Getting back in shape

The last year has not been a great one for drawing. At least not for me. After being a dad and an employee and a housekeeper, the little spare time I have had left has been consumed with the two books I have been putting together. I’ve had to do a lot of drawing to get those books done, of course, but it’s certainly not been the sort of art that fills my dozens of old sketchbooks. It’s not really a record of my daily life.

A few weeks ago, once the last of my book files was picked up by the FedEx man,I had to admit that I had pretty much lost the habit of drawing and I’d better do something about it. I just kinda didn’t wanna.

Even though it’s been a mild winter, it’s not been conducive to drawing outside so I sat for in the kitchen for a while and looked at the odds and ends on the counter and tried to psych myself up. Instead, I sighed. I just can’t draw my pepper mill again, nor a box of raisins or my knife block. I have a new, great-sounding but boring-looking radio — its a black rectangle with a small monitor and two knobs. Most of the view out my window has been blocked by two newish NYU buildings. They are as dull looking as my new radio and, in any case I’ve drawn them over and again over the years. My mind whined: there’s nothing to draw. But really, beneath my feigned boredom, lurked fear. An anxiety that maybe I had lost my ability to draw. Look at Tiger Woods — even great talent can slip away in the night and leave you swatting the air.

I had to find a way to ease back into the water without scaring the muse away. I didn’t want the pressure of making great journal pages or writing witty marginalia. I just wanted the visceral pleasure of making lines and slowly and carefully studying something, anything. I unearthed an empty, spiral-bound journal with not terribly nice paper and filled my fountain pen. Then I picked up the dogeared copy of last week NY Times Magazine and let it fall open to a random photo. Then I began to copy the picture into the book, focussing on cross hatching, spiraling lines in neat rows, lining up a smooth gradation of micro dots, making ribbons of greys and undulations of silky blacks.

The old pen was a little rusty but not nearly as bad as I feared. And soon the sweet flood of neurotransmitters swept over me, like emptying a too full bladder, and I entered the zone.

So I made a small deal with me. Each morning after my breakfast was chewed and the French press was still half full, I would do one drawing from the morning paper on one page in the book. At least one. If the urge was there and the coffee held out, maybe I’d make a second.

Most mornings I fill a page (and I don’t beat myself up about it if I miss a day to give the dogs some extra time in the park or to make an early meeting). And the fun is back.

Granted, I’m making drawings of unknown faces from news photos, not the sort of things I want to fill books with, but I figure, what the hey, it’s spring training, and the season will eventually  start for real. Meanwhile, just keep loosening up the shoulders, stretching the hamstrings, and shagging those flies.

Legacy

My friend Michael loves jazz. He infected his son with the same passion for music. By the time Nick enrolled in Jack’s school, he was already an accomplished guitarist and now in his junior year, he regularly plays with several jazz bands and combos. Our friend Jeff, also a jazz lover, recently said to Michael, “Congratulations. You’ve created a jazz musician.… Now what?”

When Jack was little, Patti and I, like most parents, collected and saved his artwork. We continue to encourage his creativity over the hump of the tween years, up to the present day. Along the way there were times I shared Jeff’s ambivalence, thinking to myself, “Are you just preparing him for life in a garret or working at a Starbucks full-time?”  I would hear the voice in my head chastising me for not preparing him for law school or medical school or Wall Street: “He’s a smart kid, he could be making a lot of money”. So when Jack decided that he wanted to focus on going to art college, I could feel the conflict rumbling in my tummy. I mean, there’s no question that I’ve always regretted the 10 or 15 years in which I didn’t create art. I wonder what my life would’ve been like had I gone to art school rather than studying political science.

But I knew deep in my heart that I could give Jack no better preparation in life than to let them know how important it is to follow your passion. I told him “most people are not passionate or talented in any particular way. You are a gifted artist and you love to make art. You are doubly lucky. It would be criminal to ignore those things to lead a life of mediocrity.” So I helped him to put his portfolio together and think about his application essays. We went to visit various art schools in the spring and I shared his anxiety over the weeks in which we were waiting for a decision.

He decided that RISD was his first choice. It was mine too, had been since I was 16 and I had attended the RISD summer program where I had the most extraordinary time of my young life, making art all day, living hundreds of miles away from my family, being surrounded by talented and creative friends, smelling of turpentine, and loving life.

I guess it’s a cliché: the father, frustrated in his youth, sending his son along the same path, like a mediocre football former high school player goading his son until he becomes a star quarterback. My own father was frustrated in the fact that he didn’t become a full-time artist, and, when I was in my 20s, he sort of encouraged me to take a different path, to study bookbinding or some such. Like most things my father said to me, I didn’t take it very seriously and so continued to go to the office every day.

I have learned so many things from art over the years, and I’ve learned it does not derail your destiny or condemn you to penury. Art is a constant in my life, even if I haven’t drawn a sausage for a month, informing how I see the world, how I think, how I feel. I can think of no greater legacy to leave my own son than to share in that wisdom and experience.

So I had no ambivalence last week, when Jack texted me excitedly at school to say that he’d been accepted into the class of 2016 at the Rhode Island School of Design. Instead, I felt enormously proud. And I felt, from some other plane, that Patti was sharing in my pride, because she too wanted Jack to follow his muse, to lead a creative life, but most of all to be happy. I think that in Providence he’ll be able to do all those things.

