Tagged: Stillman & Birn


 
So, Joe. Enigmatic. Been seeing him every so often over the last seven or so years whenever I need hi-fi ink jet copies of my drawings. He’s good. Very technical. The strip mall store he works at is pricey but Joe’s tops. I know if he’s on the job the moment I walk into the place and look in the direction of the frame & print department. Whoever’s working is seated behind a large screen computer. If they’re not sporting Tin Tin’s haircut…I leave.
I’m quite fascinated with Joe. Told me once he was a history major in college. Eastern European events. Knows a good deal about the Vikings in Russia & Byelorussia, about the Balkan Wars, Crimean War, all that Iron Curtain stuff. I had heard about the connection between the words ‘Slav’ and ‘slave’ but it was Joe who told me of the derivation of ‘cíao’ from ‘slave’. He’s keen on mechanical pencils and fountain pens and is usually sporting an ever changing pair. Likewise here. I comment on his. He on mine. A couple of hopeless gear heads. He likes plaid cowboy shirts with Mother of Pearl snaps, lots of panels, exaggerated cuts on the yoke. Dude must have dozens tho he favors a powder blue and brown combo.

Dropped in last week to take advantage of a storewide 40% off Halloween sale and place an order. Saw Joe in the parking lot on a cig break. A busy man, I let him have his peace. I watched from the printing desk as I waited for his return. I hadn’t seen Joe in a month of Sundays so the arm sling was a new development. Didn’t appear to slow him down much as he looked to be texting while nursing a make. He was already reaching for another cigarette as he crushed the previous butt beneath a high top Chuck Taylor. A pack of smokes is always part of his ensemble. Filterless. Total old school. Like my Uncle Bill. But so unlike my uncle’s measured, dreamy eyed way of languidly drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, and pausing to give the system every last second to snatch the cargo of nicotine before two wispy dragons slowly writhed from his nostrils. Joe was on a mission. For uncle Bill it was breathing. Just that. Joe’s urgency showed in impatient lips and eyes riveted to some something before or behind dilated pupils. Each drag is deep but the cigarette makes it back to his pucker before the exhale seems complete.
  What these committed smokers had in common were finger tips of amber and caramel tinting. Like aged meerschaum pipes. Teeth to match.
  I turned to look over his workstation while he power dragged. Orderly. The ever present cup of coffee. Didn’t matter when I showed up, there one sat. The other feature to Joe’s shift was the array of post-it notes. A handful on the counter top and several stuck about the perimeter of the computer screen. Usually in three different colors. Sky blue, bubblegum pink, mint green. Don’t know if it was a color coded system but Joe struck me as a man of systematic observance. I had never given them further consideration, but with time to kill……I slid a glance sufficient to note Joe still fixated on his cell phone and puffing like a car‘s exhaust pipe.
   I didn’t learn much from a quick look because they weren’t in English. There were numbers, perhaps phone numbers with crossed sevens and that Euro #1 with the long upstroke Yanks sometimes mistake for a seven. A buncha Greek frat letters. Some letters were backwards. Maybe Russian or some such alphabet. One word, ???? was followed by what looked like a date & hours of the day using the 24 hour clock. Odd. And if you’re entering orders into a computer, what’s with all the notes to self?
   More than that I didn’t get as an acrid bite to my nostrils announced Joe’s return. He slid into his chair, his eyes following an imaginary dotted line from mine to his post-it notes as he turned on the computer.
“ Mister Joe”.
“Hey”.
Our brief exchange thoroughly muted by our face mask; de rigur in these days of pandemic, his appropriately bearing a Day of the Dead motif.
“Once I clear the previous orders I‘ll open your account”.
I tried to cover my inquisitiveness with a question of faux innocence.
“Gad zooks Joe, quite the hieroglyphs there. S’that advanced math to figure out your scale conversions?”
His eyes briefly glanced down at the colored squares of paper then returned to the screen before the muffled response came,”It’s Cyrillic”.
  I redirected the conversation to his sling. “That’s gotta make for an awkward day on the job.”
“Beats letting it hang”.
“Hope you’re on the mend”.
“Getting better day by day”.
“Good to hear. Been wearing it long?”
“ ‘bout six months”.
   Each response took appreciably longer than the previous. I’m slow, but eventually I get the message.
  Every so often a buzz would grab my attention followed by Joe rotating the wrist of his sling bound arm to show he still held his cell phone. A glance down, a tap or two, then the wrist turned to again conceal the phone.
“What do you have for me today?”’ he asked.
“I’d like scans and 50% enlarged prints of four drawings from my sketchbook”. I set my backpack on the floor and fumbled thru the stuffed contents to pull out an old ledgerbook I was currently drawing in. “The pages are marked”, I offered. He took the book and opened it to the pages I had marked with little post-it notes. As he did, I noticed his had been removed.
Drawn with Faber-Castell Essentio fountain pen, and Pitt Artist Pens on Stillman & Birn Beta Series sketchbook.


