Charlevoix

     Art festivals don't always go as planned. You don't plan on selling so much the previous show that you have to scramble to get to the next show. Which we did and arrive fried. Or maybe you do plan on that, I do think pretty regularly: what happens if I sell that, then what will I do? You don't plan one show you plan a succession of them. These parts of the gig suck your soul and exhaust you. In the back of your mind your plan for bad weather, but you hope you don't have to deal with it. You try not to think what if something bad happens when you are away from home. 

     I have done Charlevoix on and off since 2004. You enjoyably drive around Lake Michigan, cross the Mackinac Bridge, spend some time in the UP. On the beaches you look for fossils and get some rare relaxation. The show sometimes is like a paid vacation which is why some artists do shows-make enough money to go someplace cool and experience something you wouldn't otherwise. There are just things to do and see that make Charlevoix unique as a show. The affluent boating culture is a turn off but the quaint no big box downtown is like going up north when I was a kid. I see families experiencing a vacation in a way that is healthy. You are in town at the seasonal high point, a time when most of the country is sweltering in the heat of the dog days of summer and you are happy to be up north. The show is run very well and the area supports it nicely. With all the transients you never know who you are going to sell to or meet. I see some of the same people year after year and have built friendships, but mostly it is a new crowd of vacationers. This makes the show a little more surface level than most of the other ones I do.

     Bad weather is part of this. We sign up for it, and have to make our peace with it. We jumped in Lake Michigan after a brutally hot set up. We camped and it was too hot to sleep, which made the show really draining. With the extreme heat, people came out early like always and then it became a trickle. In the heat people don't engage as much. They don't linger, they are not as curious, they don't take as many cards, and I don't have as many good conversations. People are on a mission to get through it and back into the air conditioning. The show drags on. It was good enough but tiring.

     Then at the end chaos. A storm rolls in. You manically bust your ass to get everything down and then out of the rain. It is stressful. You never know what a storm will bring. I have experienced and seen enough to know you don't want to be in this situation. But we get it done and have a nice meal. Things cool off and we sleep well. Unfortunately we wake up to find the storm flooded Milwaukee and our family is one of the victims. 

    Suddenly a day on the beach turns into a helpless and distracted day. We want to go spend a night in the UP, but settle for a walk on the beach and a long drive home. Our family lost their entire basement in the flash flood. All day long we hear stories of the disaster. We get home to a swollen rain gauge and a wet but okay basement. We host Katie's Mom's funeral in 6 days. Art seems very distant. Sometimes this is just how it goes. Things pile up and you just find a way to get through them. And we did. We hosted the funeral service in our barn as a ferocious thunderstorm nailed us. It was a deeply emotional and memorable ceremony. And then we crashed. Two days later I am painting in the heat over by the Mississippi River, my happy place, just trying to get centered. Trying to find some peace, trying to make my way through another blur of an art show season.

Ann Arbor aftermath

 Ann Arbor was a great show for Katie and me, and it almost always is. Unlike most shows, Ann Arbor draws serious people from a very wide swath. All of Southern Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, even Chicago and Cleveland. The weather at the show cooperated and I spent the last few weeks being overwhelmed and confused. No confusion about Zingermann's Roadhouse though, that is all good. 

Part of me never wants to do this again. I am physically and emotionally spent. It is increasingly difficult to keep this pace up, which I didn’t want to do this year, and I feel creatively drained. The work feels formulaic to me at times. It is harder and harder for me to drive around in rural America and be motivated. America is ugly, and has gotten much worse in my lifetime. Science and technology make it worse. Our addictions to cheap food, cheap houses, and cheap solutions, wears me down. Many days I come home upset by the lack of craft, thought and beauty. Its hard seeing people get rich off of it too. Furthermore, our deep political divisions only add fuel to the fire.This is not how I want to spend the rest of my life: feeling down.

Then there is a part of me that loves what I do. Painting plein air always makes me happy, even when I fail. All the cool people that I meet keep me going. As much as I dislike the world around me, I at least try to light a candle, even if I do curse the darkness. I am proud of that. I see what most people put in their homes, I know I am giving people something different, authentic, sincere and aspiring to be beautiful for their homes, and that feels good. And it is rare. Unquestionably, I put my heart into it. So I am torn as to what to do next. Right now the thought of painting the Mississippi River or Lake Michigan or the woods makes me most excited.

Lately I have been thinking about what 19 year old me would think of this. It started when a couple of women in their 20’s came into my booth, separately, and cried because the work emotionally got to them. 19 year old me says “see I was right the whole time!”. I feel fortunate that I stuck with that initial inarticulate rejection of dominant culture and have refined it. That I focused on finding beauty for my whole adult life. For me though, it is still hard to separate 19 year old abrasive scrawny dirty me and 47 year old me. I recently sat down with a big strapping fireman and his beautiful wife who had come to town to see me, it is hard to imagine that ever happening to me. The whole thing is like a dream. Like aren’t you people going to make fun of me and be mean at some point like when I was in high school? I think about dropping 19 year old me into many of these situations and wonder how that shit kid would have totally flaked out. Like, I act weird enough as it is, but imagine Napoleon Dynamite with long hair, that was me. Sometimes, sadly I still act that way, and yes you should make fun of me for it. I guess I deal with my success by finding ways to not think about it. Being successful makes me uncomfortable(I am Lutheran), but I do cherish people telling me about a painting they bought from me at some point and that they value it. Thank you everyone for that and for helping me grow up.