten run over by a truck that backed up and did it again to make sure there was no spirit left inside.

For an outgoing person, a performer, the chance to shill one’s wares might be an opportunity to show off or riff; to an inward, shy person it’s more like getting the outer layer of skin peeled slowly and methodically by a thousand amateur line cooks. They have no idea what they’re doing and they mean well but do untold damage.

I know well these are luxury complaints. Nevertheless, I always dream/speculate that there’s some other way. I read books about artists and writers having agents and staff to handle all the public-facing grunt work I take as my responsibility as a matter of course. I remember, for instance, the one and only time a gallery sent a freight company to my house to pick up artwork for a show. It was such a champagne-and-caviar moment. That was eight years ago. I’ve packed and shipped every picture and book since then myself.

Renegade’s in the West Loop this year. Makes sense. A lot of disposable income in that neighborhood. I don’t know that you can buy anything at Renegade you actually need. Certainly not off my table. I need to make these things but when someone likes one and gives me money to take it home, it’s sort of icing on the cake. I wonder whether any vendors here feel they’re performing an essential service?

I have to ask Suzy sometime why she called her craft fair Renegade. What was it an uprising against? Brick-and-mortar stores? Factories? I wonder.

Across from me is a line of couples waiting to get their portraits drawn. I wonder aloud to me neighbor about who will get the drawing after they break up. Will they cut it into halves or will one just rip off their ex’s image and chuck it in the trash or burn it? My neighbor laughs at my gallows humor. He hasn’t sold much so I’m happy to cheer him up, even through darkness.

My other neighbor’s doing bang-up business. She drove here with her sister from New Jersey. She makes t-shirts and sweatshirts with color swatches that merge into gradient designs when they’re washed. People can’t get enough. We commiserate over how draining it is to smile for so long at so many people.

I get coffee at a booth manned by a very young person. When I give her a twenty she gets flustered making change, almost handing me a fifty by mistake. I try to make light of this but only wind up making her more nervous. Her hands are trembling as I walk away.

Packing up to leave I tell myself it was worth it since I’m taking back less than I brought. After hauling the folding table and suitcase up to the Green Line, then waiting on the platform for 20 minutes for an Orange Line train delayed by mechanical trouble, then walking down to State Street and waiting a half hour for the Archer bus, I start having second thoughts.

Maybe I’ll retire from fair life for a time.

—A few recent raves.

—I was a guest on my friend Gil’s show once again and talked to musician Jim Magas on mine. Then I read an excerpt from paint-by-numbers and paired a song to go with it for Textual Healing.

—Made you another playlist.

—Buy one of my drawings to help Clinard Dance keep dancing.

Milwaukee is an easy drive from Chicago. The rental car arrives on time and I’m parking outside the Calatrava-designed alien bird-insect edifice of their art museum a couple hours later.

The week leading up to this trip was full of painting pets so a change of scenery’s a good palate cleanser. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy staring at snapshots of Bobby, Margie, and Simon as much as the next guy. It’s obvious their humans love them even in the shittiest cellphone pic. I don’t take the job of translating that love into paint for granted. But once that work is done it’s good to have something that changes the subject, clears the deck.

On a break from my commission work I go to the Art Institute and spend time with one my favorite paintings. In it, a large fish lies on a tabletop in front of a dark copper pot along with some oysters, an eel, a strange little red fish, a lemon, and a knife. All wait to be thrown in the pot for dinner. I can’t say why I love it so much. I don’t even eat seafood. But I’ve sketched it a half dozen times since first seeing it shortly after my arrival in Chicago in 1990. It’s become an old friend.

Another night after a day of dogs and cats I’m invited to draw at Wendy’s dance studio. I’ve known her as long as Manet’s still-life. That doesn’t sound right but I don’t mean it in a bad way. She reminds the audience of our long association on a break between numbers so that’s why it stuck in my head.

Drawing music and dance and listeners/watchers is a kind of communion. Not exactly like the pet portraits but not wholly unlike it either.

I’ve been to Milwaukee’s art museum before. It’s a lot more manageable than the Art Institute. There’s a pressure with admission prices as high as they are to see every single display but all that leads to is sensory overload. That’s why it’s nice to visit a small museum. My plan is to spend most of my time at the Ashcan School exhibit but I wind up strolling through most of the building. I sit and sketch a Utrillo a few minutes then buy a postcard in the gift shop and get back behind the wheel of my rental.

The real purpose of this trip is a bookstore event in the Bayview neighborhood. I drop off my box of books at the shop and go down the street looking for food. On the walk back I stop in a record store where I’d driven Bill for a gig a few years back. In Milwaukee people are still wearing masks inside some of the businesses unlike most in Chicago so the owner doesn’t recognize me. There’s a good chance he wouldn’t have even maskless and I don’t feel like reintroducing myself. I manage to leave without buying a record.

No one shows up for the reading but I spend a pleasant hour chatting with the owners. Turns out we have friends in common. They’re apologetic, cursing Milwaukee for being so out of it, but I assure them that my expectations for public events couldn’t be lower. It’s always a crapshoot and I’m grateful when anyone shows up at all. They end up buying most of the books I brought anyway so the visit is a runaway success despite no one coming.

Art openings and book readings have never been anything I look forward to. Unlike a concert, they are an afterthought, a commercial add-on, rather than the main event. That happens on the page and the canvas, away from any audience.

I wipe away any trace of disappointment on the drive home. There’s junk food to eat and a podcast to listen to—something about the history of clothes—and a dark road that helps clear my head. Maybe tomorrow there’ll be another dog or cat to immortalize and the cycle can start all over again.

—Listen to me talk to Janet Bean about her bands and about writing and to Mallory about Black Christmas.

—I recommended both Bardo and White Noise after not expecting much of either going in.