Latest installment from the graphic novella The Java Knot. “So, it’s more than a habit… this pull to draw out in public. I don’t bring a book to read, I’m too fidgety for that. I’d rather check out my surroundings. Mostly, if honesty overtakes me, I prefer to watch people. Closely. Some would call it staring. But that sounds too passive to me. I go over them like an eagle casing the river below, looking for movement beneath the surface. Trying at times to understand the substructure of cheek bones, jaw muscles, the coordination of a hand’s architecture as it returns coffee cup to saucer then glides to flip the page of a book. But I also watch, as if, like the eagle’s penetrating glare beneath the waves, I can sense a current of thought. Knit brows, pinching lips, the coordinated grip of the masseter and temporalis muscles setting molars firmly into their opposing cousins. Frustration? Displeasure? Disapproval? Disgust? And will my drawings capture a fleeting moment of unguarded commentary, which, if elusive to presumptuous certainty, feels as though I’m now driving the streets of that someone’s neighborhood.
I sauntered to my recently favored cafe to find an interesting looking gent, with long uncoiling ringlets of Grey hair, seated curbside at a table, both hands occupied, one with coffee, the other with cellphone. I seated myself at an adjacent table such that we were facing each other, if obliquely. He no sooner placed his cup, empty, upon the table than the waitress appeared from within the shop and replaced the depleted cup with a full one. ‘Keep ‘em coming?’ she asked. ‘Keep ‘em coming’, he said. She turned directly to me, and asked my pleasure as I pulled sketchbook and pens from my satchel. Hot cocoa, bitter, no whip.
About then, a bicyclist coming up the street, glided along side the curb, slowed, nearly stopping beside the gent working his second cup, deftly laying an envelop on the table before him, and continued on. No exchange of words, nor looks. No nod. As I opened my sketchbook to a fresh page with little fanfare, the envelope slid into his jacket in like fashion with the hand returning to cradle the cup. His heavy lidded eyes never wandered from the cell’s screen.
I had payed little attention to the parking meter directly behind him, but as I began laying in the preliminary lines of his head, torso, the table and meter, I was amused to see the words PAY HERE backing his right arm. The very arm which had retrieved the envelope as if an extension of the meter.”

Drawn with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens and fountain pen on Stillman & Birn Beta Series sketchbook.