If a half-century of living on this sphere has taught me anything, it’s that regret is a waste of time, that one should seize every opportunity that comes one’s way, and that the fear of the unknown is just a one-way ticket into darkness. Fortunately, my son is braver than I am, less damaged, brighter, more confident in his abilities to change the world. He is my greatest work of art (though, of course I can’t claim all the credit).

Applying myself

For the last year or so, Jack has been applying to college. And so have I. Not literally (I wish) but I have agonized vicariously through every step of the way with him. I am proud of my boy and confident in his abilities but it is nerve-wracking nonetheless.

I described it to a friend recently: “It’s like hailing a cab to the airport for an important flight. As I settle into the back seat, I quickly realize that the driver is a recent immigrant who doesn’t know New York, has limited driving skills and not only doesn’t really know where the airport is but refuses to ask for directions. I can’t make him pull over and let me get in the driver’s seat and so can only sit on the edge of the back seat, hurling suggestions through the little window in the divider. Hopefully we’ll arrive before I miss my flight.”

Anyway, the basement of my building got mildly flooded a few months ago and my super has been urging me to go to the storage room and check on my stuff which may have gotten wet. As we were getting ready to set up our first Christmas tree since Patti left us, Jack and I finally went down there yesterday to look for all the decorations she’d stored and to pull all the rest of our stuff out. One box was a bit moldy but most of them were fine but, as the thought of all those things down in the basement has haunted my sleep for a while, we hauled them all up to our apartment. For a day or two, our Christmas tree is surrounded by cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins.

Rooting through the boxes, I came upon a folder containing the essays I’d written for my own college essays a million years ago, including my various letters of acceptance and rejection.   One essay seems apropos to share with you, so I reproduce it here, without all the XXXed out sections and marginalia (how the hell did we write on typewriters back in the day?). Bear in mind, this was written by a 17 year-old me, and yet it seems to foreshadow where I am today, 34 years later.

I find those activities that interest me the most deal with self-expression in one way or another.  In the past year or two, the fine arts have intrigued me as a form of self-expression and the bulk of my time is spent improving my drawing skills.

This summer I went to the pre-college program of the Rhode Island School of Design and there began a transition. My painting instructor revealed to me the great amount of literature on painters, their works and their environments, and I slowly realized, unconsciously at first, but eventually with greater clarity and understanding, that I was, in fact, getting a great deal more satisfaction from reading about the paintings than from looking at them. I believe it is easier for me to appreciate that which is more obvious in a form of expression and presented with the full awareness by the creator.

As an artist, I created things that had very little value other than an aesthetic one, for I did not understand much about the presentation of ideas in painting and the power of certain combinations of color, form, shapes, texture, and other techniques and dimensions. I found that in producing a meaningful piece of art, one had first to feel the force of the idea, then transcribe that force into another form, even another language, that of the colors and shapes that appear on the canvas.

 

On the other hand, the writer, I thought, does not go through that step, but simply records his ideas on paper in a one-to-one reproduction. He must be more specific than the painter, and his ideas more clear, so the writer appears to blatantly present the same message to every reader. The painter leaves his work to individual interpretation. This became a stumbling block. But as I began to read more, I realized that the written word too, has many levels of understanding, and a good writer must be able to be clear and unclear the same time, so his words evoke images which are purely personal for the reader.

The idea of being able to work on these many levels, to create work that makes the reader stop and wonder, outweighed the satisfaction of creating a painting that people could simply pass by. For when one reads, one ignores one’s immediate surroundings and enters a world of the author’s creation. It takes a certain commitment to read a book, a commitment to give that author a chance to persuade or entertain you. A painting, on the other hand, is hung among hundreds of others and does not have the same chance to grab the viewer and whisk them off into the creator’s world. One may go to a museum and look at all the paintings in one day, as so many people do, but who would consider reading all the books in a library one Sunday afternoon?

Thus I have begun to devote myself more to the creation of colorful words than of colorful colors, although I still return occasionally to my paints. I look forward to the day when I shall be able to find a proper balance to allow equal expression in words and paint.

Interesting that I have continued to slide back and forth across from expressing myself in words and pictures through all these subsequent years, finding as I have at last a happy meeting point in the art of the illustrated journal.

RISD will announce its decision on Jack’s application on the 15th of December. Till then, we wait with bated breath.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of Breakfast

Watch this film in HD and full screen for maximum pleasure.

I have long wanted to make higher quality films that would show the process of illustrated journaling. I’m not a huge fan of detailed step-by-step instruction because I think everyone finds their own way to recording their lives in a journal. But I do know that seeing good films about how people make things is always inspirational to me. I love the videos Etsy posts periodically as well as small documentaries about how people make artisanal foods.

Jack shot this film with our new Canon 7D. He has an amazing ability to make images in any medium and picked up cinematography right away — insisting that we rent certain lenses and keeping my most commercial instincts at bay. Thanks to him we ended up with a slick film that still has some artistic merit.  Tommy Kane, my long-time drawing buddy, and master of his own video domain, was on hand to make suggestions and climb ladders. We shot over one weekend, then spent a couple more weeks putting it all together.  We all learned a lot during this process and can’t wait to make the next film.

Here are some of the videos that inspired our film:

Progress Report

This gallery contains 6 photos.

I know I have developed an annoying new habit of teasing you with vague announcements of upcoming projects. So here’s a status update on a few of the pots bubbling on the stove. • My next book, currently known only … Continue reading →