Having been here four months now it took me this long to actually get an art opening. Of course it helped I had tangential connection to the artist. Sometime in 2005 I saw a photo of his work in Harper’s magazine and told myself if I ever had a chance to hire him I do it. His stuff is so brilliant and totally unique I got ridiculously excited about it.
The next year when I was art directing at Seattle Metropolitan I tracked him down and was going to have him do some illustrations for a feature story, but I ended up quitting my job and moving out here. Later I found out Chip Kidd had hired him for some magazine work himself and I kicked myself I hadn’t jumped on things sooner. I’m forever behind and my timing’s perpetually bad. Anyway, we kept in touch, and told me he was having an opening at the Foley gallery who had shown his work the first time I saw it in print.
It’s always exciting for me to meet people in person whom I have no idea what they’ll look like. For some reason I thought he might be younger, but he was just around my age, well dressed, extremely affable and kind. We ended up chatting for awhile and I admired that he lived out in the sticks somewhere in Illinois. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of rural life (I’d gone to college in a small town in Northern California that was surrounded by agriculture) and I found myself longing for something simpler. Still, it’s hard to beat the quantity of art here though I failed to take a single picture of his stuff. I did however happen to get a shot of his daughter playing smack dab in the middle of the gallery, which seemed to sum him up quite well.
The next year when I was art directing at Seattle Metropolitan I tracked him down and was going to have him do some illustrations for a feature story, but I ended up quitting my job and moving out here. Later I found out Chip Kidd had hired him for some magazine work himself and I kicked myself I hadn’t jumped on things sooner. I’m forever behind and my timing’s perpetually bad. Anyway, we kept in touch, and told me he was having an opening at the Foley gallery who had shown his work the first time I saw it in print.
It’s always exciting for me to meet people in person whom I have no idea what they’ll look like. For some reason I thought he might be younger, but he was just around my age, well dressed, extremely affable and kind. We ended up chatting for awhile and I admired that he lived out in the sticks somewhere in Illinois. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of rural life (I’d gone to college in a small town in Northern California that was surrounded by agriculture) and I found myself longing for something simpler. Still, it’s hard to beat the quantity of art here though I failed to take a single picture of his stuff. I did however happen to get a shot of his daughter playing smack dab in the middle of the gallery, which seemed to sum him up quite well.
posted by Stewart A. Williams at
8:29 PM
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