 
Maybe this will answer some of your burning questions connected to Geese. Giamila and I were walking along the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. Chitown has a large resident population of big and beautiful Canada Geese. Well, they’re ardent grazers and Christ on a bike but do they leave a whole lotta fowl loaves where they roam. So, in the interest of science and understanding Nature, let’s talk bird poop. Okay then, uppermost in your minds….”What’s with those Green & White Lincoln logs “? Well, that earthy green is due to their primary diet of grass and green vegetation. Lot’s of it. “How MUCH Doc?!” you ask…well, enough that the end product yields about 2 pounds a day per bird. Your average human drops a daily no. 2 at around 1 pound – give or take depending on height + weight + diet and if you’re an active bowler. A 6’5” Texan pushin’ 300lb that consumes a full rack o’ ribs, 3/4lb of brisket, smoked turkey drumstick, 2 links of smoked Polish sausage, 1/2 pint o’ pinto beans, 1/2 pint o’ potato salad, 1/2 pint o’ slaw, 2 squares of cornbread, cup o’ rice puddin’ and big ol’ wedge of peach cobbler with oatmeal crumble and 2 softball sized scoops of vanilla ice cream on top each and every dinner….well, we won’t go there. “Uhhhh… well how ‘bout that White stuff?” Good eye! That signature look is due to the evolutionary efficiency of simultaneously eliminating #1 & #2. #1 comes out as a white paste of nitrogenous uric acid that minimizes water loss to the bird. Two for one. Cool, eh? Now them birds can have a go up to 28 times a day, with the resultant dropping as represented in the upper left of the sketch. But Giamila & I saw the occasional pilling like that shown in the center of my sketch and the accompanying close up. We refer to this as ‘stool stacking’ and believe it to be the result of multiple excrements of perhaps 6-8 birds. This could be territorial marking in several ‘overlays’ or it could be a form of clutch bonding. Either way, the activity appears to be well rehearsed and tidy to boot. Just remember to to keep the dogs and kids away as that honker’s stool is a mini bus bursting with pathogenic passengers. Get a load of the list of ‘em on my sketch. In fact, a substantial population of them creatures can overwhelm the chemistry of small bodies of water. “What’s the solution to THAT Doc?”, you ask. Well, it IS Thanksgiving. Maybe you give turkeys a reprieve this next year.
 
Drawn with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens on a Stillman & Birn Gamma Series sketchbook.

  

Zombie Moolah – A Scam 4 All Seasons. Dadgummit!! I shoulda known. They never wear out this formula. They got you thinking, well, I think it’s really dead THIS time. Da monster’s kaput. They finally swept the town clear of the undead, the last one has sunk into the ooze of the epilogue. The music softens, the camera pans the still swamp, toads are croaking, and a lone violin holds a jittery note….DAYUM!!!! The Zombie Hydra of Hysteria comes sputtering back up out of the murky goo and it looks like mayhem is about to set loose all over again!! I get suckered every time. I was totally inspired by Giuliani‘a impassioned challenge to the electoral process, as if Postmaster ‘G’ DeJoy & the govs of Texas, NC, and Georgia hadn’t given it their best. Sumbody’s jiss gotta git to da bottum of this vote fraud thing! And who better’n a bottom dwelling reptile skilled in Rudimentary survival in the Beltway Bayou with a nose for filthy lucre? An old pro who knows a patron’s impending prison sentence when he doth seize one. That mad-as-a-hatter Sanpaku gaze outta be the clue it’s all about the Benjamins. As I was drawing Rudi’s top choppers and tinting his skin toady green, I kept asking myself, “where have I seen….” then it dawned on me! Yupper, Jim Carrey nailed him years ago. Separated at birth?????
 

Drawn with #fabercastellusa Pitt Artist Pens and Albrecht Dürer Watercolour Markers on #clairefontaine Stillman & Birn Gamma Series sketchbook.

 Almost at the end of the season for most vendors at the Evanston Farmers Market. Gotta B Crepes got slammed with devoted customers on their finale day till the state of Illinois lifts the ban on indoor seating. they’ll take a vacation till the COVID-19 infection rates drops and Gov. Pritzker lifts the order.
Nice Guy Nick said Henry’s Farm has another week in Evanston.

I used Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens, an F-C Essentio and Graf von Faber  fountain pen on a Clairefontaine Stillman & Birn Beta Series Watercolour sketchbook.

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Tags

  • blog links